by SCOTT C

For the second time inside of a month, Head and Hands has organized a youth-program fundraiser, this time serving up Street Vibes with a variety of performances. Along with Bad News Brown, Madame HollyD’sh, Travis Knights and some guest DJs, MC Preach will also be taking the stage to do his thing. With his new LP, Voice of the Streets, about to drop this September on his own Youngstar Records, Preach is more than ready to blow the lid off of the show this week. The Mirror spoke to Preach over the phone, right here in Montreal.

Mirror: There’s a lot of MCs in Montreal, man. A lot of young cats, some older guys too. Do you consider yourself part of what people always refer to as the Montreal hip hop scene?

Preach: It’s funny because I’ve been re-evaluating what my role is in all of this, and over the last three or four years, I haven’t really been a part of the scene in Montreal. I don’t even know what the hip hop scene in Montreal is anymore. When I was a kid, there was the underground scene that happened at open mics and little clubs all over, with Eye-Spy and the Autobots and all them, and I figured that was the scene that I wanted to be a part of. For the last two or three years, I’ve been on the Kalmunity grind as a spoken word artist, with AKA Soulo and Sharon Brooks too, who’ve been gracious enough to open the stage up to me. I guess I’ve been performing a lot of spots that I haven’t seen rappers in, so now I feel like it’s time for me to get back to that scene and bring back what I’ve been able to learn, and the growth I’ve had.

M: I always see you encouraging the younger artists coming up to come correct on the mic, or just to take in all the knowledge and information they can about things around them before they pursue their hip hop dream. How important is it to provide that guidance?

P: It’s extremely important. I think young Canadian artists sometimes have a hard time seeing things for what they are. They don’t see outside the box. They don’t see that record labels and media forms have an agenda, and even a responsibility to their government. As hip hop artists in Canada, we don’t really have what they have sold us as freedom of speech. We can say what we want to say on any CD, but will it get to the mainstream? Is the commercial world going to let you feed your kids with that? No, because if it’s adverse to the money that they’re making, it’s not in their best interest. For the kids that want to live that 50 Cent dream or the Kanye West dream, kids that want to express themselves in this world, they have to understand that to live that dream, there’s a lot of bending over that you have to do, and most of us aren’t ready to bend.

With Travis Knights, Bad News Brown, TR3S, Casper, Holly D’sh, J!ggy N KD, Jonny Hostile and Rashad Spector at la Sala Rossa tonight, Thursday, Aug. 17, 8 p.m., $5

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