by SCOTT C

My meeting with Toronto’s K-OS, now a certified Canadian music-industry darling, happened at Montreal’s Grappa Lounge, where we quietly talked in a brightly sunlit room. After a long day of conducting more than 20 interviews, he was genuinely happy to see a familiar face. He’s coming to town to push his new LP, Atlantis: Hymns for Disco, with a new live show, but we didn’t talk too much about that.

Mirror: Needless to say, a lot of things have changed. You’re a busy guy these days, and I want to know if the past disenchantment you’ve expressed about the music industry has passed. How are you feeling?

K-OS: I don’t know who said it in the Bible, but it was such a simple thing. Something like, “When I was a boy, I did the things of a boy, and now that I’m a man, I do things of a man.” For me, there’s nothing more liberating than acknowledging that some of the things you did, you did because you were younger. Whether it was mean things, or spontaneous things that brought out the adolescent, juvenile attitude. As a human soul, you start to remember that you felt this way before. Knowing things about myself is one thing, but actually realizing that I felt a certain way, last album, is important too. If I’m alive, how long am I going to complain about the fact that I get to make music all day? It’s a corporate reality, but you learn to deal with it in a way that doesn’t upset your life. It’s not that I’m disenchanted—I wasn’t happy. When all those songs were getting played on the radio, I wasn’t happy. I was into a kind of self-loathing.

M: That’s how you would describe it?

K: Yeah. The songs sounded happy and I had fun performing on stage, but I couldn’t find joy in anything, because I hadn’t truly reconciled that I wanted to do this for real. I was lying to myself, thinking I was going to jet, just do this and break out, but I love making music, and I’ll probably be doing it for the rest of my life. So, it’s not over, but I’m no longer going to complain about the opportunity to make music. It’s not gonna be “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” or anything like that, but I will drop ideas in music in a forum that is truly fun.

M: How did it feel to see yourself in the Burning to Shine documentary, working with the CBC radio orchestra?

K: I envisioned my father seeing it and thought it was dope, but I saw a certain arrogance about myself that made me say, “Wow,” but a lot of that was nervousness, being around so many people who really knew music. The “Act Like You Know” hip hop attitude came out as a result.

M: How much more comfortable have you become with your live show, and where do you want to take that?

K: Well, after I saw the Roots in 1996 at the Opera House, I went back to the lab, and now, I want to speak that symbiotic language where we’re creating moments with the band, because we’re living, interacting people.

With Kobe James at la Tulipe tonight,
Thursday, Oct. 26, 9 p.m., $22.50

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