Sikh to be heard

>> Hip hop producer Sikh Knowledge
kicks it Khalsa style

HEAD RAPS: Sikh Knowledge

by NARCEL X

With all the recent talk of reasonable accommodation, and Quebec’s elite wondering if too many immigrants have infiltrated the ranks of society, Kanwar Anit Singh Saini, aka Sikh Knowledge, has had it up to his MPC pads with displacement and misjudgment. Born and raised in Montreal, he came up listening to dancehall, J Dilla and devotional Punjabi funk.

“My community doesn’t necessarily see the worth of what I do,” says Saini. “It’s like, ‘go back home, be a doctor or engineer and get married.’ Music isn’t frowned upon, but it’s not the best job either. I hate it when I walk into work and I get a ‘yo!’ Do you know how much harder I had to work to get to this office? They don’t think music equals education.”

When I caught up with Sikh Knowledge a couple of months ago, the recent graduate of Concordia’s music program was fresh off a trip to the U.K., where he had just recorded a DJ set and interview session for the BBC, premiering his self-owned label Bank of Mount Real’s first release, Nu High. Employing verses from Montreal’s own Ill Mestizo, Lotus and Nomadic Massive’s Nantali Indongo, to name a few, Saini’s debut album aspires to one thing—pushing the borders of music. “This album was the birth of. What’s the plan? I would say, ‘Step by step.’ You think that’s a good one?”

Currently executive producing a new release on London’s Dented Records, the label of underground heroes Foreign Beggars, Sikh has teamed up with Ghosttown, a two-man producer behemoth out of Manchester. Given a slew of beats, he is looking for the right MCs to match with the off-kilter British bangers. With mixing and arrangement duties, he is finally flexing his music muscle comfortably.

When asking him what his mantra is, Saini says, “I don’t have one, that’s my secret. My Sikh-ret. Between school, music and work, there is no time to think about what’s next. This music is my rest.”