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SASKATOONEXPRESS - March 20-26, 2017 - Page 1
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Volume 16, Issue 11, Week of March 20, 2017
in and stole a Run DMC tape.” Honest, his life hasn’t been about stealing things. Besides, there must be a statute of limitations on swiping a tape from Music City 25 years ago. Cquel, who was born Evan Thompson in Prince Albert, has lived in Saskatoon since he was two. He made his first music using a couple of ghetto-blasters. Then it was four-track recorders. “Now anybody can go online and download a program and make everything sound super crisp and clean. It’s changed the way kids growing up do this compared to how we did.” Cquel has been selected to do a performance showcase next month in Toronto at Canadian Music Week. He’s the only hip hop artist from west of Manitoba to be selected for the festival. It was the summer before he went into Grade 11 when Cquel started rapping more seriously. He laughs at that memory, too. “I wrote a couple of verses and kept doing the same verses over and over again because I only had two.” A friend gave him some advice. “He said, ‘Man, if you are going to do this, you’re going to have to freestyle.’” Cquel was reluctant to try improvising while rapping. Finally, he relented. “I tried and they said, ‘Man you’re great at this.’” He said freelancing is a measuring stick as a rapper. “It’s getting lost with the new generation. It’s always been a thing through the ’80s and ’90s and 2000s. If you’re going to go out and write songs about how you are the best — there is a lot of bravado in hip hop — you better be able, on the spot, to come off the top of your head and make something up. If you can’t, someone else, in front of a bunch Cquel has been selected to do a performance next month in Toronto at Canadian Music Week. (Photo by Alex Shenton) of people, is going to do that to you and attack you while they are doing it. Cam Hutchinson ing hip hop,” he said. “Anything she music and I found a tape she had of the “Hip hop is very competitive in that Saskatoon Express did when she was a kid I thought was Beastie Boys, and all of a sudden I loved way and that’s one of the reasons I fell here have been a number of defin- cool. She got into skateboarding in the the Beastie Boys.” in love with it. I gravitated to sports and ing moments in Cquel’s life and ’80s when it wasn’t trendy. People hated Cquel (pronounced Sequel) laughs always tried to be the best at whatever music career. skateboarders and didn’t want them in when he says a music store helped him I did. It’s like sports. You always have When he was a child, there was the their parking lot. out as well. to think you’re the best. If you don’t influence of his sister Tara Kalyn, who is “I would steal her skateboard t-shirts “I went to the mall when Circle Park feel like you’re the best then, you know seven years older. and stuff. I was always trying to be dif- first opened and Music City was in there. what, why are you playing the game? “My sister was a big part of me find- ferent, too. She liked a lot of punk rock My friend watched my bike and I went (Continued on page 8)
Cquel
Saskatoon rapper delivers positive messages
T
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