MUSIC
Missy D on a mission to make a global impression Vancouver is now home to the emerging hip-hop artist, but the plan is to conquer the world after COVID-19
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by Steve Newton
issy D remembers well the day her love affair with hiphop started. She was an 11-year-old schoolkid in Zimbabwe, and her class was preparing for the year-end talent show. But they were learning to play the recorder, which isn’t the most thrilling instrument in the world. “We pretty much sucked,” the 29-yearold rapper recalls on the line from her East Van home, “and we were all complaining to our music teacher, ‘Hey, you should be teaching us music that’s relevant to us.’ Hip-hop was a big thing at the time, and he somehow changed the curriculum for the next three months in preparation for that big talent show and was like, ‘Okay, you guys wanna study hip-hop, so we’re gonna study the history of hip-hop, from deejays to dancing to instrumentals to rapping.’ “And one of the assignments was to write a rap and perform it at that talent show. So we dropped the recorder—although I still have mine to this day—and I wound up writing a rap with one of my best friends. It came easy because I used to write poetry as a kid. I just fell in love with hip-hop that day.” It was at that point that the budding rapper, born Diane Mutabaruka, transformed into Missy D. Missy Elliott was big at the time, and because of her look and how she performed at the talent show, people started to compare her to the American superstar. Before long, Mutabaruka’s new nickname, Missy D, had stuck. Ten years ago, the Rwanda-born, Ivory Coast–raised artist moved to Vancouver to study at UBC and earn a bachelor of science degree. Since then, she’s worked to develop a musical style that fuses African flavours with hip-hop, rap, and R & B.
One of the assignments was to write a rap and perform it. – Missy D
Born in Rwanda and raised in Ivory Coast, Diane Mutabaruka now perfoms as Missy D, a Vancouver rapper who draws on the best parts of old-school hip-hop, rap, and classic soul.
“I call it ‘rap & soul’,” she explains, “and the reason I say that is that I think it’s a fusion of hip-hop, rap, neo-soul, and soul music. That’s what you usually get when you’re coming to watch my band.” Missy D has performed with the likes of Maestro Fresh Wes, Jully Black, Nomadic Massive, and Busty and the Bass. On Friday (February 19), she will take part in Winter Jazz with a show streamed live from Performance Works on Granville Island. She’ll be accompanied by her band— guitarist Vinay Lobo, bassist Dave Taylor, and drummer Ian Cardona—on a bill with DJ Kookum and dancer Sierra Baker.
“We’ve shared a few stages over the years,” Missy D points out. “I’ve had the chance to open up for Snotty Nose Rez Kids—they’re a hip-hop Indigenous group—a few times, and DJ Kookum usually deejays with them. She’s opening up, so it’ll be awesome to see this femme/ woman energy from the start to the end of the show. I think she’s gonna play some EDM, some hip-hop, some fusions of music that she enjoys, and then you get me in the second half, where I’m giving you the soul, jazzy, hip-hop, reggae, live-band aspect to the show.” Last March, Missy D released the six-
song EP Yes Mama, which opens with the track “Paint”, an exploration of intergenerational “pain, trauma, catharsis, and healing through creativity”. A video for the song, compiled and edited by Gavin Hartigan, features contributions from visual artists Kimmortal, Matt Hans, Michele Jubilee, Samaneh, Kafiya Mudey, and Corrina Keeling. Missy D reveals that a second video for “Paint”, featuring the art of Sofia Shamsunahar, will be released the day before her Winter Jazz gig. She hopes it will help cement her status as an emerging artist on the Vancouver music scene. “The current goal I have this year is just grounding myself and ensuring that people know who I am and know what my music is about,” she says. “And the goal post-COVID is just to do more shows and to tour and to share the music with more people across oceans and across continents.” g Missy D performs on February 19 as part of the Coastal Jazz and Blues Society’s free online Winter Jazz program, presented in association with the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.
Crosby takedown of Bridgers proves truly pathetic
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by Mike Usinger
t what point do you go from being one of America’s most idealistic original hippies to a miserably intolerant old fart? That’s a question Phoebe Bridgers might be rightly asking this week since David Crosby reminded the world he’s still using up valuable oxygen. Folk music’s most famous mustachioed portable sperm bank was asked on Twitter what he thought of Bridgers’s February 6 appearance on Saturday Night Live. Before we get to that, a quick recap. The 26-year-old Bridgers finished off her second song on SNL, “I Know the End”, by doing her best to smash the living shit out of her Danelectro Dano ‘56 guitar. Said 12
THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT
FEBRUARY 18 – 25 / 2021
demolition, which included piledriving it into a dummy amp that shot fake sparks, wasn’t the result of her blowing a line on national TV, having her Sportsheets Unity Vibe Mini Vibrator malfunction, or being pissed that the bread on the backstage deli tray was two sizes too small for the imported European salami. How to explain it, then? Um, have you been paying attention to, well, everything that’s gone on in the world over the past couple of years? Donald Fucking Trump. Black Lives Matter. COVID-19. #MeToo. California wildfires. And Vladimir Putin arresting Pussy Riot—again. Who in their right fucking mind isn’t motherfucking angry? When Bridgers went full-on wrecking ball on her
guitar, she sent a message to all of us: you are not alone. It was as inspirationally cathartic as it was beautiful. Unless, evidently, your name happened to be David Van Cortlandt Crosby. The 79-year-old has been around long enough to remember when Pete Townshend was making Leo Fender weep on a nightly basis. So somebody asked him on Twitter what he thought of Bridgers channelling the spirits of Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Courtney Love. His response was swift and blunt: “Pathetic”. And then, in case the message was somehow not clear, he followed that up with a series of double-down tweets. see next page
