Buck 65 Gets Situational

01/19/09 5:01pm

by Noah Love (CHARTattack)

Halifax's dark hip-hop prince finally gets his scratchwork out of the closet

It just so happens that on the morning Buck 65 gets on the phone, Radiohead have changed the face of the music industry by releasing In Rainbows by themselves. Buck himself has been releasing free material on his website since his last record, Secret House Against The World, came out.

"I have to admit to you I sat in on a panel discussion at Pop Montreal a few days ago, and we were discussing sample issues and legal issues around music," he begins. "Then we got into a discussion about internet downloading and stuff, and when it comes right down to it and I think about the whole big picture, I think with the possible exception of the publishing arm of the music business, I can't wait to see the whole goddamn thing destroyed."

"It's on its last leg, and it's kind of pathetic now as it is. And when I think about what it would mean, if it was just wide open, open season, and the whole thing was just dust and didn't exist anymore and we were just totally losing in artistic wild west, I kind of can't wait."

Given the events of the last year or so, it's not hard to see why Buck is palpably excited about the idea. The demos for his current Situation album, which came out at the very end of October, were given to Warner way back in June 2006 at the MuchMusic Video Awards.

But the tracks were so sample-heavy that Buck and co-conspirator Skratch Bastid had to go back to the drawing board on most of the material. Situation was finally finished this past spring — er, well, sort of. Actually, Buck and Skratch were still putting finishing touches on the record as late as the beginning of last month.

"We basically put together a 100 per cent sample-based record," Buck explains. "I don't know what we were thinking in terms of pulling it off. You know, we were essentially told that we could never get away with this. So we had to go back into the studio and rebuild the whole thing from scratch.

"In the end, we did that basically, like from when we first started to get the first reports back on what the picture was in terms of the samples, the legal and financial realities of that. We thought, 'This picture isn't looking good. We better get back in the studio and come to the understanding that we won't be able to use any of this.' In the end, we were able to use a handful of things. A few songs remain unchanged on the record, but it was a very long process. It's very agonizing to think that you're finished but then be told you're not. I think the record benefited from that process in the end."

Legal headaches and painfully long gestation periods aside, Situation is Buck's catchiest and wittiest effort to date. The record may not be a collection of wall-to-wall samples, but you'd never know it given that Buck and Skratch used recording tricks to make it sound like it was.

The Mt. Uniacke, N.S. native who's currently living in Denver is sure of one thing: It won't take nearly as long for you to hear what's coming next. Just keep your ear tuned to his website.

"I'm getting ready to post another project there," he reveals. "In these last two years, I've just really made a ton of material. In fact, yesterday I was in a studio recording the vocals, just polishing off my next record as well, which is pretty much ready to go. I definitely plan on, as much as I can, giving my music away
from now on. It's the only thing that really makes any sense to me.

"It's always been agony for me working on music and then having to wait for a long time to get it to people. I've always wanted to get it to people when it was still new and exciting to me. I always work a lot, all the time. I'm sitting on a mountain of music right now, like I'm always am sitting on a mountain of music, and I just want to get that out to people. I think this stuff, and the way that I've used the internet and my website in the last couple of years, is just a small indication of what's to come and how I intend to do things."

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Bananas For Bongos

One of the samples that was toughest to clear for Situation was The Incredible Bongo Band's "Let There Be Drums." Buck sampled the Canadian instrumental band's entire song, merely layering lyrics overtop of the track.

"They were around in the '70s and they made completely instrumental music and
it's kind of a genre unto itself," Buck says. "There's kind of elements of surf rock in it, but it goes way beyond that into weirdness. And the main instrument of the band is bongos. Funny enough, I actually swore off bongos when I was a kid: Never in my life will I ever touch a bongo.' Now they're all over this record, which is really weird."

This feature is from the November 2007 issue of Chart Magazine. You can purchase the issue in the Chart Shop.