Use Your Allusion: Funky Reference-Happy Rapper K.O. Strat Raises The Arcane On Debut Album Glass Sandwich
Good hip-hop lives and dies on the cleverness of its wordplay. But when it comes to witty namechecks, rapper K.O. Strat is playing in a different league entirely. On his debut album, Glass Sandwich—and its spotlight track, “The Moleskine”—he’s dropping pop-cultural nods so deep they might have stumped even Dennis Miller in his prime.
A short but sweet peek into a restless creative mind, “The Moleskine” packs its 2-minute running time with references to The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Flintstones, Tekken, Metallica’s first album, and the Space Shuttle Challenger. Even the title is an IP: It’s the brand name of the notebook in which Strat used to jot down his lyrical ideas and other bursts of inspiration.
“My close friend had gotten me a grossly overpriced but undeniably nice Moleskine notebook as a gift. If he hadn’t, the song might be called ‘The Hilroy,’” he muses.
All of those lyrical footnotes are in the service of an unabashedly boastful paean to the skill with which Strat hits on his ideas and brings them to the mic. As with most of his material, the aim of “The Moleskine” is to combine an almost free-associating stream of self-promotion with geekisms that are delivered with such flow and rhyming technique that you almost don’t notice how nerdy they are. “Sleight-of-hand rap,” he calls it.
On a musical level, the song basically qualifies as an extended callback of its own. It’s a breezy, finger-snapping little ditty with a sampled acoustic bassline and melodic layers that create what Strat calls “almost a cheat code to appeal to fans of A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, and other early-’90s jazz-sample-heavy artists.”
A host of such pleasures await on the album proper, a self-produced compilation bookended by two new tracks but otherwise made up of singles the artist has released over the past 4 years. That was when this Thornhill, Ontario native—formerly a breakdancer and audio engineer—was still getting serious about making music of his own. Now that he’s entered what he’s calling Phase II of his career, the time seemed ripe to issue a musical refresher course that could sum up Phase I while clearing the decks for a deluge of new material he says is coming.
In the meantime, prepare to be dazzled and confounded by plenty of that aforementioned sleight of hand. Glass Sandwich is loaded with brain-teasing mentions, namedropping everything from Canadian rock band Max Webster, Cloris Leachman’s Frau Blücher character from the movie Young Frankenstein and blues great Howlin’ Wolf to professional wrestling, Italian horror movies, the Led Zeppelin concert flick The Song Remains The Same and what Strat calls “more things that only a limited number of people would understand – and how many of them would listen to hip-hop?
“One of the hallmarks of my music is that I don’t care in the slightest if someone understands what I’m talking about,” he shrugs.
Consider yourself one of the enlightened few if you recognize the album title as being inspired by a Primus song, and the cover art as a mashup of Frank Zappa’s Weasels Ripped My Flesh and the silent classic Nosferatu.
A product of Toronto’s Nekkrak hip-hop collective, Strat classifies his output as “wide-ranging hip hop music made by someone just being themself.” He says to expect more of the same but better in the wake of Glass Sandwich, promising even greater emphasis on the eclectic in everything from samples to style. And if you don’t catch all the references at first, don’t worry: That’s what Google is for.
Care to introduce yourself?
Azoy! My name is Max, but professionally I go by the name of K.O. Strat of the Nekkrak music collective out of Toronto. I’m a lifelong music obsessive and have been playing drums since I was a toddler with high-level backgrounds in bboying (breakdancing) and audio engineering. I discovered hip hop in my tweens and it took over almost my whole being – even today, no matter how weird the music I make is, there’s a strong foundation in “real” hip hop keeping it all together.
Tell us about the process of recording “The Moleskine”?
Being a professional-level engineer, I do most of my solo recording at home on my system which contains everything I need in a room with naturally good acoustics. As what they call a studio rat in my past career, I’ve spent so much time in fancy studios with no windows outfitted with the finest gear and amenities that I’m almost repelled by them now. If the gear is proper and the room sounds fine, I’ll take a house set up any day – worked for Zeppelin. The beat itself is made of an acoustic bassline and synth layers sampled from a jazz fusion track over one of the only songs that I used my live drumming on, and even that was chopped up and treated like a sample. On a note that may interest producers, I use Pro Tools for my beat making as well as recording and mixing (more known as engineering software vs a producer one), as it’s the program I know best and has everything I need. It’s the end quality that matters, so speed isn’t an issue, but I tend to be able to record myself fast in minimal takes and end up with something I’m happy with; I’m exacting and know what I want, but I also don’t have perfectionist standards or am precious about my vocal takes – a very much “if it gets the right energy across, it works” kinda thing. In terms of the actual vocal recording process, the song’s opening bars tell the tale – “record the 16 (verse), then the dubs (adlibs/double tracking), and then record the chorus”. Since I have the skills to facilitate almost the whole audio creation process, I also handled the mixing and mastering of the tune and everything on the “Glass Sandwich” record.
Who was the first and most recent Canadian artist to blow you away?
Honestly, the first Canadian band that would have blown me away was Kideo! Children’s entertainment has come a long way, but there’s nothing like a sanitized KISS for kids that may just have influenced us to pick up guitars and drums the same way bands like Nirvana did when they ruled the charts. In terms of a “real” band, it was probably something that was heavily played as Can-Con during the mid-90s Much Music era where I was glued to the TV – a band like Moist or even Glueleg, who I still listen to all the time. In terms of the most recent, it would have to be some of these local Toronto underground producers and rappers I didn’t know existed until I made more of an effort to start coming out to local events – rappers like J.O. Mairs, Spenny, and Roshin, and producers like Celine, Jake Lepp, and Mr. iLango. That’s just a few off the top of my head, and I was blown away and humbled by the talent I started seeing at these small communal events. Those names might look like gobbledegook now but I’m sure you’ll hear of them one day soon! Also, Rush is my favorite band so hey! Rest in peace Neil.
What’s an album that you have in your collection that would surprise people?
I have very, very wide taste and a giant physical music collection, so I’ll just angle this as something a hip-hop listener or fan would be surprised I own. I’m a huge Captain Beefheart fan and “Troutmask Replica” by this point for me is filled with hummable ditties, the most complex music ever thrown on a popular music record (mostly because he had no idea what he was doing and convinced people to almost kill themselves to bring it to reality – the real making of that album is an inspiring and harrowing story), and an extreme sense of wonderment. It’s got infinite replay value and I uncover new things every listen even after decades of spins. For the Beefheart fan, they’d be surprised I make the music I do! I also listen to The Residents “Duck Stab/Buster & Glen” album like it’s The Beatles.
You’ve been making music for a bit of time now, what’s one piece of advice you can offer to those starting out?
My main advice is that if there’s something you want to do, don’t worry about the list of 50 reasons you can give yourself to not bother and just try it. It might be terrible, which is why you don’t try it out at open mics or open stages, so don’t worry – hey, it may also turn out life-altering! When I was coming up, hip hop was still framed culturally with an emphasis on the elements of Rhyming, DJing, Breaking, and Graffiti art. When I started, I figured I’d choose an element and just assumed I wouldn’t be able to rap because I’m a pasty-faced Jewish kid (Eminem wasn’t the first great pale MC ever, but he was the one who opened the doors of perception for all, to steal a phrase from Aldous Huxley), so I started breaking. This was probably the right call as I had a natural talent for it and it defined my existence for a good couple of decades, but one day I just decided to try out writing a rhyme on one of my friend’s songs. Turns out I was already good – the decades of rapping along out loud to all of those classic records is the best rap training anyone can do, and I never would have even known it if I didn’t just say “forget that I assume I’ll be wack, and let’s try it out”. Over ten years of hip hop catalog creation and here I am.