Former ‘Pegger feels connected to nightlife types

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This article was published 13/02/2020 (2390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hip-hop performer Odario Williams was born in Guyana, lives in Toronto, and spent a lot of time in Winnipeg in between.

Williams moved to Winnipeg as a toddler with his family and, as a young adult, honed his chops as a rapper, songwriter and collaborator while studying at the University of Winnipeg.

And even though he’s been in Toronto for more than a decade, Williams maintains strong creative ties to his adoptive home, working with Winnipeg artists in the scene such as Nestor Wynrush, Len Bowen and Anthony OKS of the Lytics.

He was even in town to help close things out at the Cavern in December, a venue he says has always been a spot where he could safely try out new material and experiment with his work.

Williams will be back in Winnipeg again Saturday, Feb. 15, as the opening act for the genre-spanning Bedouin Soundclash on its Canadian tour. He is preparing to release a new EP in May; the first single, Low Light (in This Space), dropped a few weeks ago and features powerful Canadian soul singer Dawn Pemberton, an artist Williams admires.

“It is a privilege and a joy to work with people that I’m also a fan of, that blows my mind,” Williams says. “I’ve worked with Posdnuos of (influential New York hip-hop trio) De La Soul in the past, of course (Ontario rapper) Shad I’ve worked with a few times… and this new single with Dawn Pemberton, I’m a big fan of her spirit, her whole way, I’m just a fan of the type of human she is.

“To be able to work with these people, you also get to learn a little bit about life in general and learn a little bit about yourself. I really admire Dawn’s spirit and wanted a little some of that in my life, so why not work together?”

Though the single has been released, Williams says he isn’t quite sure yet how the rest of the EP, titled Good Morning, Hunter, will end up sounding. He is working with new producers who are challenging the processes and routines he developed in his 10 years fronting Canadian hip-hop group Grand Analog — the group he formed when his Winnipeg-based act, Mood Ruff, disbanded after four albums in 2005 — and he’s discovering that while change can be frustrating, it can also be fruitful.

“As a musician, it’s always challenging and exciting to work with producers that you’ve never worked with before and who have their own process to songwriting,” says Williams, who is in his 40s. “So working with other producers, such as Todor Kobokov, who is a classical musician and composer, I’m not just learning his process of how to write songs, I’m learning how stubborn we both are.

“It’s good to bump heads and try stuff and be encouraged to try new things, so I actually don’t know how things are going (wind up), but I’m definitely excited for the result, because I know it’s going to be territory I’ve never been in.”

In addition to the music-creation aspect of his career, Williams is also the host of Afterdark on CBC Radio 2. Each weeknight starting at 8 p.m., Williams captains a ship of musical discovery, playing everything from contemporary hits to lesser-known gems from the realms of art-pop and the avant-garde.

For Williams, the connection to, and love of, nighttime radio is a deep one. As a kid in the late 1980s and early ’90s, he’d stay up late listening to Brave New Waves, an overnight radio program on CBC that eventually evolved into The Signal. As his own career progressed, opportunities arose to be a fill-in host on those radio shows he loved so much, which in turn led to his position on Afterdark.

“This job presented itself to me and it was absolutely a no-brainer because I’ve always been part of that nighttime community — and it really is a community, because for the most part, there’s a lot of people already asleep and tucked in and off to Never Never Land — but it’s a joy to cater to this night-owl community that really appreciates avant-garde music,” Williams says, noting the show celebrated its second anniversary in September.

“I’ve definitely grown to appreciate how important and how gratifying sharing music is. In this YouTube era that we’re in, if you go to YouTube and want to just discover something new, it’s not like you’re going to know what you’re going to type,” he says. “You are reliant on what the machine suggests.

“I just appreciate that Afterdark could be a human touch to suggesting new artists you may not have heard before.”

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca