Local hip-hop artist is giving bad news a good rap

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/04/2020 (2363 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It took a pandemic for Pip Skid to make a record.

It’s been nine years since the Winnipeg rapper put out a new set of songs. In the meantime, he’s mentored hip-hop rookies in the finer points of songwriting, performing and the ins and outs of the music business.

He’s also spent time watching news from around the world, and says he knew a virus-sparked revolution was heading our way.

The terrible news gave Skid (a.k.a. Patrick Skene) a creative jolt. “Stuff was just pouring out of me,” the 45-year-old says in a telephone interview.

“I’m a bit of a news junkie and I spend a lot of my day seeing many news cycles. I saw (the pandemic) miles away.”

The result is It’s OK, a seven-song collection on Marathon of Dope, a Belgium-based label Skid co-founded a while back. The songs focus on the anxieties brought on by the coronavirus, whether they are the fears of contracting COVID-19 or the ennui created by social-distancing measures undertaken to prevent the spread of the deadly microbe.

In Good Times, the album’s opening track, he paints a bleak picture of self-isolation, which include bouts of over-sleeping, bottomless cups of coffee, anguish, dread and a life devoid of motivation. 

“Lay around and hope the cat comes to cuddle / But he knows better than to join this huddle / Deep in the internet, trapped in the bubble / The cat’s no dummy and he senses some trouble,” he raps. 

Unlike many YouTube videos posted by people furious with social-distancing measures or the lack of compassion from big business, Skid takes a mellower approach. His criticism of capitalism, which goes back to when he started rapping in 1994, remains. 

“This is a great time for change, where real change is possible — to take power from the billionaires and give it back to working people,” Skid says.

While news of COVID-19 inspired Skid to write songs and record again, he didn’t want It’s OK to fall into a giant pile of records that are solely devoted to views of the pandemic. He says the album will have a timeless quality.

“Nowhere on the record do I say corona or COVID,” he says. “I knew there would be so many on-the-nose assessments. I want something that could last beyond these moments we’re going through.”

Skid has had his doubts in the past few years if he would record again. In the back of his mind he wondered if there was room in the music industry for a white rapper in his 40s, but he set aside his worries, converted a closet in his house into a studio and in March got behind the microphone again, even performing on Instagram.

“I felt it wasn’t part of me, but I guess it reinvigorated my love for music,” he says.

Skid enlisted fellow Winnipegger Rob Crooks to produce the record from his place and got Canadian DJ Scratch Bastid to add some fills. But putting It’s OK together under quarantine grew a bit tedious because Skid and Crooks couldn’t listen to changes in the mix at the same time.  

“As we got closer to being done, we were sending massive music files back and forth,” Skid recalls. 

The album is available for listening and to purchase at Marathon of Dope’s Bandcamp site: wfp.to/pipskid. It will be available on streaming services such as Spotify and iTunes later this week.

• • •

COVID-19-related music of a different timbre will be heard Saturday, April 25, at 7 p.m. outside St. Boniface Hospital.

That’s where a group of 10 Winnipeg trumpeters are planning to salute doctors, nurses and other front-line hospital staff with renditions of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and Where the Saints Go Marching In. 

Music lovers of all skill levels from around the world have taken to their balconies while in self-isolation to perform, and videos have become moments of hope and inspiration for viewers. Dan Steinhilber, a music teacher at Transcona Collegiate, is one of them; he went out into his front yard to play, and encouraged students to do the same. 

“We want to do our part to lift people’s spirits,” Steinhilber says.

The trumpeters will follow social-distancing guidelines and stay the recommended two metres apart from each other. They don’t seek a crowd, either, and Steinhilber urges any curious onlookers to respect the same distancing rules.

Steinhilber has recruited Shane Hicks of the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra and University of Manitoba music professor Richard Gillis, as well as other high school teachers from across Winnipeg, for the endeavour.

The horn players have been practising during the lockdown, Steinhilber says, but Saturday will be the first time they’ll play as a group.

“There has been no rehearsal. We have to respect the guidelines,” he says.

• • •

Stronger Together, an hour-long, star-studded TV fundraiser for Food Banks Canada (Sunday, April 26, at 7 p.m., CBC, CTV, CityTV, Global and several specialty cable TV channels) has added some Manitoba music to the broadcast.

The show, which will salute Canada’s front-line workers and their efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, quickly enlisted local folksinger William Prince, who will join Céline Dion, Bryan Adams, Sarah McLachlan, Michael Bublé, Buffy Sainte-Marie and many other Canadian acts and celebrities who will appear. On Thursday, Burton Cummings — who has serenaded his loyal audience on Facebook during the pandemic — announced he will also be on the show. 

 

alan.small@freepress.mb.ca   Twitter:@AlanDSmall