It’s a Rap
Sixtoo’s music explores the cinematic state of hip hop
BY Mason Wright
Photography by Paul 107
Canadian music today is basking in a spirit of collaboration, with independent record labels fostering side projects between label-mates and prominent musical collectives. It’s as though the philosophy of hip hop has permeated rock, for long before Broken Social Scene and the New Pornographers, hip-hop artists were doing ground-breaking collaborative work, even in Canada.
A veteran of this scene is Rob Squire, a producer, beatmaker and rapper who works creatively under the name Sixtoo. After rising through the Halifax hip-hop scene in the 1990s and forming the successful duo the Sebutones with fellow rapper/producer Buck 65, Sixtoo needed a change. In 2001 he took matters into his own hands, living briefly in California before settling in Montreal and discovering an inspiring community of like-minded musicians.
Shortly after his move to Montreal, Sixtoo’s original and organic brand of beats, samples and rap was noticed by Ninja Tune’s Montreal office. The label behind Amon Tobin, Roots Manuva and fellow Montrealer Kid Koala signed the artist last year.
“I’ve been in Montreal for three and a half years now,” Sixtoo said in May after a beat-dominated set at California’s Coachella Festival with collaborator Matt Kelly, “and most of the people I’ve been collaborating with are all Montreal musicians: Matt [Kelly], Norsola [Johnson], who sometimes plays with Godspeed You Black Emperor! I’ve really tried to immerse myself in the Montreal community.”
Constantly moving from idea to idea between recordings, Sixtoo’s first Ninja Tune effort in 2004 used cut-and-paste wizardry to recreate live instrument samples into a slightly psychadelic, organic album called Chewing On Glass and Other Miracle Cures.
“Ninja’s been really supportive in whatever I want to do,” Sixtoo said. “My next project is going to have just as much of a change as my last project, so I think it’s important to have a label that can get behind you and push you in whatever you’re trying to do.” His next full-length album—currently in the writing and sample-search phase—will be electronica with an avante-garde focus, “more in line with traditionalist composers,” he says.
In the meantime, Montreal label Bully Records has released a Sixtoo side project and a CD/DVD reissue. The side project is (what else?) a collaboration with cellist Johnson resulting in Homages, a 7" EP. The reissue covers the last few months of Sixtoo’s time in Halifax in 2001, which was for Sixtoo “one of the most creative periods of my life.” During that time, Sixtoo became fond of stealing utility covers, sprucing them up with graffiti art and returning them. This, he says, inspired a whole sound project that involved re-recording studio material in outdoor public spaces (those marked by the painted utility covers) and enlisting friends to help mix the new material with the original recordings.
The fruit of this project, Duration, was not widely released when it came out in 2002. Sixtoo also had video footage of the whole creative process, so he decided to release a CD/DVD combo on Bully, a label where he also lends his mixing and engineering talents, as well as contributing handmade, silkscreened sleeves for the label’s 17 or so limited-edition releases.
The sheer number of Sixtoo’s creative efforts suggests he is entering an artistic high point, but in order to get to this stage in his career, the 27-year-old admits he had no choice but to leave Halifax. “The thing about Halifax is: it’s a really great place to make stuff, but it’s a really hard place to sell it. Eventually it got to a point where I was like, ‘Okay, I’ve been doing this here for a long time and I can almost support myself doing it, but it’s never going to turn into anything bigger than what it is.’”
Despite the silkscreening and the new attention on his graffiti art days, Sixtoo said he doesn’t focus on aspects of hip hop such as rap or graffiti art much anymore due to the effort required “to actually be a good producer. My attention span for other things has sort of dropped a little bit, visual arts included in that—although on any given day my attitudes toward that stuff will change,” he added with a laugh.
Given his recent output, it seems there are only two things you can count on from Sixtoo: diverse, cinematic musical collaborations and unpredictability.
