Jill Murray

The launch on Sunday was a lot of fun, and the book (now available for purchase from Coach House Books) looks great. I tried to check out the panels, but I was still sick and the room was very crowded and hot, so that didn’t last long. I came back for the early evening music co-presented by Wavelength and had a lovely time. Thanks to friends who came out, from as far away as North Toronto and even… gasp… Pickering!

Carl Wilson has a detailed summary of the whole day up on Zoilus, including a nice critique of Les’ performance.

They were followed by rapper More or Les and his DJ, Professor Fingers (also of Insideamind). It was my first time seeing Les - I’ve been meaning to check him out for awhile, thanks to buzz from local heads such as Del Cowie - and it was a real pleasure. He’s got great flow, but moreover he’s got one of the most charming, personable stage personae I’ve encountered in a while - and while some of his raps-about-rap are predictable in that indie-rap way (okay, we get it, you don’t like women being disrespected, guns or the N-word), quite the opposite is true when he rhymes about brunch, busking and other quotidian facts of life. Plus, he did a freestyle based on the uTOpia book - getting an audience volunteer to call out page numbers, he flipped to those spots in the volume and improvised rhymes based on words and sentences in it. I got to hear a subtitle from my essay turned into a rap. Pretty hard to resist.”

I love reading Les’ reviews because they can be so contradictory. For instance, lots (a majority?) of reviews have hailed the originality of songs like “Sucka Word” and “Shooting Guns & Disrespecting Women,” while last week, the CBC suggested that in the entire hip hop universe, probably only K-OS would ever suggest laying down guns, and then here Carl Wilson suggests the whole idea is practically clichéd. Meanwhile the songs Carl likes have been called “silly” by others. (And not in the deffrent way we use the word here at Villain Worship HQ.) What does all this mean? Variety is good and a little charm doesn’t hurt either.