just say nope...

the nope. i first met psy and moka (dave and dan, respectively) somewhere around the same time. oh, ten years or so ago. (has it really been that long?) living in toronto, writing the rap column for vice magazine, my path crossed with both of theirs, back in the day when dudes were hustling tapes. i love tapes. ape nuts. awkward why. durable mammals, both of these cats. good guys too.

a decade later, we've all gone on to experience our share of the rap life's ups and downs. from selling cassettes out of the backpack, to sipping champagne in the vip section, to pushing mp3's on myspace, and taking it back to the people at the underground clubs. the rap game done changed, but the strong remained the same. stayed gold. or got gold again. and that's when it starts to get gooder.

from his early days riding trains up and down the west coast, to winning juno awards with swollen members, to making the best beats of his career, moka only is a canadian legend. he was already a legend in his own mind before the rest of us caught on. this is a good thing. psy, for his part, has been putting it down forever as part of the oddities crew, tightening his flow with multiple releases, writing the kind of lyrics that make rappers wanna hate on him. don't hate. coagulate.

the nope. well, the nope, i guess it's like the opposite of the yup. or the yep. yes. that's exactly what it is. what it isn't. and it isn't what you might think it's gonna be. it's not what you see on tv. it's not trying to be something it isn't, which is exactly what it shouldn't be, which it isn't, which is, again, a good thing.

good things happen to people who are good. good people, good at what they do, being good. more than the sum of it's parts, this is what makes it great. and greatness, well, greatness is what happens to goodness when it ages. ripens. matures. loses itself to find itself again and realizes that it already was what it always wanted to be.

psy and moke.

just say nope.

-fritz tha cat, aug. 2007