Live at CFRU 93.3 FM, Lee Reed talks ecological collapse, indigenous resistance, conscious and mumble rap, the cons and possible pros of voting, Sage Francis, cities like Hamilton, Ontario, and performs songs from his new album Before & Aftermath! Supported by Pizza Trokadero, the Bookshelf, Planet Bean Coffee, and Grandad’s Donuts.
Lee Reed is a riveting and uncompromising hip-hop artist from Hamilton, Ontario. Once a member of the powerful group Warsawpack, Reed has released three politically-charged solo albums, including his latest, The Butcher, The Banker, The Bitumen Tanker, which is available now via leereedrevolt.com. He’s playing the Hillside Festival in Guelph during the weekend of July 24 and here, Lee and I discuss the city of Hamilton and Kathleen Wynne’s one billion dollar promise to bring light rail transit to town, gentrification, people moving to Hamilton while other people are being displaced, the severe classicism within the city, action versus reaction, contributing to discussions more than ushering them along, learning more about and carefully scrutinizing Canada’s disturbing social and political history, this country’s large role in resource extraction, how the Indian Act inspired South African apartheid, writing the new record pretty quickly, punk rock, his relationship to more materialistic or problematic aspects of hip-hop culture, Public Enemy’s Yo! Bum Rush the Show, Kanye West and Mike Myers, old school production, flossing and being a chubby old white dude, trying to breakthrough with ‘fringe’ messages in the Canadian hip-hop community, Hamilton’s supportive music scene, making art for love, catchy political music, accessibility, hopelessness, greed, we just suck, The Butcher, The Banker, The Bitumen Tanker is #1, the Rebel Function, Mother Tareka and Flotilla, working a good day job, the song “Fuck Ya,” and that’s all.
Related links: leereedrevolt.com hillsidefestival.ca vishkhanna.com
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This episode of Long Night with Vish Khanna was recorded at the Tranzac in Toronto during the Spur Festival, Canada’s first national festival of politics, art, and ideas, on Friday April 10, 2015. Aside from Long Night sidekick James Keast and house band the Bicycles, Vish’s guests were Rachel Giese, Sabrina Ramnanan, Daniel Schulman, and Lee Reed. Rachel Giese is a National Magazine Award-nominated journalist who was a senior editor at The Walrus and a deputy editor at The Grid. She has also worked for CBC and guest hosted radio programs like Q and Day 6. Here we discuss her most recent stint hosting Q and her popular 2014 Walrus piece, “The Talk,” about the new sex education for boys. Sabrina Ramnanan is an Ontario-based author who won the 2012 Marina Nemat award via the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Education Creative Writing Program and her work has appeared in journals known for presenting postcolonial and diasporic perspectives. Her debut novel is out this month via Knopf, it’s called Nothing Like Love, and here we discuss being celebrated for our difference and the action in her novel. Daniel Schulman is the New York Times bestselling author of Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America’s Most Powerful and Private Dynasty, a biography of the Koch family, which is coming out in paperback this May. He’s also a well-respected investigative journalist and a senior editor in the Washington, DC bureau of the left-leaning and highly reputable American magazine Mother Jones. Here, Daniel and I discuss his recent entanglement with Bill O’Reilly, the Koch Brothers, House of Cards, and the upcoming U.S. Presidential election. Lee Reed is a gifted and politically outspoken hip-hop artist from Hamilton who once fronted the amazing group, Warsawpack. He has just released his brand new album, The Butcher, The Banker, The Bitumen Tanker and here, he performs a new song called “This Microphone.”
Related links: spurfestival.ca vishkhanna.com
Listen, subscribe, rate/review on iTunes. Now available via AudioBoom.
Podcast: Download
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