JC Subliminal

It's just after 10 o'clock on a Monday night and the rappers in AweDaCity are stalking the Lamplighter's tiny stage, killing it for a crowd that just doesn't seem to care. Faced with the audience's tepid response, each of the two MCs follows his own muse. Lanky and animated Ty-C paces around the stage, bouncing to his self-made beats and delivering his lines with the shut-eyed passion of a conjurer. Standing opposite him, his partner JC Subliminal plays the cool-headed foil, deliberately leaning on a speaker and tossing off his lines with scornful ease. If Ty's frustrated with the crowd, he doesn't let it show, but JC seems hell-bent on letting everyone know that his group's too good for this room, and too good for this town.

Interviewed two months later at a Gastown pub, the 23-year-old rapper exhibits nothing less in the way of confidence, declaiming loudly enough to cause a woman sitting nearby to request a new table. An animated conversationalist, JC takes every question he's asked and runs away with it, twisting up the language as if he's inventing it on the spot. When the topic of that recent Lamplighter show is broached, his eyes light up.

"Listen, I've been rhyming close to 10 years now," he offers. "And it comes to a point where you know the mathematics of what you need to do. You know that you've got to take things to the next level instead of just sitting around Vancouver and going to the Lamplighter and doing shows. So, yeah, I'm sneering at the crowd; I'm like, 'I'm better than this shit.' These people aren't even really buying my albums. I know Vancouver too well for that."

A lifelong Surrey resident, JC first started acquainting himself with the city's scene in the late '90s, strolling in off the SkyTrain to participate in freestyle competitions and shows at Gastown's old 7 Alexander.

In 2001, he first crossed paths with Ty-C, another talented battler with whom he'd eventually join the Fresh Coast crew. For the first few years of the decade, most local MC battles boiled down to a three-way matchup between JC, Ty, and fellow Fresh Coaster Emotionz. While he always seemed a little less fluid than his counterparts, Ty-C walked away with his fair share of titles, winning them on the strength of his quick wit and redoubtable passion. A Castlegar native, Ty seems older than his 25 years, his pensive manner suggesting that he's had to hustle for every penny he's earned.

Crouched on a chair outside a Commercial Drive café, the rapper intimates that he first started writing rhymes at a Castlegar grocery store, where instead of stocking shelves he'd hide out in the storage room and pen page after page of free verse. After moving to Victoria and briefly hooking up with the City Planners clique in the late 1990s, Ty eventually came over to Vancouver, where he met up with Mat the Alien, likely the province's best underground DJ.

In the ensuing years, he put out two solo albums (2001's Tyrannosaurus Chex and the following year's Still Here) and formed MK Ultra (later changed to AweDaCity) with JC. In 2003, Ty won freestyle titles at Sonar's Grande night and at the 604 Hip-Hop Expo, but rather than capitalizing on his increased notoriety, he failed to put out any follow-up albums. Pressed on the matter, the MC insists that's not due to laziness, but quality control.

"Some artists will just flood the market from the get-go, like Moka [Only] for example," he says between bites of a breakfast scone. "But with my music, I like to keep it as an internal process. In this city, I've seen so much potential wash away so many times. There's plenty of people who have tried to push their hype and then not come through. I see a lot of potential in what I'm doing and I want to make sure that whatever I'm putting out is the absolute best of what I'm doing."

From what I've heard of Ty's forthcoming full-length-due this summer on Mat the Alien's Really Good Records-he's never sounded better than he does right now, reining in his penchant for polysyllables in favour of swift putdowns and swifter predictions of his impending fame. Such, too, is the mood coursing through AweDaCity's long-awaited LP (also scheduled for imminent release), wherein Ty and JC one-up each other on skills-intensive double-time cuts like "Ride Through" and "The Last Word".

For JC, the breakneck style of those songs is just one of the many modes of vocalizing he already seems to have mastered. His recent solo album, Versustyle, finds him covering all bases, whether as a streetwise freestyler ("Battlecat"), a cold-hearted hustler ("Together"), or, most surprisingly, a tender singer ("Around Still"). With another solo effort due later this year, the Surrey native is widely rega - Goergia Straight Newspaper Vancouver BC

It's just after 10 o'clock on a Monday night and the rappers in AweDaCity are stalking the Lamplighter's tiny stage, killing it for a crowd that just doesn't seem to care. Faced with the audience's tepid response, each of the two MCs follows his own muse. Lanky and animated Ty-C paces around the stage, bouncing to his self-made beats and delivering his lines with the shut-eyed passion of a conjurer. Standing opposite him, his partner JC Subliminal plays the cool-headed foil, deliberately leaning on a speaker and tossing off his lines with scornful ease. If Ty's frustrated with the crowd, he doesn't let it show, but JC seems hell-bent on letting everyone know that his group's too good for this room, and too good for this town.

Interviewed two months later at a Gastown pub, the 23-year-old rapper exhibits nothing less in the way of confidence, declaiming loudly enough to cause a woman sitting nearby to request a new table. An animated conversationalist, JC takes every question he's asked and runs away with it, twisting up the language as if he's inventing it on the spot. When the topic of that recent Lamplighter show is broached, his eyes light up.

"Listen, I've been rhyming close to 10 years now," he offers. "And it comes to a point where you know the mathematics of what you need to do. You know that you've got to take things to the next level instead of just sitting around Vancouver and going to the Lamplighter and doing shows. So, yeah, I'm sneering at the crowd; I'm like, 'I'm better than this shit.' These people aren't even really buying my albums. I know Vancouver too well for that."

A lifelong Surrey resident, JC first started acquainting himself with the city's scene in the late '90s, strolling in off the SkyTrain to participate in freestyle competitions and shows at Gastown's old 7 Alexander.

In 2001, he first crossed paths with Ty-C, another talented battler with whom he'd eventually join the Fresh Coast crew. For the first few years of the decade, most local MC battles boiled down to a three-way matchup between JC, Ty, and fellow Fresh Coaster Emotionz. While he always seemed a little less fluid than his counterparts, Ty-C walked away with his fair share of titles, winning them on the strength of his quick wit and redoubtable passion. A Castlegar native, Ty seems older than his 25 years, his pensive manner suggesting that he's had to hustle for every penny he's earned.

Crouched on a chair outside a Commercial Drive café, the rapper intimates that he first started writing rhymes at a Castlegar grocery store, where instead of stocking shelves he'd hide out in the storage room and pen page after page of free verse. After moving to Victoria and briefly hooking up with the City Planners clique in the late 1990s, Ty eventually came over to Vancouver, where he met up with Mat the Alien, likely the province's best underground DJ.

In the ensuing years, he put out two solo albums (2001's Tyrannosaurus Chex and the following year's Still Here) and formed MK Ultra (later changed to AweDaCity) with JC. In 2003, Ty won freestyle titles at Sonar's Grande night and at the 604 Hip-Hop Expo, but rather than capitalizing on his increased notoriety, he failed to put out any follow-up albums. Pressed on the matter, the MC insists that's not due to laziness, but quality control.

"Some artists will just flood the market from the get-go, like Moka [Only] for example," he says between bites of a breakfast scone. "But with my music, I like to keep it as an internal process. In this city, I've seen so much potential wash away so many times. There's plenty of people who have tried to push their hype and then not come through. I see a lot of potential in what I'm doing and I want to make sure that whatever I'm putting out is the absolute best of what I'm doing."

From what I've heard of Ty's forthcoming full-length-due this summer on Mat the Alien's Really Good Records-he's never sounded better than he does right now, reining in his penchant for polysyllables in favour of swift putdowns and swifter predictions of his impending fame. Such, too, is the mood coursing through AweDaCity's long-awaited LP (also scheduled for imminent release), wherein Ty and JC one-up each other on skills-intensive double-time cuts like "Ride Through" and "The Last Word".

For JC, the breakneck style of those songs is just one of the many modes of vocalizing he already seems to have mastered. His recent solo album, Versustyle, finds him covering all bases, whether as a streetwise freestyler ("Battlecat"), a cold-hearted hustler ("Together"), or, most surprisingly, a tender singer ("Around Still"). With another solo effort due later this year, the Surrey native is widely rega - Goergia Straight Newspaper Vancouver BC