Preach Ankobia

"The North's Truest and Hardest Working M.C". Those six words stood out to me as I read a profile on the rapper known as Preach. Innovating or imitating? is usually the first quetion the pops into my head when I listen to aspiring artists.

The line keeping it real is so abused it has become a overnight cliche. For me it means being true to one self and situation. Since it has become so lucrative, everybody and they momma wanna rap. Many emcees simply clone their favorite rapper, others express themsleves and get their point across using their own voice. Preach has managed to accomplish the latter.

Longtime member of the group "The Ville", consisting of Shame Dog and Ill Zilla. Preach delivers gritty street tales wrapped in a positive message.Not afraid to speak his mind he touches on relevant social issues,which the listener can relate to.I recently heard one of his latest singles, "Voice of the Streets". Riding through the city Preach rhymes about hustling, wheter it be on the block, in a club or a 9-5. His observations reach out to the youth, the unemployed, incarcerated and everyone between.

With a very strong vocal presence and timely delivery Preach is definately worth checking out. I also peeped his track "Big Wheel" which you can hear on www.myspace.com/preach514. Preach reminisces on the past when life was simpler. This concept has been done countless times, yet he managed to keep it fresh.

A budding entrepreneur Preach formed YoungStar Records and is collaborating with various artists.
He introduced me to the music of an extremely talent vocalist Sha'ron Brooks and Spoken Music artist Stephen Thomas.

In celebration for black history month YoungStar Record in association with The Stephen Thomas Group presents Dreams 2006. They will be wrapping things up this sunday at the Main Hall with an All-Star line up of Manchilde, A.k.A Soulo and Preach. Don't let this event pass you by. - MONTREAL COMMUNITY CONTACT - WORD ON THE STREET by DON SMOOTH

"The North's Truest and Hardest Working M.C". Those six words stood out to me as I read a profile on the rapper known as Preach. Innovating or imitating? is usually the first quetion the pops into my head when I listen to aspiring artists.

The line keeping it real is so abused it has become a overnight cliche. For me it means being true to one self and situation. Since it has become so lucrative, everybody and they momma wanna rap. Many emcees simply clone their favorite rapper, others express themsleves and get their point across using their own voice. Preach has managed to accomplish the latter.

Longtime member of the group "The Ville", consisting of Shame Dog and Ill Zilla. Preach delivers gritty street tales wrapped in a positive message.Not afraid to speak his mind he touches on relevant social issues,which the listener can relate to.I recently heard one of his latest singles, "Voice of the Streets". Riding through the city Preach rhymes about hustling, wheter it be on the block, in a club or a 9-5. His observations reach out to the youth, the unemployed, incarcerated and everyone between.

With a very strong vocal presence and timely delivery Preach is definately worth checking out. I also peeped his track "Big Wheel" which you can hear on www.myspace.com/preach514. Preach reminisces on the past when life was simpler. This concept has been done countless times, yet he managed to keep it fresh.

A budding entrepreneur Preach formed YoungStar Records and is collaborating with various artists.
He introduced me to the music of an extremely talent vocalist Sha'ron Brooks and Spoken Music artist Stephen Thomas.

In celebration for black history month YoungStar Record in association with The Stephen Thomas Group presents Dreams 2006. They will be wrapping things up this sunday at the Main Hall with an All-Star line up of Manchilde, A.k.A Soulo and Preach. Don't let this event pass you by. - MONTREAL COMMUNITY CONTACT - WORD ON THE STREET by DON SMOOTH

Contemporary hip-hop currents in Montreal are countless, in a city with a striking cultural history. Hip-hop today is represented by a diverse array of artists who lace words in the multiple languages common on Montreal's city streets. One striking hip-hop artist in Montreal attracting growing attention is Preach Ankobia.

Preach Ankobia is a hip-hop artist offering profound and poetic words on contemporary realities of city life in Montreal; artistic work that touches the pulse of social struggles in the city and current affairs internationally.

As a hip-hop artist working with the Kalmunity Vibe Collective – a diverse network of conscience musicians, singers, poets and artists celebrated in Montreal – Preach Ankobia represents a strong signal on Montreal's music scene, writing hip-hop songs that could become contemporary anthems for social justice struggles.

Ankobia's journey began on Walkley Street in Montreal's NDG neighborhood – Notre-Dame-de-Grâce – a street renowned for police violence and poverty until today, home to a diverse community facing a daily struggle against poverty, racism and state violence.

You can listen to a sample track of Ankobia's here. He was interviewed by Stefan Christoff.

Stefan Christoff: Can you speak about how your experiences growing up in NDG, on Walkley Street, renowned in Montreal for police violence, informs your music?

Preach Ankobia: I spent my youth on a street called Walkley, which unfortunately in the eighties was a hub of different criminal activity, a lot of drugs went down. Remember encountering my first violent act at six-years-old.

Being a young child, at five or six years old and we had foot-patrol on Walkley, police patrol, I remember always having the police around. I also remember the relationship with those who were into shady activities; you know what I'm saying? Over time you learn from their stories, while in the neighborhood we all accepted each other for who we were at the time. Music was my thing, although we were all a community.

Forming a relationship with the streets was important as a youth. Today I work with an organization called Head and Hands, with their program Jeunesse 2000, where I work as a youth animator, creating programs and workshops for the youth, so that they have a comfortable and positive environment, which will assist us in building community.

Let's talk the criminalization facing different communities, we could talk about Walkley Street or about Little Burgundy, about the consistent reality of police violence that informs so many experiences from a very young age. Does this inform your music at all?

Definitely. In talking about Little Burgundy or Walkley, or what police do to these streets, or how they have treated the members of these communities, we must first go back to people like Marcelus Francois [an unarmed black father of two shot dead by Montreal police in 1991].

A reality of police violence is something that has always been with me, you know, I was a young child when many of these incidents took place, some taking place while I was in my teenage years, but all in my community. Also many terrible things happened to close friends at the hands of the judicial system. It's important to not just talk about the police violence you know, but also the entire judicial system.

It's not correct to just talk about what the police did to our streets, it's also important to talk about what the world has done to urban society, to the immigrants who came into this world, into North America, to try to make a way, then ended-up building North America.

Everything viable in North America today was built by immigrants, while we don't receive the wealth or the resources, we are placed in these holes, leaving our children to have to claw their ways out of these ghettos, or neighborhoods, you know?

It is in this situation that criminal activity emerges, that then leads to the criminalization of our communities, hence the impacts of judicial system on us. Criminal activity is what many of us, or many of my friends, were forced to do in order to attain a more comfortable way of living, while many people get out of this and many people don't, while some are [ironically] fortunate enough to land in jail and not be at the end of a bullet, you understand, not be in a coffin.

Let's talk about identities, about Diaspora in Canada, where many carry hyphenated identities, despite common rhetoric on Canada as a multi-cultural country, we will never hear about a Canadian simply when hearing a news report about policing in immigrant community, we will hear about Filipino-Canadians or black-focused schools recently in Toronto.

Multiculturalism isn't a reality. I don't think that I have experienced a truly multicultural society in Canada. There are many things that this term doesn't recognize. This term multiculturalism, doesn't take into account the fact that we as black people have to get use to living in a - Rabble News by Stefan Christoff

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Kalmunity/Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, 02/13/2008

There is a love for tribal art in Montreal. The Sunday ritual of Tam-Tam drum circles in Parc Mont-Royal have thrived for two decades here; we have a small but powerful Afrobeat scene. We also host many émigrés from other parts of la Francophonie, including Cote D'Ivoire and Haiti. The historical motives for this passion are something I'm unaware of, but fascinate me, and were manifest in last Wednesday's double bill at La Sala Rossa.

The Kalmunity Vibe Collective is an assemblage of musicians, poets, MCs and singers that congregate every Tuesday at Sablo Café, a tiny hub in the middle of residential Little Italy. Helmed by drummer Jahsun, the band initiates grooves for the wordsmiths to freestyle on or read over. Over their five-year existence, they've had a shifting core of musicians and have diversified from the hallmark R&B and reggae to include jazzers like Andres Vial (keyboards), Martin Heslop (bass) and Jason Sharp (saxophones). It was this jazz side of the collective that was the musical foundation for the Sala Rossa hit, while vocalists Fredy V, Malika and Odessa "Queen" Thornhill wove soulful background melodies behind trumpeter/poet Jason "Blackbird" Selman, MC Preach Ankobia and Kalmunity stalwart Fabrice Koffy. As with anything improvised (and anything involving large numbers of people), nights can be hit and miss, but when they hit there's a magical sort of communion that happens in the room. Last week, it was pretty much all "hit," aside from some minor pitfalls surrounding the ability of everyone to hear the grand piano onstage. Fabrice's new work is rhythmic and incisive, and all the MCs/poets navigated the syncopated structures well. Andres, Martin and Jahsun have achieved a really tight hookup over the past year or so, and I haven't heard Jason Sharp in a long time. He's now specializing in baritone saxophone and fujara, an overtone flute which he achieves non-traditional, haunting sounds.

Kalmunity was the perfect complement to Kahil El'Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, a group that achieves the same sort of spiritual unity on a much smaller scale. Percussionist and bandleader El'Zabar moved between electrified kalimbas, his hand-built "earth drums" and drum kit over the course of the night, and vocalized bass lines as well as lyric mantras in a gruff baritone. Sometimes the vocalizations struck me as a more purposeful Keith Jarrett, and in his stronger moments sounded like a preacher in the throes of a sermon. The group is rounded out by saxophonist Ernest Khabeer Dawkins and trumpeter Corey Wilkes. Dawkins appeared as the elder, clad in a dashiki and surrounded by a table of small percussion that he and Wilkes shared. Wilkes is of the hip-hop generation, with a swagger and mannerisms not unlike Roy Hargrove, and he balances showmanship with musicality. They opened the set with a meditative version of "All Blues," with El'Zabar holding down the famous ostinato on kalimba and vocals while Wilkes and Dawkins soared overtop. Both Wilkes and Dawkins can switch from greasy, gritty blues to more outward bound invention on a dime, all the while retaining a grounded soul to their playing. Even the most showy portions of the set - both Dawkins and Wilkes playing two horns simultaneously in "Mama's House," Wilkes' circular breathing during "There is a Place" - never got in the way of the music. The closing "There is a Place" seemed to drag, being such a spare tune with spare instrumentation and repetitive lyrics, but the simpatico between the three musicians on stage, and the rapt attention of the audience, was a thing of beauty. A power stronger than itself.
Posted by Ryshpan at 9:58 AM - Settled In Shipping Blogspot

For the second time inside of a month, Head and Hands has organized a youth-program fundraiser, this time serving up Street Vibes with a variety of performances. Along with Bad News Brown, Madame HollyD’sh, Travis Knights and some guest DJs, MC Preach will also be taking the stage to do his thing. With his new LP, Voice of the Streets, about to drop this September on his own Youngstar Records, Preach is more than ready to blow the lid off of the show this week. The Mirror spoke to Preach over the phone, right here in Montreal.

Mirror: There’s a lot of MCs in Montreal, man. A lot of young cats, some older guys too. Do you consider yourself part of what people always refer to as the Montreal hip hop scene?

Preach: It’s funny because I’ve been re-evaluating what my role is in all of this, and over the last three or four years, I haven’t really been a part of the scene in Montreal. I don’t even know what the hip hop scene in Montreal is anymore. When I was a kid, there was the underground scene that happened at open mics and little clubs all over, with Eye-Spy and the Autobots and all them, and I figured that was the scene that I wanted to be a part of. For the last two or three years, I’ve been on the Kalmunity grind as a spoken word artist, with AKA Soulo and Sharon Brooks too, who’ve been gracious enough to open the stage up to me. I guess I’ve been performing a lot of spots that I haven’t seen rappers in, so now I feel like it’s time for me to get back to that scene and bring back what I’ve been able to learn, and the growth I’ve had.

M: I always see you encouraging the younger artists coming up to come correct on the mic, or just to take in all the knowledge and information they can about things around them before they pursue their hip hop dream. How important is it to provide that guidance?

P: It’s extremely important. I think young Canadian artists sometimes have a hard time seeing things for what they are. They don’t see outside the box. They don’t see that record labels and media forms have an agenda, and even a responsibility to their government. As hip hop artists in Canada, we don’t really have what they have sold us as freedom of speech. We can say what we want to say on any CD, but will it get to the mainstream? Is the commercial world going to let you feed your kids with that? No, because if it’s adverse to the money that they’re making, it’s not in their best interest. For the kids that want to live that 50 Cent dream or the Kanye West dream, kids that want to express themselves in this world, they have to understand that to live that dream, there’s a lot of bending over that you have to do, and most of us aren’t ready to bend.
- The Montreal Mirror

Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Kalmunity/Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, 02/13/2008

There is a love for tribal art in Montreal. The Sunday ritual of Tam-Tam drum circles in Parc Mont-Royal have thrived for two decades here; we have a small but powerful Afrobeat scene. We also host many émigrés from other parts of la Francophonie, including Cote D'Ivoire and Haiti. The historical motives for this passion are something I'm unaware of, but fascinate me, and were manifest in last Wednesday's double bill at La Sala Rossa.

The Kalmunity Vibe Collective is an assemblage of musicians, poets, MCs and singers that congregate every Tuesday at Sablo Café, a tiny hub in the middle of residential Little Italy. Helmed by drummer Jahsun, the band initiates grooves for the wordsmiths to freestyle on or read over. Over their five-year existence, they've had a shifting core of musicians and have diversified from the hallmark R&B and reggae to include jazzers like Andres Vial (keyboards), Martin Heslop (bass) and Jason Sharp (saxophones). It was this jazz side of the collective that was the musical foundation for the Sala Rossa hit, while vocalists Fredy V, Malika and Odessa "Queen" Thornhill wove soulful background melodies behind trumpeter/poet Jason "Blackbird" Selman, MC Preach Ankobia and Kalmunity stalwart Fabrice Koffy. As with anything improvised (and anything involving large numbers of people), nights can be hit and miss, but when they hit there's a magical sort of communion that happens in the room. Last week, it was pretty much all "hit," aside from some minor pitfalls surrounding the ability of everyone to hear the grand piano onstage. Fabrice's new work is rhythmic and incisive, and all the MCs/poets navigated the syncopated structures well. Andres, Martin and Jahsun have achieved a really tight hookup over the past year or so, and I haven't heard Jason Sharp in a long time. He's now specializing in baritone saxophone and fujara, an overtone flute which he achieves non-traditional, haunting sounds.

Kalmunity was the perfect complement to Kahil El'Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, a group that achieves the same sort of spiritual unity on a much smaller scale. Percussionist and bandleader El'Zabar moved between electrified kalimbas, his hand-built "earth drums" and drum kit over the course of the night, and vocalized bass lines as well as lyric mantras in a gruff baritone. Sometimes the vocalizations struck me as a more purposeful Keith Jarrett, and in his stronger moments sounded like a preacher in the throes of a sermon. The group is rounded out by saxophonist Ernest Khabeer Dawkins and trumpeter Corey Wilkes. Dawkins appeared as the elder, clad in a dashiki and surrounded by a table of small percussion that he and Wilkes shared. Wilkes is of the hip-hop generation, with a swagger and mannerisms not unlike Roy Hargrove, and he balances showmanship with musicality. They opened the set with a meditative version of "All Blues," with El'Zabar holding down the famous ostinato on kalimba and vocals while Wilkes and Dawkins soared overtop. Both Wilkes and Dawkins can switch from greasy, gritty blues to more outward bound invention on a dime, all the while retaining a grounded soul to their playing. Even the most showy portions of the set - both Dawkins and Wilkes playing two horns simultaneously in "Mama's House," Wilkes' circular breathing during "There is a Place" - never got in the way of the music. The closing "There is a Place" seemed to drag, being such a spare tune with spare instrumentation and repetitive lyrics, but the simpatico between the three musicians on stage, and the rapt attention of the audience, was a thing of beauty. A power stronger than itself.
Posted by Ryshpan at 9:58 AM - Settled In Shipping Blogspot

In a world of cookie cutter major label artists and safe predictable music styles, I feel Independent music is the only route to take if you are in search of an original sound. Big labels, with their bottomless pockets and expensive repetitive marketing strategies, know they can make a healthy profit even if the product is unoriginal or bland. That is why it’s important to support the talented artists who have not been fortunate enough to have big label help selling and promoting their product.

The Ville happens to be one of those acts! Consisting of Shame Dawg, Preach, and Ill Zilla, this is a collective of true hip-hop talent from Canada . I noticed how The Ville’s songs could go from street tough, to a seductive melody for the ladies and then to an educating the people type vibe. I have to say that with the gangster image so abused by rap act, I wish all the young up and coming rap artists would realize they have the power to change the game, not mimic it. We all know real Gangsters never say they are Gangster and 90% percent of drug dealers live with their Mom. 50 cent is not a gangster; he is a rapper selling the false image of a successful drug dealer. Drugs did not make him famous, rapping did. This is why when I heard The Ville’s perform “Voice of the Street FT. Preach”; I was thrilled to hear an artist actually trying to influence people that are surrounded by negative daily events. I was left wanting more of that style by The Ville. Not every song I heard was of this style and I’m not saying their music could be sold with out a parental advisory sticker, but it’s honest. They speak of the streets and the lifestyle they are around which can change very quickly. They do an excellent job of depicting the many different emotions artists, from the inner city, may go through. I feel that, as a label owner, this group with a little guidance, a healthy artist advance, the proper amount of time to make a retail ready album, and continually focusing on separating themselves from the massive amount of two bit gangster hip-hop artists, with nothing much to say, they could truly develop into a very successful act.

- http://www.northeastintune.com

If you were at the Nas show last week, you know that hip hop can’t possibly be dead, and that its future path is in the hands of people like you and me. The idea that there is something wrong with the little subculture that could was also discussed on Oprah this week, with nothing short of a two-day panel of African-American hip hop industry heavyweights debating the pros and cons with bloodthirsty academics and civil rights leaders.

I’m happy to say that hip hop is alive and well in Montreal, where there are a slew of voices to choose from. Gathered on stage this Friday are a handful of Montreal MCs who are doing their best to keep this shit alive. Organizer and full-time MC Preach Ankobia presents Global Warning, for which he’s assembled a fairly wide representation of Montreal’s most vocal contributors—and thrown in Cote d’Ivoire MC Foblaze for an appropriately international point of view.

“Everybody is waiting for the revolution, and we’re the only ones that can bring it,” says Preach, cutting out on his cell. “It’s not really about whether hip hop is alive and well around the world, because the current state may have killed the essence and heart of it.”

It’s amazing, if you utter the words hip “hop is dead,” just how many different points of view arise, and the feelings come out in a big way. Global Warning might be a good night to ponder some of these hard questions, complete with multiple points of view. “Nas said hip hop is dead,” notes Preach, “and called his album that, to help bury a movement. This phase of commercialism is done, and it has to go, because it’s holding us back.”

Preach himself is backed by the Truth, a Kalmunity offshoot that holds down the beats, but also on the bill is the world traveled Nomadic Massive supporting Foblaze, Iraqi MC Narcycist, Lou Piensa, Ceasrock, Rashad Specter, Johnny Hostile, Epsi and DJ Wyzah.



Global Warning with Preach,
Foblaze, Nomadic Massive and guests
at Boodha Bar on Friday, April 20, 9 p.m., $10

- The Montreal Mirror

If you were at the Nas show last week, you know that hip hop can’t possibly be dead, and that its future path is in the hands of people like you and me. The idea that there is something wrong with the little subculture that could was also discussed on Oprah this week, with nothing short of a two-day panel of African-American hip hop industry heavyweights debating the pros and cons with bloodthirsty academics and civil rights leaders.

I’m happy to say that hip hop is alive and well in Montreal, where there are a slew of voices to choose from. Gathered on stage this Friday are a handful of Montreal MCs who are doing their best to keep this shit alive. Organizer and full-time MC Preach Ankobia presents Global Warning, for which he’s assembled a fairly wide representation of Montreal’s most vocal contributors—and thrown in Cote d’Ivoire MC Foblaze for an appropriately international point of view.

“Everybody is waiting for the revolution, and we’re the only ones that can bring it,” says Preach, cutting out on his cell. “It’s not really about whether hip hop is alive and well around the world, because the current state may have killed the essence and heart of it.”

It’s amazing, if you utter the words hip “hop is dead,” just how many different points of view arise, and the feelings come out in a big way. Global Warning might be a good night to ponder some of these hard questions, complete with multiple points of view. “Nas said hip hop is dead,” notes Preach, “and called his album that, to help bury a movement. This phase of commercialism is done, and it has to go, because it’s holding us back.”

Preach himself is backed by the Truth, a Kalmunity offshoot that holds down the beats, but also on the bill is the world traveled Nomadic Massive supporting Foblaze, Iraqi MC Narcycist, Lou Piensa, Ceasrock, Rashad Specter, Johnny Hostile, Epsi and DJ Wyzah.



Global Warning with Preach,
Foblaze, Nomadic Massive and guests
at Boodha Bar on Friday, April 20, 9 p.m., $10

- The Montreal Mirror