Not everybody's meant to be an overnight celebrity, explains Vancouver-based artist Moka Only.
"Sometimes," he says, "it's a long simmering boil like chicken soup on a stovetop at five in the afternoon, on Vancouver Island in Nanaimo."
The rapper's career moved from Canada's musical back burner to the front after gaining critical acclaim and mainstream success for his work with Swollen Members a decade ago.
Since, the wordsmith has released albums at a rate of four per year, including his latest, Saffron, attributed to his alter ego Ron Contour.
But Only, who carefully crafts each sentence before speaking, lives quietly - as an artist - away from nightclubs, women and stereotypical images bound to hip hop.
Not one to wade into politics unless prodded, the musician says more must be done to support Canadian artists.
"We are the people that the general populace look to for escape," he begins. "So if we can't make a living directly, if we need some assistance, I think it's completely feasible for the government to step in. We're creating the landscape that we all live in. We're major contributors. We're not just on the sidelines, you know what I mean? Artists are the people who give music, who give movies, who give books. That's us."
Only, however, recognizes an artist's lifestyle shares many similarities with a sweatshop worker.
"Art walks that fine line," he says. "You want to be honest and always give people 150 per cent of yourself but you still have to make a living. I think that's why I've been so prolific because in order to make a living, I have to do four times the amount of the average artist."
Still, Only needs to do more to afford services most working people take for granted.
He teases about hosting a series of benefit concerts to finance a set of new teeth. Apparently, there's no extended medical offered when signing to a record label. But Only's not willing to hold a fire sale of his artistic integrity.
"I've built something for others to come and see. I haven't built something to haul away and show someone else."
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Sketch
- Reporter
- Dharm Makwana currently serves as a web editor at The Province, British Columbia's best read daily newspaper. For more than four years he wrote on issues affecting the Lower Mainland for the province's third largest daily newspaper Vancouver 24 hours. Before arriving in Vancouver in January 2007, Dharm won the John Lott Scholarship for outstanding journalism at Centennial College. Since then Dharm has developed an interest in municipal and provincial politics, crime and policing and social issues including immigration, prostitution and trafficking. He is currently working on a series of stories involving Vancouver's sex workers.
Wisdom
I don't want to be that guy mumbling into his drink at a bar.
-Bill Murray
-Bill Murray