Let’s Talk About The Time We Tried To Be Rappers

Me and my homie, Zak McDonald, from Canada — yeah, it’s just as nice as it sounds. Did you know they don’t go around shooting each other and exclaiming that they STAND FOR THE FLAG AND KNEEL AT THE CROSS, BROTHER— are reliving our wild days as rappers. We document our rise and fall of being real life rappers who thought they had it all.

1) What was your rapper origin story?

ZAK: There is one reason and one reason only why I decided to become a rapper — the same reason why every young, angry, white dude born within five years of me went through a “being a rapper” phase — I started rapping because of Eminem. Oddly enough, my backstory was literally Eminem’s backstory. I actually have an estranged relationship with my mom who suffers from addiction issues. I actually did grow up poor and actually was bullied for being white in a mostly non-white neighbourhood. My rapper origin story was that I was the Canadian version of Eminem, which is to say I went through a WAY nicer version of his experiences.

For example: Eminem got beat up by his bullies to the point where he ended up bloody, battered, and stuffed in lockers. I used to get bullied on the bus to school until I told my dad, who told the principal about it, and my bullies apologized to me and we became great friends. Canada is awesome.

HUNTER: Yeah, so mine was a lot less tragic than becoming the Canadian Eminem. I was like a middle-class Eminem, but the chip that was on my shoulder was that I was friends with the coolest kids in school but I wasn’t like a staple in their group, so I thought I was an outcast.

Me and my dude, who is now a few steps away from being a prestigious lawyer, decided to form a rap group at my 14th birthday party, and we went by the name Trid Click (Dirt spelled backwards for some reason) and we recorded 8 songs in one night, all .WMA files. We remixed “Umbrella” by Rhianna and “Let’s Get it On” by Marvin Gay. The rest of the party goers were so bored because we were in my bathroom getting jacked up to beats while they were playing Halo. My rap name was Fliparachi because I was a giant Lil’ Flip fan. TRID CLICK FOR LIFE!!!!

2) Did you ever have a “Wow, I’m going to make it big” moment?

ZAK: I remember once for a project in my tenth grade drama class I wrote a rap that started with the line: “I’m rapping with intelligence and social relevance so when I step into the room I’m addressing all the elephants with eloquence.” When I rapped that line my classmates FLIPPED out. They made me repeat the rap every day for like a week and I thought I was going to be blowing up any second.

The line got into my head though, I began every rap with it, up until the point where I went to rap with some friends one day and immediately after I spit that line my best friend said, “I’ve heard this one already,” and everyone in the circle started laughing at me. I got ethered so hard I pretty much stopped rapping after that.

HUNTER: So my rap group was now on MySpace. And we hit refresh so many times on our songs that we were 11th in the unsigned category for Kentucky rappers on the website. We thought we were making moves and we were so cocky about it because we all knew we were going to make it at some point.

We expanded the group to 4 of us so we could have more versatility. We decided to take advantage of being ranked above other equally terrible white rappers and sent emails to The Cool Kids manager and told them we were working with bad equipment, but they could hear the potential if they gave it a listen. We sent that email and sat back and talked about how they would be STUPID not to sign us. They never wrote back.

3) Give me an outrageous story of your rap career that sticks out

ZAK: I used to battle rap my friend Anthony every day on our lunch break at school at this pizza place called The Pizza House. Anthony grew up in the Jane and Finch neighbourhood of Toronto and had legit street cred. I grew up in the Gage Park area of Hamilton, Ontario and had NO street cred. He routinely destroyed me every time we battle rapped. One weekend I spent all day and all night thinking of some way to beat him in a battle. I eventually realized that his rap name was “Lunch Box” and could be rhymed with the term, “Munch Cocks.” So, I built up my whole battle to the point where I would tell Anthony that he “munched cocks” and when I did, he immediately came back at me with a line about how he might be gay but he’s seen me shaking my ass for change at the corner of King and James (a very popular intersection for hookers in Hamilton, Ontario). I very much lost that battle.

HUNTER: Me and my homie went to our friend’s house for the night. And where we were a rap group, we obviously brought a Dell laptop so we could murder beats and do anything other than hang out with our friends. We started rapping at like 7 PM and we finished at 7 AM. We ripped through like 4 songs, I think, one of them being a breakup song with a pre-recorded hook by Wyclef Jean. Some sample lyrics from the night:

• In the game of seduction we broke the first rule/that rule was to never fall in love/but we did with something as simple as a hug/I coulda supplied you with more carrots than Bugs — I rehearsed that line for 4 hours before my mom dropped me off.
• Those three words kept me going/kept me higher than the ganja that I was blowing — I didn’t smoke weed until well my 20s
• Girl, one day I’m gone be big and you gone come back, but nah…I’m done. This is me…signin’ out (echo effect)

And so after that, I had to go to church on no sleep with my girlfriend at the time, who I just roasted for 12 hours because I had to be prepared for if she ever did break up with me. She asked me if I had fun and I told her that we played Call of Duty and drank Red Bull and had a fun night!

4) What was the moment you decided rapping might not be for you?

ZAK: My 11th grade talent show was the exact moment I realized I would never be a rapper. I rehearsed a rap for 3 weeks with my friends band. My whole verse was about 32 seconds long. Before the show I went out and purchased this RIDICULOUS baby blue t-shirt and paired it with a purple bandanna around my neck like I was trying to play an effeminate cowboy, and I closed my ensemble off by wearing black batting gloves for my performance because I think I saw Nelly do that once. I named myself “Ziplok” because I was “keeping it fresh.”

At the end of my performance I yelled out into the crowd “That’s not a rock show, that’s not a rap show, that’s the Zak show” and I literally dropped a very expensive microphone, an action that led to me getting a harsh talking to by a teacher organizing this event. This talking to almost led me to tears which is decidedly the least hip-hop moment of all time.

HUNTER: That story is legitimately hilarious and I’m mad that I couldn’t have something that great happen to me. I just used to message girls on MySpace and tell them that I recorded a song about them and made them listen to it. Didn’t matter if I met them before or not. I was a kid searching for love AKA I was Drake before Drake.

But, the moment I hung up the mic for good was when I had a page on Hot New Hip Hop and this girl I know found it and posted it on Facebook. She put like 40 “HAHAs” on it and like two of my ex girlfriends got on there and roasted me. And then it got a bunch of likes and people commenting “LOL.” So I got on there and said “HAHA, this isn’t me, I just edited other people’s things on my macbook.” Then I blocked her immediately and had to do damage control with my current girlfriend because I could not have her find out that I was a secret rapper. I was 18 at the time and defeated because everyone was laughing at me. So I hung up the mic and never went back. I flew too close to the sun!

5) Do you want to die of embarrassment when you think about it?

ZAK: It was a pretty embarrassing phase. I wouldn’t take it back though, I learned so much by doing that. The thing that really makes me want to die of embarrassment was when I entered into my spoken word poetry phase and had my own sweater printed that had the phrase “Rebel Poetry” on the front and on the back had a lyric from a poem of mine that I am ashamed to admit was “Most men aren’t even willing to have a conversation before penetration.” I wore that sweater every day for two years; I wish someone would’ve beaten me up for doing that.

HUNTER: It was embarrassing for me, too. Those songs still exist, but you have to go hella deep to find them. But, I’m like you, I’m glad it happened. I’ve always wanted to create things and push my boundaries, and of course being a rapper was misguided as all fuck, but it laid down the blueprint for who I’d eventually become. If anything it made me more self aware because one time I told a girl I was talking to that I made hip hop music, not rap. She immediately stopped talking to me forever.

I would’ve rather had a “Rebel Poetry” sweater, though, instead of big sunglasses with “Kid Dynamite” written on them. Yuck. If anything, my rap career is a really funny story to tell at parties. Next time, let talk poetry, because buddy I fucking went there, too.