BriskInTheHouse wants a more comfortable home for rap.“Why can't there be a day and age where rappers really just want the best for everyone?” he asks. The Bakers Club affiliate has spent the past year developing his arsenal of knowledge on organic foods, hip-hop, Moors culture and the teachings of the Nation of Islam. Now, Brisk presents a greenly tinted, graffiti bombed visual for “See Me,” the first single off his upcoming 9-track project Tickets to The Roxy.The eyes-wide-open artist, hailing from Brampton (a city northwest of Toronto) maintains a mostly non-threatening narrative in his rhymes, allocating spiritual lessons, black power and positivity through a lo-fi filter of beat tape sounds and wavy piff smoke.The track, featuring Toronto’s resident Starter jacket-wearing pot aficionado, street-wise boom-bap emcee The 6th Letter, is shot in Toronto’s Kensington Market, a neighbourhood intertwined with an active countercultural, anti-establishment community. It's a fitting location for a rapper who, when he’s not working on an upcoming novel, reading, eating good vegetarian, or experimenting with producer Satorii on an upcoming house music project, is making his own line of organic juice. “It's not sold in stores,” he says. He calls his brand Moor Juice, named after the civilization of Africans that colonized Europe in the last millennium. A move that stands in stark contrast to other rappers who push more, um, fermented liquids.“Rappers sell poison. Even 50 Cent had the Vitamin Water,” says Brisk. “Vitamin Water ain’t even that good for you, it’s a branch off of Coca-Cola.” The conscious rapper starts to give a mini-lecture on his knowledge-based, uplifting philosophy, using his attire choices as an example. “I'm trying to be like Fidel Castro, Marcus Garvey,” he says. “It's wartime, it's not playtime.” So in between reading about our looming surveillance state, check out “See Me.” And pass that.Tickets to The Roxy is out March 15th.Eric Zaworksi is a writer living in Toronto. His favourite juice is loose.
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