Socalled Loves Passive-Agressive Producing & Peoplewatching

Photo By Richmond Lam

We’re in Socalled’s grimy basement apartment in Montreal’s Mile End, surrounded by his collections. He has a wall devoted to vinyl, a shelf in the corner with old books about magic tricks, stacks of VCR tapes and most terrifyingly, a chest with baby clothes he uses for his hand puppets. In the shadow of these mountains of stuff, conversation turns to how tragically uncool Socalled is. “I’m a member of this group on Facebook, Beta Boys Autism Support Group, and it’s led by this 20-year-old rapper kid from New York,” explains the Montreal rapper, real name: Josh Dolgin. “Whenever I post anything they don’t give a shit. They’re making their beats, doing their raps, and it sounds like shit. No production values, no harmonies, no real instruments. But it’s hip sounding, like bleeps and bloops. I put up this record that took four years to make and has all these incredible studio sounds—an old world way of making music—they don’t give a flying fuck.”

The anachronistic record in question is Peoplewatching, released in April. At first, Dolgin wanted to move in a modern direction. “I was going to make a mixtape, called Word of Mouth,” he recalls. “I bought a big bag of weed and invited all my favourite rappers in Montreal to the studio, and we smoked the weed and everyone rapped and wrote over the tunes. But I can’t relate to half-assed mixtapes.” His thing is collecting, and stuffing as many oddities from his basement into an album, either with his MPC1000 sampler or by simply hitting up the living legends themselves and getting them to contribute. And so Peoplewatching, originally designed to be simple and streamlined, ended up a big, bloated, funky, goofy, guest-laden affair. “I like big productions,” he says. “I like horn sections and world instruments, like ouds and accordions. I’m sorry, I like all this shit and I want to jam and try and put it all together. Like what if you put together chicken curry, peanut butter, fried noodles and a crepe and made something out of it? It would be disgusting, right? I’m open to being out of line with what I do.”

Some of his favourite musical ingredients in the past have included klezmer and frequent collaborator Fred Wesley, the American trombonist who ostensibly presided over the creation of hip hop’s template working with James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic. This time, Peoplewatching is klezmer-free, although Wesley returns as the inspiration for the album’s TV theme song-esque title track. (And lest you think Wesley is just some hired hand, Dolgin points out they’re friends and Wesley has smoked in the basement apartment before). For his hometown audience, he threw them a bone by including disco dude Pierre Perpall and burly trad rigodon singer Yves Lambert on Peoplewatching. Mista Sinista and Rob Swift from the famed New York turntablist crew The X-Ecutioners also make an appearance, which took on an even stranger significance when Dolgin presented me with the roach of a joint he smoked with them in 1998. He likes to collect artefacts as well as collabs, and at the expense of current-day street cred, Dolgin likes to retrace hip hop’s origins when it comes to creative partnerships.

It was Socalled’s use of guest stars during his album launch that prompted a short-lived and subsequently resolved Twitter beef between myself and the rapper (Undoubtedly one of the least interesting social media beefs in history). We at first butted heads about the differences between marionettes and hand puppets—he makes the latter, and I’m weirded out by both—but it was my heaping of praise on the likes of Lambert and Illa J performing together at the expense of the man who brought them there in the first place that made Socalled’s blood boil. It’s true, though: Socalled tends to cede the floor to others. Even on his record it doesn’t sound as though he’s rapping all that much. “I don’t want to hear me singing and rapping either,” he admits. “I want to hear the best rapper in the world rapping. It’s not me doing it, but I made the song. It’s weird. It’s why I’m such a loser and I haven’t really made it. It’s not obvious what I’m doing. It’s a magic trick: you don’t see what goes into the magic trick, only the result.”

The way he uses some of his guests on the record is also pretty unusual, as he’s only looking for brief, sample-able sound bites from them. Take, for instance, septuagenarian Brazilian percussionist João Parahyba: all Socalled wanted was to record the Trio Mocoto’s member repeatedly hitting his hi-hat. Socalled says it’s like getting a sample “made to order” in the desired key and tempo. Because his old sampler only has 128 MB of memory, when Socalled performs live he has to do a magic trick halfway through the set while he waits for the second half of his set to load onto his device. Dolgin has amassed enough of a fanbase in his hometown and Europe (notably France, Germany and Russia) in his decade-plus long career. Enough to keep the lights on in his basement apartment and the weed man coming around his living room window to make deliveries, and yet Toronto still won’t give him a shot. Even his dog Poopsie, trained to fetch weed for his owner, seems to be more adept at garnering accolades.

“Like, fuck everybody. Is Peoplewatching good? Is it fun? Is it stupid? Are there interesting musical ideas? Fuck the stories and the marketing. Maybe I’m an outsider artist? I’m kind of a freak. I remember a time when it was cool to know shit, and now it’s cool to be ignorant and not know about anything other than what’s cool. When I was 20 I wanted to know everything. “The thing is,” he continues. “I’m too Quebec for Ontario. I’m too Ontario for Quebec. I’m too Jewish for everybody. I’m too gay for everybody. I’m too pop for world and folk music festivals. I’m too folk and world for pop music festivals.” He does have a sleight of hand prepared for people who happen upon Peoplewatching in a brick and mortar. There’s a sticker on it, informing people that on the album is the remix he did of Moe Koffman’s “Curried Soul,” better known as the theme song for CBC Radio’s As It Happens. “That sticker is directly for the people of Toronto,” he says. “I want to make a living as a musician. I want to work. My band kicks fucking ass. My music is stupid and fun. It’s better than most boring ass music.”

Erik Leijon is a writer based in Montreal. Follow him on Twitter - @eleijon