Rap Vs Indie

Yonge-Dundas Square hosts a number of free music concerts profiling Canadian artists. I went down to one of their Urban Groove concert to check out Masia One, a Singaporean-Canadian female rapper. It was a gusty evening that promised rain. Opening for Masia was a Jamaican MC, spinning some Caribbean tracks. His efforts to get the Toronto crowd to get up and dance was a failure. Then Masia One came on with an MC, 2 back-up singers and 4 dancers.

For her first set, she decided to do some of her older tracks such as Return of the B-girl, New Love, and Halfway Through The City. I really like the smooth, jazzy beats of these songs. But she kept stopping the songs halfway through ostensibly because these are old songs and the audience didn't seem to recognize them. Not to disrespect Masia but I think most of the people have never heard of her and were just hanging around the square. When one of her backup singer got profiled in a solo song, the rain came pouring down and that was that.

I enjoy her even flow but I prefer a little more punch, syncopation, and internal rhyme to my rap. So as far as female Canadian rappers go, I will have to give a slight edge to the hard stylings of Eternia.

I didn't think Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was my kind of movie because of, um, Michael Cera but I gave it a shot because of all positive reviews. I like the comic-book and video game aesthetic of the movie, there were also some funny retorts and exchanges. Overall though, I thought it was a dud. First reason, well, Michael Cera ... who plays Scott Pilgrim Michael Cera the same mumbling introvert in every movie. Second reason is Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is an enigma. There might be more to her in the graphic novels but here she's just a cute girl with funky hair. In real life, this is more than enough for a guy to find her interesting enough to pursue. But for a movie, it's hard to the rest of us to care. Third, Scott is (metaphorically) fighting her past by (literally) fighting her exes in combat. Sounds like a fun conceit. After all, we all carry baggage from our past.But 4 of her exes are just short term middle-school dates, the 5th is a bi-curious make-out, the 6th are generic twins (titillating!), leaving only the last ex, a record executive named Gideon Graves, to have been in a serious relationship with her. As far as relationship scars go, that's not much to get anxious about, let alone 2 hours of it. Finally, there's a weird prudishness to the movie, culminating in Scott accusing her: "Isn't there anybody at this party you haven't slept with?" A nasty barb that's probably a deal breaker in the real world. But it's particularly odd with regards to Ramona. After they met, she changed her mind about sleeping with him on the first date. In fact, he doesn't have sex with her at all during their courtship for the entire movie. And as far as her exes go, the only ones she might have slept with are the Japanese twins and her current ex. By the sexual mores of the last 50 years, she's practically a virgin. Maybe he'd be happier with one of those Christian girls who wear purity rings.

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