Buck 65- Gives Back With More Than Just Great Music

By Bridget Arsenault

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The music scene has always been a tight knit weave and Buck 65, whose new album The Secret House Against the World propels his discography into the double digits, hopes to take a little and give a little to the musical family. Buck 65, hailing from Mount Uniacke , Nova Scotia , but now calling Paris home, has carved a very singular artistic path for himself in the world of hip hop. His style doesn't really fit into any of the main trends or movements of hip hop. So it is a big step in a new direction for him to collaborate with outside artists for the first time on this record. �I had never collaborated with anyone before. I had never really invited an outsider into my little recording world, but we did almost the entire album with Tortoise from Chicago and then we had DJ D Styles from LA do all the turntable stuff and this guy Gonzales play the keyboard on it. I really wanted to work with a whole diversity of people. That was all new and gave it a whole different sound.� Signed to Warner Music artists in Canada and label mates with the likes of The White Stripes and Moby on V2 in the United States, Buck 65 still remains has modest and humble as ever: �this record really belongs to them as much as me. I really just can't take credit for all of the stuff on this record.�

Collaboration mode proved a bold move for Buck 65, as he has always been a little skeptical of recording relationships, �I was excited about it, but I kinda had weird reasons for not wanting to do it. Because I didn't want it to look like I had suspicious motives. Sometimes to me it looks weird when a musician comes out of the blue that you've never heard of but the album features some super famous person and I think to myself, well that's pretty easy. It's always been important to me to establish myself first with my own songs and my own work.� Luckily Buck 65 has always been given the opportunity to create his own work, without the pressure from a record label to conform. �The good thing with my relationship with both my labels (V2 and Warner); I hardly even know they're there. They really give me a lot of artistic freedom to just do what I want. My process of writing songs or recording them in the studio, they don't really get involved, and they don't put any pressure on me to write hits or singles or anything like that. They'll just take what I give them and put it out.�

As well as dipping into the array of talented artists in his midst, this new album explores new musical avenues, �I really wanted to get into more classical elements on this record in particular and strings; I've never really worked with either of them before.� As well, another difference Buck 65 wrestles with is linguistic. A few of the tracks on the new disc showcase his wife Claire's voice speaking her native tongue: French. Both dabbling with a second language and the use of a female's voice were firsts for Buck 65.

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