Check it out, progress is being made to actually get this site off the ground again! In the meantime, here is an interview with Fritz da Cat from OK Cobra:

Ryan Somers, AKA Fritz tha Cat, hit the nail on the head when he mused “It’s funny how time flies” on his OK Cobra album. I interviewed him a year or two ago, and only now realize how long ago that really was. Between now and then I had lots of ideas for how to present it, from a dramatically redesigned webpage to shopping it around to magazines to starting a magazine with this as the cover story (what better way to present an article about a dude that ran his own magazine than to start your own? haha). I thought and continue to think that this dude has led one of the most interesting lives ever, and didn’t think a simple writeup on here would do it justice. Anyways, I kind of lost sight of the point which was to just let people read it, and sat on it for way, WAY too long. I was gonna rewrite it into article format, but I think that Ryan does a better job expressing himself than I could, and it’s too great a conversation to extract a few snippets from and write a mini review on the guy. So here’s the interview, from around 2005, copied out basically word for word from a mic-recording (that’s why there’s lots of repetition). Sorry about the typos, this thing clocks in at 10 pages and after retyping it and trying to edit it together for however long, this is how it’s gonna be, haha. I hope you enjoy it!

Pmore: So what’s up man?

Fritz tha Cat: What up, what’s goin on?

P: So Ryan, when you lived in London back a couple years ago you used throw some shows here. How did you get started doing that? How was it?

F: It was fun, it was good. Pretty much it was who ever I wanted to bring to town, I didn’t really know what I was doing. And it was just kind of random occurrences, like for Divine Styler I was doing the ‘zine and got in touch with him and he was like “yo, I wanna come up, we wanna meet you guys cuz this is crazy.” So then a bunch of friends just organized the show. With Aceyalone it was similar cuz the guy who was managing him at the time was a dude that I knew cuz he was a publicist. I’d known him for a year or two via emails and shit so he was like were gonna be playing Detroit which is pretty close, so he was like “Can you hook up a show?” and I was like “I guess? Sure.” I’m like “I never, [put on a show.] Well what do I have to do?”

“Well you have to send us money”

I’m like “ok” {laughs}

“And you have to find a venue”

“ok”

“and make flyers”

“alright, I can do that.”

And then other times I was just randomly was down, the Hieroglyphics crew was playing at this rave down in Detroit somewhere, so me and a bunch of friends drove down to see it. I ended up talking to Domino and he was like “OK, well here, next time we’re around, we can come play London where you’re at.” So a few months later he called up and was like “Hey, we’re going to be doing another couple shows in Michigan and a couple other places.” So it was same kind of thing, “So we’re close, we’re only 2 hours away, so for that one, there used to be a store in town, called soul choice, and um, Andrea, the owner of the store, she djs at the office on Wednesdays, and her brother bob, he used to work at the office, so I just went by the store and was like hey bob and Andrea, talkin to domino, heiro wants tot come to town. so they got involved in that and helped set up that at the office, so yea, just kinda randomly like that, and then I started working w remg in Toronto on a few shows when I was living in Toronto. They’re kinda the main promoters for rap shows in Toronto, so I started working with them on a few shows, cuz I had London connection cuz if they brought an artist to town if they thought it would work in London then id help them set up a show in London so we did a few more we did heiro again and blackalicious and I forget who else, a few, so yeah, and I kinda stopped doing that a few years ago, cuz you get bored you know, you start doin other things.

P: The other day I went to Grooves and saw on the back of the Oddities album “the scenic route” it lists you as their manager, has your e-mail on there, I thought thats was pretty cool. How did you end up managing the Oddities?

Um, that was like, I just sort of always dabbled in a bunch of different shit over the years, like, from starting out rapping you know and break dancing, and doing graffiti, and doing all that shit as a kid and as a teenager. And then I had this rap group and that broke up and then went into doing the magazine, and that led into doing shows, and that led into moving to Toronto. And that just kinda led to sorta wanting to do different things and try different things and learn about different things and whenever people I met needed help I tried to figure out what they needed and try to help make things happen. 

So I ended up doing publicity for a lot of different underground rappers and like organizing shows and tours and things like that plus writing for mags, so helping to expose artists. So I just kinda met the Oddities along the way and I was just a fan of their shit, I liked the music, thought it was really cool, I hung out with them a bunch of times at their shows and liked the guys, I just thought they were really good dudes, so at the time when I was doing A&R at Universal I was really into the Oddities and I was talking to them a lot and trying to get something happening with them at Universal

No one else at the company was too into them as far as they didn’t think they really had , they didn’t hear hits, you know, so when I left the company they were like, they were making really good music and they’re really well known for their shows in Toronto they put on a great live show but they kinda needed a little help as far as getting organized and figuring out how to get a record out. At the time I had done a little bit of work with Battleaxe Records before and I played the Oddities music for Battleaxe and they were into it and wanted to put out a record so I kinda just started managing the group. And hooked them up with that thing to do the record through Battleaxe and yea then just whatever, I got them a booking agent and started getting things rolling and it was a lot of fun, they’re an amazing group, but then after a while I kinda realized that I wanted to get back to doing my own stuff and being an artist and its kinda hard to juggle 3 different jobs at once you know, so it was kinda, it was cool, I mean they were cool, I was like ok, I cant really do this anymore, and the guy who I had brought in to help me with the Oddities he took over, he’s still managing them, I believe he’s still managing them now, he actually works for REMG too so it kinda works out well.

P: So I guess the next question would be you were talking about working for A & R at universal, how did that go down? What did you actually do there when you were working for A & R?

F: Well my job was a few things, basically it was your always on the hunt for up and coming artists, so my days at the office would consist of listening to demos. I mean hundreds and hundreds of demos that get mailed to the office all the time, we had literally had a giant bin where all the mail went, all the demo packages, and like every day you’d go and grab a stack of envelops a pile and just go through them, so you gotta listen to everything and send letters back to people who submit stuff. And you know, meeting with my bosses and the other people in my department and discussing what’s happening in music and new bands or artists that we’ve seen coming up and keeping an eye on them. A lot of research too, you know how every city has their local paper, like here we have Scene and Toronto has Now and Eye, every city has that sorta weekly thing. So basically we would read those from across the country and every time we read about a new artist we don’t know you try to track them down find out what they’re all about and hear their shit, your checking radio playlists from the college and commercial stations across the country to track if, if some radio station from Saskatoon is playing some artist from Saskatoon then your like well who is this band I wanna know. So you track the band down, you find their website, you find someone who knows them and email them and say hey let me hear their music, so you’re always on the hunt to get more music. Basically, at the end of the day, you want to know every band in the country that’s doing anything interesting, like if they’re getting on the radio their getting press they’re doing shows they’re touring like anything that’s happening, if you don’t know about it, you’re not doing your job. So that was like, and at night you would go out every night and just see bands, you know. Like 4-5 nights a week you’re out watching bands, it also involves a bit of traveling to different cities. Toronto has North by North-East (NXNE) Canadian music week, Montreal is pop Montreal, Vancouver is New Music West, these sort of weekends where there’s a conference and a million showcases and shit so you’d go across there and look at all these bands hear them all and network with people so that was that was my job, pretty much doing all that shit. I mean, when you find something you like, you have a meeting every week or two with your department. So you narrow it down to “this is the small group of things that I think are worth keeping an eye on” or if I heard something I really like right behind where I sat was my bosses office and I’d just go play it for him like “you have to check this band out, this up and coming band from Halifax or wherever.” And then we’d keep an eye on them or contact them, say “hey, we want to check you guys out” or whatever whatever. 

It was actually a really exciting, awesome time when I was there, there was a lot of good shit happening, good stuff going on, I learned a lot, met a ton of people, but it was kinda the same thing at the end of the day, like I was there for a year and then I just sort of realized like it’s a really intense job. It’s like 80 hours a week, I’d be at the office at 10am usually wouldn’t leave until 8-9pm, grab a quick bite to eat, and then go straight out to bars to see bands, get home at 1 or 2 in the morning, be up again, and doing that every day, and it didn’t leave much time for me to write or paint or do any of the kind of stuff I want to do, so I kinda had to make a decision. If you wanna do that job, that’s your life, and as much as it was really cool and I was learning tons and meeting great people, I had to think about it and was like “well, in 5 years do I want this life?” and I was like “well, no, in 5 years I kinda want to be making my own music and acting and doing my own shit, and yea, you know?” word.

P: Tell me about Divine Styler Magazine, how it translated into a book, how the magazine came to be first of all, and then how it got to book form.

F: That just again came out of booze and drugs I think, um me and a couple of my buddies, a lot of us actually basically everyone I hung out with we were all huge divine styler fans. And um ill give for people that don’t know divine ill give them a little back-story. He was, is, a rapper, he was a new York rapper but out in Cali, put out an album called word power in I think 89 and it came out as part of Ice T’s rhyme syndicate label thing. At the time ice t was huge and he put on Everlast, Donald d, and all these other people that kinda came out under this loose collective called the syndicate. Divine was part of this but he was so different than everybody else, he wasn’t on that la raiders hat, gangsta shit type vibe, he was just,  the first time I saw the video for ain’t saying nothing I was like who the fuck is this, this is the best thing I’ve ever heard and seen in my life. And anyway he released that record, amazing album, a couple years later he came out with this other record called spiral walls, which was just like this insane album that he was fuckin around with like crazy electronic shit, acoustic guitar songs, weird rapping shit, chanting shit, like it was just the weirdest fuckin album you ever heard in your life, WAY ahead of its time, still to this day you can still listen to it and be like wow its fuckin out there.

 So after that he kinda just disappeared, and like I was a huge fan, and at the time I decided I wanted to start this zine thing, and decided to call it in search of divine style, I guess just being hammered and on acid one night me and a bunch of friends decided we needed to find divine style, you know what I mean? It doesn’t really make a lot of sense but we decided we needed to find him, and it seemed like doing a zine would be a good way to do that, because it could kind of spread the word about this search for this guy

So first issue was a piece of shit, just literally took 40$ from my welfare check and photocopied a bunch of shitty paper, like you can see the lines where it was glued together, you know what I mean. but I just kind of fell in love with the idea of having this creative outlet where I could say anything I wanted and photocopy it and put it in stores and have people read it, that was awesome to me.

P: *Was this before you had anything recorded of your own or after or around the same time…? *

F: It was kinda, I was kinda in this rap group that kinda broke up so I didn’t have anyone to work with musically at the time, so I needed another outlet for creativity, so I just started, I really was addicted to reading hip hop magazines at the time when they were good, so I was just like alright, ill start my own zine. And then it kinda grew and then

Ended up moving to Toronto and putting it out there, and it was kinda just at the time, the kinda Indy and underground hip hop thing was just starting to get big, right like the mid 90s when all these Indy labels were coming out of nowhere and all this really awesome shit was coming out outside of the major label system, it was like this little Indy renaissance happening, so there was all this wicked shit and that’s what the zine ended up focusing on, it was before a lot of those people got well known. So we were doing interviews w MF doom and co flow and phoenix Orion and aceyalone in 96-98 before, like now doom is huge and all these dudes are touring and shit, so it was kind of neat, a lot of fun, to feel like with the zine we were kinda like ahead of the curve, it was really an exciting time to be a part of that and sort of documenting everything that was going on and pushing, pushing these artists and this whole thing

And so the other thing is the name, in search of divine style, there was the one side that was looking for the guy, cuz we were kind of obsessed with finding him for some reason, and then the other side that name was kind of like a metaphor for like all the divine stylers, which are like all the divine stylers that are people that were really good but no one was really paying attention to. Cuz at that time you had these people like acey put out book of human language which was like the most amazing record ever but no one was talking about it, in any of the rap magazines, and it was this whole scene that was happening that no one was talking about, so that was the purpose of this zine was to focus on this shit. The problem with that is that when you’re focusing on this underground indy scene you aren’t going to get advert dollars from major labels, and all those small underground indy companies didn’t have money to buy ads. So it kinda like strangled itself in a sense