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BIOGRAPHY | BEEFS | INTERVIEWS | ARTICLES
THE HORSEMEN | CLOAK 'N DAGGA
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Rapper takes on institutions, music and otherwise
source: Errol Nazareth, Toronto Sun (1999)
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A mischievous smile crosses the usually intense, angular face of one of hip-hop's most talked-about figures. I've just asked 23-year-old Canibus if he fantasizes about hacking into a Web site. "Of course," he replies swiftly, his baritone bouncing off the walls of the Sun cafeteria.
Which sites?
The smile breaks into a laugh. "The sites I want to hack into ... if I was to successfully hack into them they wouldn't put me into prison, they'd put me under the prison."
Meet Jamaica-born Germaine "Canibus" Williams. One of the tightest, hungriest and most intelligent rappers in the biz. Information and computer junkie who once worked for the U.S. Department of Justice. Conspiracy theory fanatic whose real ambition was to be a genetic engineer.
Yeah, the same cat who dissed LL Cool J hard earlier this year on the scorching single, Second Round K.O. I half-expected Canibus to bring along his trusty IBM Think Pad to the interview. Not today, though, but he is excited about buying the top-of-the-line Apple G3. "I want to get the G3 'cause it allows you to log on to the Net without plugging it into a wall," says Canibus, who was here this week talking up his solid debut strike, Can-I-Bus. "It's got an antenna. If it didn't have that feature I wouldn't get it."
Given that he spends all his money on gadgets, it seems perfectly natural that Can-I-Bus begins with its creator logging on to the Internet and hacking into a site.
"I didn't want to start the album with guns clicking, me trying to rob somebody, the foolishness, you know what I'm sayin'?" he says. "Every artist out there is talking about guns, jewelry, cars, women, drugs."
Taken at face value, Canibus' modus operandi sounds deceptively simple. "All I do -- all any MC does -- is take information, process it, make it rhyme and spit it out," he says.
But spend a while with cerebral jams like Niggonometry and Channel Zero and it'll become obvious that Canibus' sources of information and the way he "processes it and spits it out" are, with the exception of Killah Priest, unmatched in hip-hop.
The self-described "illest lyricist in America" peppers his conversation with talk of government conspiracies, "third density beings," the Bhagvad Gita (the ancient Indian text sometimes called the New Testament of Hinduism), physics, and the existence of aliens.
"I read everything I can get my hands on, but when people ask me what type of books I read or which Web sites I go to, I tell 'em that that's classified information," says Canibus. "I do that 'cause I don't like people biting off me, I don't like people taking my ideas."
While his ideas may get stolen, the sheer energy he brings to the stage will not. It's been ages since I saw someone deliver the type of high-octane performance Canibus gave at the Montreal edition of Smokin' Grooves a few months back.
I asked him where the hunger comes from.
"I came from Jamaica, went to the Bronx, and lived up and down the East Coast and it wasn't in the nicest neighbourhoods 'cause we didn't have money," says Canibus, who's been rhyming for a decade. "It was never easy.
"But I've always been real aggressive and to the point with my music," he adds. "I've wanted to do this for so long and I got my shot through perseverance."
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