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Rb Hip Hop
Exclusive: k-os to Release New Album 'BLackneck' on Oct. 30, Financed By Drake: 'We Inspire Each Other'
The new seven-track LP finds k-os reconnecting with the influence he's left behind — the ambition of a Canadian artist willing to think beyond the country's borders while also representing where he came from — and it took one of its biggest benefactors to bring it to life.
Drake is credited as an executive producer on the project. Though he wasn't behind the boards, the Toronto star bankrolled the whole project while offering encouragement to k-os to make the album only he could make.
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"Drake was like, 'please make me a k-os record, please, please, please.' That's all he wanted," k-os tells Billboard Canada over the phone from Mayne Island in B.C., where he's putting the finishing touches on the mix for the album.
By a 'k-os record,' he means an album that takes big swings and doesn't pigeonhole itself to one genre or perspective — a vision that inspired a young Aubrey Graham as he was building his Drake persona.
He grew up watching k-os on MuchMusic in the 2000s, when k-os was making his name as a major name in Canadian hip-hop. They collaborated on the songs "Faith" part one and two in the early 2010s, and remained friendly ever since. They first reconnected, k-os says, in 2021 or 2022 when they saw each other at a club. They re-exchanged phone numbers and Drake asked him to send him some music.
"He was like 'dude, clearly you're still good at this,'" k-os remembers. "'I want to put you into a situation where you can make some music.'"
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Drake spoke to Matte Babel, the former MuchMusic VJ who now works closely with Drake as the chief brand officer of his entertainment company, DreamCrew.
Babel has been managing the project with k-os, with Drake as the "chief financier," says k-os.
"He's like 'oh, he wants to go to this big studio? He wants to get this string section?' It's hard for a label to spend that on an artist these days," says k-os, who was formerly signed to major label Universal Music Canada and indie label Dine Alone. "If you're a new artist and you just get signed off of streams, you tell them you want the Vancouver String Orchestra, they're going to say 'we're not paying for it.'"
But Drake is able to pay for it, bringing him back to a musical situation he was in when he was a major label artist in a pre-streaming world. He can get a string orchestra, or fuse country elements with hip-hop, or even hire the legendary Metallica/Bon Jovi/Aerosmith producer Bob Rock to produce his rock song, "I Would Never."
Drake provided the funding, k-os had the big ideas, and Babel came in to "help me get 'er done," as k-os puts it.
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"He checked in, booked the studio time. In some cases Babel rolled up to the studio with bags of cash," he says. "It was insane."
It's a luxury that allowed him to reconnect with his classic sound and style, one that relished in contradictions and was not afraid of big ideas.
He calls BLackneck the "best of everything" that he's done, a mosaic of the late '90s to early 2000s time period during which he signed his first deal and released most of his albums. He cites Outkast, Shania Twain, Our Lady Peace and Radiohead as the music he listened to and loved during that era.
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It's also inspired by being a musician in Canada, where he's made a decision to stay throughout his career. He made the album in B.C. and his parents' farm property in Whitby, Ontario, and that setting underlies the new album's title — a play on "Redneck" — as well as one of its standout cuts, "OK Corall."
The Wild West-inspired song about finding freedom after the implosion of a romantic relationship is laid over a hip-hop beat that features a country twang in the form of a slide guitar, and even incorporates a barn dance into the outro, marrying hip-hop and R&B over a "country outlaw" backdrop.
"Everyone keeps asking me how Drake helped the music creation," he explains. "The song ‘Still Number 1” is a perfect example of that. I was able to hire major orchestras, choirs and fuse symphonic elements into production. This was always a part of the k-os sound that I had forgotten. [This is how you can] see and feel the evidence of what a proper recording budget can do."
He has never been scared of being surpassed by other artists as his goal was to forge his own lane within his country, leaving a lasting impact that has bridged singing with rap and helped Canada become one of the top music exporters in the world, through superstars like Drake, The Weeknd and Justin Bieber, which he points out.
"I was experimenting, and it kind of worked for me in Canada, which made people go, 'hey, I'm going to try that too,'" he says, saying Canadians are pioneers by definition. "Do you think there would be a Drake, The Weeknd, Tory Lanez, all these if they didn't hear me doing my thing? And that's not something I'm conceited about, but it's what I was trying to do. You have to mentor people. You have to bring the younger generation into the studio and talk to them, even though they're a threat. They're there to replace you, but at least if they replace you, you can teach them some good s--t, right?"
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He describes his relationship with Drake as a brotherly dynamic, one in which the roles have shifted. Where Drake once looked to him for inspiration as a young up-and-coming artist in the country, he's now helping k-os' vision come to life.
Having Drake's name and funding attached to the album creates some pressure, he realizes. But that's an inspiration too.
"When you have the pressure of a label advance, that makes you think of music in the studio in a more exciting way. It's almost like gambling," he says. "It's like 'the pressure's on,' so it better be good. [On this album], Drake provided that for me, because he certainly listened to it after and was like, 'This s–t is incredible.'"
Now, k-os says he's often asked to define his relationship with Drake. People ask him if he produced his album, or if he's a member of OVO. He says it's not easily definable.
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"Our relationship is strictly defined by inspiration," he says. "We inspire each other."
BLackneck is out Oct. 30 on Spiritual Tech Records via The Orchard. You can pre-order it here.
Check out an exclusive first look at the album art and tracklist below.
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