Calgary hip-hop artist Transit releases ‘dark, honest’ album
Transit releases his new album Stale with a show Saturday at MacEwan Hall.
Artistically and personally it’s difficult not to appreciate what the past year-and-a-half has done to Daniel Bennett.
In that time, the B.C.born, Calgary-based hiphop artist who performs and, now, for better or worse, lives much of his life under the Transit moniker, was a finalist for the city’s first Poet Laureate, has released an album and EP, and has collaborated or shared the stage with an assortment of heavyweights including Madchild, Jann Arden, Kyprios and Grieves.
There have been many ups, there’ve been certain downs, and all are not only part of a candid conversation with the musician at a 17th Avenue beer house but have also left their impression on his latest album Stale, which he’ll release with a show Saturday night at the U of C’s MacEwan Hall.
“Stale is what I’ve been trying to do for the last five, six years.
“It’s everything I want my sound to be,” Bennett says of the 10-track effort between sips.
“I finally found what I think I’ve wanted and just got secure enough in my own sound and my own thoughts to be completely vulnerable and honest and lyrical with it rather than hiding behind metaphors and rhyme schemes.
“It’s a really dark, honest album.”
Partially for this reason it’s also his most focused and most realized, feeling like an album rather than a collection of singles, sounding like that statement of who he is and what he’s going through as he attempts to balance, question and appreciate the trinity of fame, family and faith. And Bennett admits that because it was so personal, so important to get it right, that he spent far more time in the studio than any of his other projects, crafting the material with local producer and engineer Chris Fawcett, who helped him fully realize a style that meshes the melody of pop with hip-hop and R&B, like, say, Kanye West, OutKast or B.o.B.
Joining him on the outing is an amazingly diverse array of guests that illustrates his willingness to stretch the definitions and includes: rising Alberta roots artist Joe Nolan; feel-good Calgary reggae poppers Makeshift Innocence; MCs New’L and Jaynova; Canadian hip-hop pioneer Kyprios, whom Bennett had previously recorded with for his last EP Public Domain; and phenomenal local find Sykamore, whose gorgeous voice graces two of Stale’s standout tracks, Heavy Crown and closer Never Left.
“I’m probably quicker to listen to a Stars album than a Ne-Yo album, so for me when I was looking for an artist to collaborate, Sykamore was perfect because she has this pure voice,” he says of the singer. “I was only going to have her on one track and then we did one and I was like, ‘I need to get her on another one.’
“Those songs turned out really well.”
But while those collaborations are sources of artistic pride to Bennett, there was one that also had the benefit of being something of a career coup for him, and that’s the teaming with Grieves for the song Settled Smoke. Bennett had previously opened for the Seattle rapper for a pair of area dates, before being asked to join the more established American artist in Transit’s hometown of Victoria.
An admitted “fanboy,” he was wary of suggesting the two work together, but was emboldened by the fact Grieves was familiar with some of Bennett’s earlier work and was then floored when his Washington State friend showed up with a beat, hook and verse, then was so happy with the results he Tweeted the link to his 27,000-plus followers.
“For me, that’s my favourite collaboration I’ve ever done on a fan level, because he’s exactly where I want to be,” Bennett says, noting that’s both musically and because Grieves is on the influential indie label Rhymesayers, home to one of Bennett’s other faves Atmosphere.
Which brings us to much of the darkness that lyrically drives Stale. For as close as he may now be to realizing his goals, Bennett admits that it has all come with a price that he wasn’t necessarily expecting.
It’s what colours much of the material, including songs such as Hiatus, Public Figure and Heavy Crown, where he explores all of the things attached to fame — critical blowback, and loss of such things as privacy, friends and fans — even when achieved on his ad- mittedly modest level.
“I was one of those people who used to make those Britney Spears jokes and I got a kick out of watching TMZ and seeing these rich spoiled celebrities break down. And I started getting followed in malls and pictures getting taken of me when I’m out with my (fiance) and stuff like that — a little tiny taste of it. . . . And I started to relate more with what it must be like to be famous and what it can do to you and your family, and I sympathized with it a bit.
“Also, it’s the thing that you strive for your whole life (as a musician), when you get this crown and this title and realize that you compromised everything else to get there.”
That realization, though, doesn’t mean he’s ready to stem the passion and drive that have brought him to this level, as his booking of one of the city’s larger venues for his CD release should indicate. It’s just that Bennett is now aware of what he will and won’t do to placate fans, including those who not only appreciate and are drawn to the proclamations of his faith in his music but want to define him that way.
That’s why among some of the lyrics on Stale are some pointed rhymes about “message board Christians” and “Westboro Baptist conservative fascists” while still allowing for just as many moments of praise.
“The problem with being tagged as a ‘Christian rapper’ is that you can’t be honest about your struggles. And I know a lot of, quote, Christian rappers who only make songs about God ... and who only play in churches who have affairs or they have drug addictions. A lot of the time it’s worse than the secular scene,” he says.
“And that’s what really, really bugs me is I feel like there’s no room to be human inside of that genre — and that’s why I don’t want to be affiliated with it. Also because their fans, who are supposed to be the most accepting people as Christians are the biggest haters in the entire world.”
That, too, is another thing that Bennett has now had to deal with as he gets further into his career, the backlash that often starts as anonymous muttering on social media but eventually gets a little bolder, a little more public.
“It used to be I get YouTube comments, now people find my number and wake me up in the middle of the night telling me how much they hate my music or even in person, I get off the (CTrain) and someone pushes me and says a comment about my music,” he says before noting it’s even made its way into local media.
“But that is kind of encouraging at the same time because you realize you’re going somewhere. You’re not anyone until someone hates you.”