Jesse Dangerously - Righteous Bad Ass

I finally managed to back up my old iPod so I felt safe to reinstall iTunes on my computer. A couple of years back one of my friends bought an iPod Mini (remember those?) and didn't know to turn the syncing "feature" off. When she deleted mp3 files from her hard drive to conserve space on her antiquated computer iTunes quickly decided she didn't need those songs on her iPod anymore either. I told my teary-eyed friend (she was teary-eyed quite often) that she would need to turn syncing off to avoid this from happening in the future. Ever since that event I have a very limited trust in Apple's software. While it was a good time to back up the my old 3rd generation iPod, it was basically full and I went to our local Apple retailer to look at the latest and greatest. I came home with a shitty haircut (not from the Apple shop) and an awesome 160 GB iPod Classic. It is not without it's shortcomings, it's a bit slower and has slightly choppy video occasionally but the additional capacity more than makes up for it.

It was also time to use my first iTunes card and see what was available in the store. I was very disappointed with their selection of foreign music while not completely absent it is safe to say it would not pass "The GOOD Music" test. The Canadian version of the iTunes store is so saturated with Canadian content that I gotta assume the CRTC (Canada's FCC) has something to do with it. Canada has some of the most draconian legislation when it comes to minimum Canadian content. In fact, you may not know that Bob and Doug Mackenzie were a sarcastic jab at the CRTC's content rules. It's much easier to complain about these rules when it means you must choose between Nickelback, The Hip and Rush but at least the iTunes store has a very very thorough selection to choose from. While on the iTunes site I picked up a Hifana single, a Four Tet EP and a new album by Halifax-born, Alberta resident, Jesse Dangerously.

I first came across Dangerously while reading an article from an excellent site called Hipster, Please! The article did little more than mention him alongside a number of other Nerdcore rappers but it did say he was from Canada and so I figured I would give him a try. It's too smooth to be Nerdcore and too nerdy to be mainstream. Indie hip hop at its finest with a strong nineties influence. Undeniably Canadian in prose, Dangerously is really darn tight with good production and high replay value. So much so, that I decided to make him the first artist I have ever paid for a bunch of ones and zeros coming through my tubes.