Jul. 14, 2010 - Issue #769: Musician’s Survival Guide

Prevue

Verbal acrobat

Local rapper reconciles shyness with backflips

During his first concert, in 2008 at the short-lived Black Spot Cafe, Mitchmatic, then 18, rapped his first song with one hand in his pocket.

Mitchmatic is naturally a shy guy who speaks in quiet, brief phrases. Furthermore, his demeanour was amplified by the fact that he'd accidentally become the centre of attention: his friend, rapper The Joe, billed him on the show as a "special guest" and kept it a secret from everyone, including Mitch, until a week prior. To boot, Mitch's older brother, now New York rapper Teddy Holtby (aka Well-Put), was supposed to perform, but was too sick to show up. In his absence, Teddy's fans became Mitch Holtby's closest listeners.

When the beat to one of his songs intensified, indicating the chorus should have arrived, Mitch retrieved his pocketed hand, gestured for the small audience to part to the side, and then did a back flip off the stage. "That's the chorus," he explained.

Occasionally, Mitchmatic still employs the "flip chorus," a skill he learned out of boredom in his hometown, Clearwater, BC, where he flipped off cars to impress friends. Mostly now, his go-to concert spectacle is live beat-making on an MPC sampling machine he bought off eBay. "It's my fail safe," he explains. "If they're not impressed by my rapping ... which they usually are."
Mitch catches himself in a rare moment of ego: "Don't print that," he says.

Mitch has a lot of musical talent to be proud of, and even cocky about if he wants. When he's not rapping, flipping or sampling, he's playing piano, which, he says, "My mom tried to teach me, but I quit after the first lesson and learned it myself."

Given that his mom is a music teacher and his father a "jazzophile," it's no surprise that he and his three siblings (Teddy, Beth Holtby and Jessica Holtby) are all singers, songwriters and instrumentalists. "We all take influences from my dad's tastes in jazz," he says.

Since his first concert, Mitch has been a regular on the local music scene, mostly doing regular shows organized by Old Ugly Records. He's also become a member of Chop Shop, an instrumental hip-hop supergroup made up of local producers and rappers ReDef, KazMega and Joey Dats.

But the show on Sunday, opening for '90s hip-hop legends Souls of Mischief, is the first time Mitch gets to precede high-profile artists.

About a month ago, Mitch sent Tim Baig of Urban DNA a copy of his new, download-for-free mixtape, Two Weeks Off. Days later, the promoter booked him.

It's more than just Mitch's talent that got him the gig. There are a lot of very good rappers in Edmonton, but none with the sort of early-'90s style that Mitch has honed—a perfect fit for fans of Souls' '93 to Infinity. Even his name is an homage to Nas's 1994 classic, Illmatic. It's as if Mitch had started and stopped listening to rap at age four.

"I'm most inspired by music of that era ... I feel like rap had soul back then," he explains. "Not even in lyrics, but the way they used their voices like instruments. Now, rapping sounds like chanting." And then, sensing hubris, he says, "But not all of rap. There's some good stuff nowadays." V

Sun, Jul 18 (9 pm)
mitchmatic
With souls of mischief
Pawn Shop, $15 vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus