Royal The One Man (...Massive!!!.....)

My older brother (RIP) brought hip hop home. Early LL Cool J, Dana Dane, Beastie Boys. I was young and I was intrigued, and before long I was filling notebooks with rhymes of my own. By high school I was on stage with Splif(t) Reality: Red Pig (DwightRath), DJ Redaxe and MC Buddorff. The Stuntman and I made a cassette single, "The Gloucester Hydro," and it picked up a little play around Ottawa.

In 1999, Integrity Records put out *Mad Love*, a compilation of Canadian hip hop pulled together from crews across the country. I'm on "Test" with The Stuntman, Deception and Zeus (RIP). We shared that record with Checkmate and Concise, Social Deviantz and Shorty Reck, 2-Tone, Shines 'N' F-Roc, White Plains, CIA, 2Ra, Mr. Bigstuff, Moka Only and Swollen Members. A lot of those names are still making music today.

Toronto came next. I was Oneman then, half of Irregularz with Eshbeats, who went by Esh at the time. We made two albums, *Phototropizm* and *Deeply Rooted*, and let them go into the underground. In those years we were rolling with Tyme-One (The Quarter Inch Kings) and the Intricate Syndicate, and sharing bills with MC Collizhun, Adversaree and Theo 3 of Camp X, Flight Distance, Broken Bridge and Eternia, with Eyedea and DJ Abilities passing through. The albums never travelled far, and the few copies that got out are hard to find now. Let me know if you have a copy of either (I don't) :)

Then I set it down, and almost twenty years went by. Ever walk away from something and find it still waiting when you came back?

Ottawa again, where it began. I'm writing as Royal The One Man, back in the room with Eshbeats and The Stuntman. The wells haven't changed: old books and scripture, philosophy, science fiction, the stranger corners of the new age. I'm just drawing from them with more years behind me. "Supreme Wisdom," produced by Eshbeats, and "We Could Grow," produced by The Stuntman, are the first of it.

More is on the way, with production from Mr. Ilango, The Stuntman, Cool Cal, Baptiste Hayden, Eshbeats and others.