Ôr-gan'ik: Redefining hip-hop
David Wilson McLeish, Arts Editor

Ôr-gan'ik has only been around for 14 months, but already they've released four underground hip-hop tracks, collaborated with Checkmate and Concise, and hope to have their first album finished by early 2003. Their latest release is being played on the Beat 94.5, but Ôr-gan'ik is not your standard hip-hop act. "It's live hip-hop music played on real instruments, thus the organic," says TK, a vocalist and bass player in the group. "It's basically like your average rock band setup, except hip-hop."

The organic nature of Ôr-gan'ik doesn't stop at their live performances. With the exception of their keyboard player, all the members of Ôr-gan'ik are brothers. They also grow their own vegetables and bake their own bread. TK explains that their song "Just get by" describes how the members of Ôr-gan'ik live. "It's about living just to get by instead of busting your nuts to have a mortgage for thirty years... Living within your means is a very important part of the organic lifestyle." Ôr-gan'ik raps about their lives and what they see, and as such, the "organic lifestyle" is featured heavily in their lyrics. "That's what rap is - it's a commentary on life. I think too many MCs have it wrong; they comment on the life they want to have or other people's lives, and it's not very real."

The brothers' musical careers began with a funk/RnB band called F-Jam. In the latter part of its six-to-seven-year run, F-Jam incorporated hip-hop into its show, but when the band decided to focus solely on hip-hop, they changed their name and a few of the band members. "Hip-hop was the most challenging," says TK. "It's the most fresh, and extremely difficult to play." Most hip-hop is meticulously constructed in a studio, so I asked TK what kinds of challenges their live performances present. "The hardest part about making it sound like hip-hop is really playing everything perfectly all the way through. You have to think like a producer while you're playing, as opposed to just a musician, and you have to do little production tricks while you're playing; that's what makes it sound like hip-hop instead of just a funk band with a rapper."

Ôr-gan'ik hopes to bring the live act back into the club. For as long as TK can remember, clubs have played predominantly canned music; Ôr-gan'ik hopes to "kick things back into the live show, as opposed to things just being based on music videos." This Thursday, they will be performing at Element Sound Lounge, and TK suggested that Checkmate and Concise might join them to perform their collaboration.

This January, Ôr-gan'ik will begin recording their first full-length album at the Factory studios. "The album is going to be quite musical," says TK. "Lots of different tempos and styles. That's a beef I have with some artists; a lot of them tend to stick with the same old thing. We like to switch it up; do some fast, some slow, some aggressive and some deep songs, so expect something that's quite versatile." The production of the album was the grand prize of a contest Ôr-gan'ik won. The prize included recording and mixing as well as graphics for the album and legal counsel. The songs are all written and have been pre-recorded at their studio in Coquitlam, so expect to hear some of them at their Thursday performance.

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