Freelance: The Coast - Halifax's Weekly
Volume 10 Number 30 (#383)
December 26 - January 9, 2002

ARTS> High class currency
Hip-hopper Buck 65 comes home for the holidays.
by Iain K. MacLeod

There was once a time when actually getting your hands on a Buck 65 release was a game of chance. Since the fall, Warner Music Canada has re-released five albums from his critically acclaimed back catalogue, including Language Arts, Vertex, Man Overboard, Synesthesia and Weirdo Magnet. On top of that, Buck released the highly anticipated Square, which has already been nominated for an East Coast Music Award for urban recording of the year. He was then promptly whisked off to make in-roads in Europe by way of an all-expenses-paid hip-hop sabbatical in Paris, France.

"I am back, basically here for the holidays and to finish up recording the new album with Charles Austin at Ultramagnetic," says Buck, born Richard Terfry, peering out from under his blue "Keep Nova Scotia Farming" ball cap. He has already made plans to return to Paris after his world tour in the new year, so his Marquee show December 27 will be your last chance to catch him for a while.

Terfry, a native of Mount Uniake, had never lived outside of Nova Scotia, so Paris was a bit of an eye-opener. "If there is a big city that is going to work for a country boy from Nova Scotia like me, maybe this is it," says Terfry, commenting on Paris's relatively slow pace and appreciation for the arts. With lots of time on his hands, he "cased" Paris by strolling the Left Bank, discovering weekly ragtime jazz jams and amateur readings. He found a really heavy record dealer who specialises in incredibly obscure European records and ingested copious amounts of cinema. Oh, and he also penned the first draft of a novel.

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