It’s game day at Ridgemont High School. The campus buzzes as jacketed jocks hit on leggy cheerleaders; severe history teachers patrol the halls as stoners slink around the bleachers. But just when you’re getting settled in for a throwback coming-of-age classic, a funk bassline and turntable scratches twist up the familiar scene.
This is the world of Teenburger, a hip-hop supergroup featuring Halifax MC Ghettosocks, Timbuktu out of London, Ontario and local DJ Jorun Bombay. Their album Burgertime, out September 6, is a boom-bap brouhaha that takes place in the dimension where varsity football is king, where gaggles of girls-next-door giggle teasingly, those golden lawless days where the worst punishment for breaking a rule was getting detention.
“It’s not necessarily a reflection of our own experience,” says Ghettosocks, AKA Darren Pyper. “Eighties movies, they refer back to that formula: jocks and geeks, everyone’s partying, struggling with the opposite sex.”
“High school…it was just a continuous comedy of errors, really,” says Timbuktu, AKA Tim Wallace. “A lot of what we do is whatever makes us laugh, we just try to crack each other up—it’s a pretty easy process, really.”
The two share unmistakable chemistry, ignited when a DJ friend introduced them (“It was like putting two wild animals in a cage to see if they’ll co-habitate,” says Pyper). Since then, they’ve collaborated on solo albums, from Ghettosocks’ Juno-nominated Treat of the Day to Timbuktu’s Stranger Danger. And though their styles diverge, they describe themselves as lyricists first. On one track from Burgertime, they rattle off raps, finishing each other’s sentences, while maintaining the same rhyme scheme—over 24 bars.
“We sat down and wrote the whole album in a week or something, at my house,” said Pyper. “It’s effortless.”
But if the smooth-talking Socks plays Reggie to Timbuktu’s hyperactive Jughead, it’s all under the watchful eye of their own Principal Weatherbee, Jorun, an icon who has blessed the careers of Classified and Buck 65.
“He’s a mad genius,” says Wallace. “The album, the flow and the way it works, he really took what we had and ran with it. It’s my favourite thing that I’ve ever been a part of.”
Burgertime, Teenburger album release
Tuesday, September 6 teenburger.bandcamp.com | droppinscience.bandcamp.com
This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2011.
ghettosocks would be easier to take seriously if he ditched the glassless frames…
woow really? maybe listen to the music and who cares wtf he looks like?
You’re right. Maybe I should mention that I saw him at the pop explosion last year and the jazzfest this year and tried watching the youtube vids, all to no avail. I will give Teenburger a try, though. Wish me luck!