CRATERY 88: Mr. Attic

I first met Mr. Attic at York University’s 105.5 FM in ’95. It was my first year attending York and my favourite pastime had quickly become loitering around the campus/community radio station before, between and after classes. One of my favourite shows was called “Soul by the Pound” – a program dedicated to playing the soul, jazz, funk and rock songs that inspired the hip-hop songs of the era. Show creator Jeremy “Beatdawg” Weisfeld would blow my mind every week with source material for my favourite Pete Rock, Tribe and Large Professor songs with a level of insider knowledge I hadn’t encountered up until that point. It wasn’t long before pestering Jeremy on the phone every 5 mins for song titles turned into hanging out at the station and pestering him in person.

One week I turned up and Jeremy wasn’t there. Filling in for him that week was a dude who introduced himself as Seven. He was joined shortly by an unassuming cat with a bag full of records. The gentleman introduced himself as Attic. “That’s Mr. Attic from Da Grassroots”, Seven said, chiming in quickly. Da Grassroots? Wow. I had heard of the production trio through the work they had done for Toronto hip-hop outfit Ghetto Concept, including the classic “E-Z on the Motion” which I would later find out was actually produced by Attic himself. For the next hour, I stood by the studio door as Seven and Attic killed me with records I had never heard by groups like the Nite-Liters, Delfonics, Spirit and Don Covay (I remember going nuts off the original for Pete and CL’s Lots of Lovin remix). I was rhyming at the time, so I asked for Attic’s number at the end of the show in the hopes of securing a beat from the man himself. Suprisingly, he actually obliged.

It’s important to note that Da Grassroots had already developed a bit of a reputation around the city during this time period. Ghetto Concept (along with counterparts ORB and Born II Roam) were already head and shoulders above what was happening in the city at that time. And a huge part of it was due to the production provided by Da Grassroots. The local rap showcase was particularly unforgiving to rival producers when their pithy kicks and snares were easily outclassed by the warm, comforting boom of a Grassroots riddim. Ghetto was already collectively great on the mic. But the beats made them even better. By ’95, Da Grassroots had miraculously won back to back Junos with Ghetto Concept for the independently released “Certified” and “E-Z on the Motion” singles. It wasn’t long before the trio of Attic, Swiff and Murray were becoming the stuff of legend in Toronto.

My first time at Attic’s crib was, well, in a single word: overwhelming. It was the first time I had ever seen that many OG records in a single place. I had been buying bootlegs and compilations trying to get more bang for my buck and here was this dude who, in my estimation at the time, had “everything”. The only people I knew that had those kinds of crates were the big U.S. producers of that era. I hadn’t seen anything like it outside of a magazine. I didn’t even own Superman Lover by Johnny Guitar Watson at the time, so seeing records like 1619 Badass Band was overkill on my 21-year-old brain. That night, Attic made a beat off a Mongo Santamaria record and I remember hoping he would give it to me. Not only did he not give it to me, he nearly deleted it. I was dumbfounded. I thought the shit was single worthy and this guy was ready to toss it away without a thought. That was telling. After nearly 20 years of friendship I can say without a doubt that Attic is his own harshest and most ruthless critic, the definition of a perfectionist.

The next time I went to Attic’s place, I brought a friend of mine equally enthralled by sample mining: a budding producer I had met less than a year earlier by the name of Moss (featured on Cratery 33). We basically spent the entire night tapping Attic for sample knowledge. It was literally like typing searches into whosampled ye