Victoria hip hop community building from within

On a clear winter’s day at the end of North Park Street in Victoria, Marco Bermudez stands in a circle of people who are freestyling rap verses. Sharing stories with each other, everyone in the group is in the moment, getting lost to the rhythm of the beat, and letting their feelings be expressed with words.

Bermudez, also known as Nostic, has been a part of the hip hop scene in Victoria since he was 14 years old.

“My friends, the Pocket Kings and Illani, started this thing that they called Outright Cypher. It was just four MCs getting together at the end of North Park Street and free-styling rap with a boombox,” explains Bermudez.

Outright Cypher, which began six years ago, still takes place most Wednesday evenings and has many more members today than ever.

“It’s grown into such a big community, connecting different people from many areas. A lot of bands and groups have formed because of it,” says Bermudez.

One of these groups is the Leg-Up Program, which was formed last year and is made up many local acts, including Nostic, coming together to create something completely new by mashing up musical genres.

Going back to its roots, hip hop has always been a process of taking old sounds and creating something new. Ever since the well-known song “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang was released in 1979, deejays and MCs have been sampling records and rapping to them. Back then, a lot of hip hop was influenced by the funk and disco era, but nowadays there’s also a lot of electronic influence.

“These days it’s easy to make a beat,” says Bermudez. “You don’t need any fancy equipment, just a computer, but that also makes it harder because there is more good music being put out there. That’s why being original and trying something new is the progression of the sound, and that’s what we are trying to do with Dia-Nos.”

Dia-Nos consists of two musicians: the rapper, Nostic, and the DJ, Dia (also known as Eric Norberg). Coming from different musical backgrounds, both of them bring their skills to the table, mixing hip hop with ancient tribal sounds and fresh electronic beats.

“We started making what felt right to us,” says Norberg. “We’ll play a beat that the crowd can dance or vibe out to, and Marco will basically just freestyle to it a lot of the time.”

The beat of a track is what keeps its rhythm, but the lyrics are what give it meaning.

“Even though we just want people to dance, let loose, and have fun, there is also a deeper meaning in our music,” says Bermudez.

Last summer, Dia-Nos released a song with a video, opposing one of the pipeline proposals. It went viral within a week and was posted by Greenpeace on their blog.

“Within a week of it being posted it got taken down and deleted from the internet,” says Bermudez. “We never found out why it was taken down. But we are actually kind of excited about the video raising awareness, and that’s exactly what it did in a very interesting way.”