One afternoon in February, 26-year-old Mark Kasprzyk met up with the rest of his band at his bass guitarist's home, a sprawling wood-panelled place set on a ridge overlooking the Dundas Valley, just outside Hamilton.
The band was to rehearse for a music-industry-only show in Toronto designed to coincide with the release of his first major-label CD, titled Go For Broke and sold under Kasprzyk's performing name, Kazzer. The CD has been available since the beginning of April, and will be in U.S. stores from June 1.
Based on a signal from Kasprzyk, the band runs through the album's first single, Pedal to the Medal, a little ditty about driving around in Kasprzyk's 1986 Jetta. The song is currently unavoidable for viewers of MuchMusic or listeners of Canadian commercial rock radio. Despite the use of nearly every production cliché in the rap-rock genre -- think big guitars paired with turntable scratching, and rapped verses with sung refrains -- the track somehow manages to convey a sense of fun and harmless rebellion, like a beer commercial aimed at the under-25 set.
One half-expects Kasprzyk to conclude his song with a shouted, "I am Canadian!" Instead, he falls silent. As the band watches for his reaction, he smiles. "That was good," he says. "This is going to be very good."
In the grand theatre of global pop music, there are two significant stages of hype separating the civilians from the superstars. The first stage is the minimum level necessary for an artist to get signed to a label. The second involves crafting an image that so intrigues a record executive that the exec is willing to bet hundreds of thousands of dollars on the artist's career. The second stage separates the herds of performers who have won record deals from the cabal of global superstars, the celebrities familiar to people by a single moniker -- like "Eminem" or "Shania" or "Celine."
Kasprzyk has already ascended the first level of hype. That happened almost two years ago, a few months after he narrowly missed joining the Canadian Olympic judo team in Sydney. The young man from Binbrook, Ont., -- a suburb of Hamilton -- sent a tape of himself performing rap music to an employee of his judo sponsor, Mizuno. The employee lived in New York, by chance in the same building as a lawyer from MTV, the pop-music network. From the MTV lawyer, Kasprzyk's tape made its way to another MTV lawyer, who happened to be married to the head of A&R of Epic Records .
When the A&R executive heard the tape, he telephoned Kasprzyk and asked him to send more information. Kasprzyk sent a videotape of himself winning judo matches and was on a plane to New York only days later to discuss record contracts. Soon, the Hamilton rapper was one of a growing number of Canadian artists signed to an American label, Epic Records, which is also home to Michael Jackson and Jennifer Lopez.
Now, with the release of his album, Kasprzyk will spend the remainder of this year attempting to manufacture the hype necessary to remake himself into a global superstar. If he succeeds, he'll join a growing number of Canadian performers. For example, the most-played song on North American radio in 2003 was How You Remind Me by Hanna, Alta.'s Nickelback, propelling the rock band to sales of eight million for its 2001 release, Silver Side Up. Avril Lavigne has sold 10 million copies of her first album, Let Go. Sum 41, the Ajax, Ont.-raised punk popsters (and Spin cover boys), sold five million copies of its first album, All Killer No Filler.
Add in recent platinum recordings from Nelly Furtado and Shania Twain, and breakout years for such performers as Default and Kathleen Edwards, and one realizes that the biggest entertainment export from Canada to the United States is no longer comedians, but pop music performers.
Have Canadian musicians suddenly become brighter or more creative, better able to woo audiences, to hypnotize the record-buyers with their eyes? Alas, no. Industry insiders speculate that the unprecedented success of Canadian artists is caused by a new class of savvy entrepreneurs, mostly managers and entertainment lawyers. Most of them know each other because of their annual attendance at such industry-targeted events as the North by Northeast music festival and Canadian Music Week, both in Toronto. The new class includes such Toronto-based names as Furtado handler Chris Smith and entertainment lawyer Chris Taylor. On the other side of the country, there's Vancouver lawyer Jonathan Simkin, who jointly runs 604 Records with Nickelback's Chad Kroeger. Learning from them is a young generation of up and comers, such as the Toronto-based duo of Patrick Sambrook and Dave Spencer.
There are a number of reasons why some people in the Canadian music industry speculate that Kasprzyk could become the next performer to trigger a tsunami of hype in the United States. The record he's promoting is catchy and radio-friendly, and the judo thing could be intriguing enough to persuade someone like Casey Kasem to make him the subject of a few blurbs on a radio program. Kasprzyk's chin-length blond hair, coupled with his tendency not to wash it, bring to mind Kurt Cobain, which never hurts record sales. And he's intelligent -- prefacing thoughts with words like "consequently," which is about two syllables more than many other hip-hop MCs can manage.
But more than anything else, Kasprzyk has demonstrated a willingness to work hard, and a pragmatism that indicates he's learned that there are no guarantees when it comes to the music industry.
"When you're on a big label, it's very easy to get overlooked. You're on the same label as Michael Jackson and Jennifer Lopez -- so what do you do to get noticed?" asks Kasprzyk, rhetorically. "The trick is to get people motivated about you as a person. When I go into Epic, I make sure everyone knows who I am, and I make sure I know everyone's name. And I make sure I know everyone's assistant's names. I even know the janitor. His name's Bob." He pauses. "And it's working. I go in there now, and everyone's stopping me -- 'Kaz, what's going on? What's up?' I know the Top-40 guys, I know the rock radio guys, I know their assistants, I know everybody."
The two-year period between Kasprzyk's signing, and the release of his album, has included both pitfalls and peaks. After he delivered the tracks to Epic Records, Kasprzyk -- and, more importantly, his label -- decided the album wasn't as radio-friendly as they would have liked.
So it was back to the sound board. He enlisted the help of Philosopher Kings band member Brian West. They co-wrote Pedal to the Medal, which would become Kasprzyk's first single, and he enlisted the help of a producer from St. Catharines, Ont., who goes by the nickname "Tawgs." Last August, Tawgs and Kasprzyk delivered the reworked album to Epic.
Toward the end of 2002, Kazzer's single, Pedal to the Medal, was serviced to commercial radio stations, and the video was sent to networks. And from then, it's been a non-stop, unending tour.
Two days after the rehearsal, Kasprzyk is at the Rivoli on Toronto's Queen Street West strip. This exclusive concert is a targeted show intended to generate interest in the upcoming release of the album from people in the media as well as radio DJs and programmers. In other words, it's intended to create hype.
Despite his current gruelling schedule, nothing about Kasprzyk's manner as he saunters on-stage suggests that this is anything but the most important performance of his life. A prerecorded, distorted vocal booms from the speakers, asking, "Who is this kid coming out of nowhere?" And moments later, Kasprzyk has executed a complex gymnastic move on the Rivoli's cramped stage that involves running forward and then performing a back flip -- a trick from his judo days. He lands it. The audience is impressed. Later, a reviewer from Chart magazine sums up the show: "If I was a 15-year-old boy, Kazzer would be my favourite band."
Word of mouth has begun. For the moment, mission accomplished.