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Sketch wants to be where audiences appreciate rhyming in triplets

In 2008, Fairfield County Weekly readers voted Sketch Tha Cataclysm their favorite hip-hop act in the area. A handful of months later, he felt it was time to see where else he could make an impact.

"My idea," he explains, "was to come out to another area of the country and try to get something started the way I was starting to build up things in Connecticut and regularly return to Connecticut, not abandon it, but be really supportive of my state. I love the people there."

The plan is working as Sketch, who moved to Minneapolis on June 1, will be making his return for shows on Aug. 21 at Cousin Larry's in Danbury and Aug. 22, at the Acoustic Café in Bridgeport. The latter he'll headline.

So, of all the places to move, why Minnesota? For Sketch, it was a unique artistic community he had heard about. It seemed like the perfect place to build. Dessa, of the Minneapolis hip-hop crew Doomtree, explains, "Musicians here collaborate a lot. We play mixed bills and drink beer with people who make music that sounds different than our own. Compared to other cities, we also might be more likely to celebrate the successes of our colleagues. We don't necessarily perceive them as threatening."

Sketch felt the community vibe as soon as he arrived, noting, "There's a quality to the musicians here to where they're personable. They're people you can go up to and have a conversation with."

None of this is to say Sketch doesn't still have an appreciation for his home state. "One of the things that is incredible about Connecticut is the amount of musicianship that there is," he's quick to say. "There are incredible musicians of all different genres and increasing levels of talent."

The audience for those artists, however, isn't the biggest, and Sketch wanted to live in a place where the music fans are just as rabid as he is. Receptive audiences are something Minnesota has in abundance, and Sketch received his first taste of this his very first day there while attending an event at McNally Smith College of Music. The reaction to Doomtree impressed him. "It was like the fuckin' Backstreet Boys had just come out. There were girls like, 'Oh my God, Mike Mictlan, I want your body!' And guys yelling 'Dessa, marry me!' ... There's a song by Dessa called 'Mineshaft,' She has a part in it where her rhymes are chopped up in triplets for a brief moment. There was thunderous applause when she did that. I was like, 'This is crazy. This is why I moved over here. It's an appreciation for things like rhyming in triplets."

Sketch hopes to generate a similar reaction from his hometown crowd for his upcoming performances, saying, "I want people to have something to talk about, so they'll stick around and they'll be back again when I pop up in either October or November."

He'd also like for people to pick up one of the many projects he's been working on. Before Sketch left for Minnesota, he produced The Protégé's Untitled Is Hard Enough EP, and he's just finishing up another album with one of The Protégé's partners from the group Phenetiks, deto-22, titled Sharing Is Caring. Sketch also recently released an EP with DJ Halo titled The Shoeless Flow Jackson. His hope is to put together enough money from this tour to record his next EP, titled Indie Rappers Do It For Gas Money.

Sketch says gas money will likely be one of his main concerns for the next few years. "I'll probably move again," he says very matter-of-factly, "if not right back to the tri-state then somewhere else in the country." He notes that Europe is also on his radar. "I gotta keep it moving and start building something up," he says of his career plans. "I think now is always the time."

Read Adam's blog at www.AdamsWorldBlog.com