Feature chartattack.com ARABESQUE - Hang Your Heros (Hosted by Rah Digga) Reported by: Cheryl Thompson Hang Your Heroes, with 11 tracks and a few interludes, is a little long for an EP. But it's not a full-length either. And while Toronto rapper Arabesque could have called it a mixtape, he didn't want that label. "A mixtape in Canada is basically 'I don't have my shit together so here's a mixtape'," Arabesque says. "I didn't want to go with the mixtape, but I still liked the idea that Rah Digga was co-signing me and bringing something with her beyond a mixtape." Flipmode Squad's Rah Digga's fingerprints are all over this disc, but its message is solely the brainchild of Arabesque. "Hang Your Heroes is about the industry, which has a tendency to build up their artists to essentially beat the crap out of them," he asserts. Despite its conceptual premise, the album isn't one long bitch-fest. It has tracks that make you think, tracks that make your head nod and tracks, like "Nature's Phone" featuring Melanie Durrant, which make you want to dance. Its infectious house beat and equally matched rhymes are hype, but not exactly archetypal hip-hop. "I love house music and a lot of hip-hop purists would shit on me for that, but for myself… to get on a beat you know where people can dance to it, whereas Toronto artists have a tendency to perform for hardcore fans with the screw face with people standing up against the wall just staring at you," says Arebesque. "I didn't want that feel. I wanted something different in that regard." The biggest hurdle for an artist like Arabesque is figuring out how to market himself to the people. "I'm not a knapsack guy, I'm not the gangsta guy, I'm not the hip-house guy, I'm not the hip-hop purist, you know what I mean? So when it comes down to it, it makes it very difficult. I feel like, as long as it's packing a punch or there's substance behind it, give me the freedom to do what I do."