WINNIPEG SUN
Mood Ruff - Hip-hoppers Mood Ruff buck wild odds by making it to their 10th anniversary
by Rob Williams @ Winnipeg Sun
May 25, 2002

Ten years ago there was no place for hip-hop artists to perform in Winnipeg. So local duo Mood Ruff took their act to rock clubs, developing a fan base more accustomed to watching guys with guitars than two MCs with mics. "At that time we weren't upset the hip-hoppers weren't listening or coming around, we didn't even expect them to, because there was a tradition of people checking out local bands, but the hip-hop community was never like that," says Garfield Williams, aka Odario. Slowly but surely Williams and his partner Spitz (Eli Epp), who met at Kelvin High School, found fans by getting up and performing wherever there was a stage -- dance bars, parties and anyplace a deejay was spinning records. Since then Mood Ruff has become one of Winnipeg's best known hip-hop acts. They have released four albums, run their own label, made five videos and organize a successful annual music festival, Peg City Holla, which attracted more than 1,500 fans last year. They also became a trio when they added Williams' brother Kevin to the group a few years ago. He's a deejay and breakdancer who operates under the alias ICQRI.

Williams credits the group's longevity to the fact they never looked at Mood Ruff as a business, "but as a family who happen to make music together." Even the formation of their label, Slo Coach Recordings, wasn't planned. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, when Williams and Epp, both 27, told creators of a TV soundtrack that they had their own label. "The next day I went to the business bureau and had it finalized and made sure no one else had it," he laughs. Slo Coach has put out the last two Mood Ruff CDs and is the home of their new, seven-song Antarctica (Cold Cold World) EP, which is being released at their 10th-anniversary party this weekend. They plan to release a CD by local rap group Shadez in the fall and will expand the label's roster next year with more local artists.

"I'd like to create some kind of sound, an aura, so when you say the name, just like a lot of other sub-labels, you know what you're getting," says Williams, who just quit his job to work on the band and the label full time. "You need the time and effort to keep each city interested. You can't survive in Winnipeg alone." Making people in larger centres such as Toronto and Vancouver pay attention to a duo from Winnipeg -- and convincing fans that good hip-hop doesn't have to come from south of the border -- has been an uphill battle, he says. "And not only that, you have to be honest with your music, you can't talk about coming from some rough background and (having) bullet wounds when you really don't," he says. "These people can read right through you. They know when you're telling the truth and when you're not. "We've always been honest with who we are. You listen to our music or you see our videos and you know these guys, they're from Winnipeg and they're not coming up with any (crap) basically. Those are the keys to survive in a prairie town." May 25, 9:30 p.m., Avenue Cabaret.