It's the July long weekend and Lance Sampson is working. A union plumber by trade and still a few weeks away from releasing his latest album as Aquakultre, he technically has the time off, but when Exclaim! reaches him over the phone at his home in Dartmouth, NS, he's writing outside.
After this call, his schedule becomes more of a blank slate: muffins are in the oven, he and the family might make some pizzas, a game of basketball might happen, and maybe he'll get into some drinks.
"We're just chillin', man."
As Sampson sets the scene, he might as well be sharing some of the laid-back atmosphere that permeates Aquakultre's upcoming album, Don't Trip (out July 22 via Forward Music Group and Black Buffalo Records). Originally conceived as a five-song EP about the honeymoon phase of his relationship with his partner Julia, the inspiration didn't stop when he submitted the tracks to be mixed. The resulting full-length is more like the sonic equivalent of stepping out of the bedroom ready to mingle and make introductions at a house party, its survey of R&B styles and eras nodding to the playlists he heard at those he went to growing up in Uniacke Square, a public housing residential area in north-central Halifax.
"Everybody was always getting together on the weekend just jamming. And it would always be the old-school R&B that we were jamming to," Sampson reflects. "I wanted to bring it back to those times, where everybody was just in the house while dance is happening, the liquor's gettin' splashed…"
Don't Trip is overflowing with the help of more than 20 guests and features — a network Sampson mustered on cold calls and community contributions, crediting confidence he acquired working with seasoned improvisers Nick Dourado, Nathan Doucet and Jeremy Costello on Aquakultre's Polaris-nominated 2020 album Legacy.
"If I don't feel comfortable around people, or if I don't feel able to express myself, you're probably not gonna get what I have that's boiling up inside of me, musically," Sampson explains. Although he lacks a grounding in improvised music, he says the band approached the album with a looseness that made the whole experience feel natural. "Our relationship made it that much easier for me to reach out to people outside of the band atmosphere."
Following Legacy's success, Sampson teamed up later that year with Haligonian producer DJ Uncle Fester and a handful of mostly local guests to release the 10-song Bleeding Gums Murphy. Now, Don't Trip gathers voices from around the world, including Johannesburg singer Amarafleur, New Jersey-bred rapper Ransom, Toronto's Tafari Anthony and Halifax's Zamani Miller.
More than the glue that holds the album together, relationships are the generative elements that made Don't Trip possible. The title track features a synthesizer Rich Aucoin donated to Centre Line Studios, a non-profit recording studio in Uniacke Square that Sampson helped North End city councillor Lindell Smith fundraise for; Ransom caught the attention of Sampson and local hip-hop heads in 2014 when he featured on a track from Halifax MC Quake Matthews; Sampson frequented "It's All Good" producer Tremayne "Trobiz" Howe's Gottingen Street barber shop when he was growing up; "Africvillean Funk" reaches back to Sampson's family roots in Africville — the since-razed community founded by Black Nova Scotians (many of them formerly enslaved) on the south shore of Bedford Basin on the outskirts of Halifax.
Imagining a house party in Africville as it might occur in present day, "Africvillean Funk" is produced by Howe. Sampson called him back up after watching the producer perform an earlier version of the instrumental on Instagram Live. In the video, Howe played an interpolation of the chords from the DJ Premier flip of Billy Garner's "I Got Some" that appears on Gang Starr's "B.Y.S.," and Sampson was impressed.
"Trobiz basically learned all those chords and was just like, 'Okay, I'm gonna play with this groove, but then I'm just gonna start adding stuff onto it, make it my own,'" Sampson recounts. "I was like, this is hip-hop at its core, send me that over."
Released in 1971, "I Got Some" set Black love in the wake of the civil rights movement to the sound of soul and funk music; when Premier put it on "B.Y.S.," it became the nectar of golden age hip-hop braggadocio, extracted in frenzied response to the surge of industry resources that entered the New York rap scene in the '90s after decades of divestment and white flight to the suburbs left Black Americans to build something from nothing. Following in their tradition, when Sampson made the connection that he and Howe were both descendants of Africville, he envisioned a new future for the track that also spoke to the material situation of Black culture.
"'We gotta make this,'" Sampson recalls telling Howe. "'We gotta shed light also, pay respects to where we're coming from on this one, right?'"
The Aquakultre joint doesn't merely borrow its source material — it sets the individual satisfaction expressed in the original and the boasting of the Gang Starr application to the beat of a communal get-down, its piano plunkier and more ecstatic, wah guitars lending a psychedelic looseness, an organ sounding a call for celebration. Twice removed, Garner's hook becomes the sound of Haligonian neo-funk — of Black joy and prosperity.
Of course, Africville was effectively destroyed by years of environmental racism and violent neglect, the City of Halifax refusing its residents access to the same amenities and services other taxpaying Haligonians could take for granted. (Activist Eddie Carvery, brother to Sampson's grandfather Victor, still defies orders attempting to force him from his birthplace in the area for more than 50 years.) But Sampson reaches further back to a time when Africville was a destination, reconstructing a world passed down through memories to forward a new vision.
"The one thing we've gotta remember about Africville is, man, every serious American, Canadian, Black musician that would come through to Nova Scotia, that's where they were going out to: Africville, man. Duke Ellington was married to a woman from Africville — like, c'mon, man. That was the Mecca. When they came through Nova Scotia, that was where they were going. That's where they were spending all their money."
Paying respects to the past while honouring the community around him in the process, for Sampson, it's all a matter of paying it forward.
"If it wasn't for the community around me, I don't think I'd really be here. I wouldn't be able to create music the way I do," Sampson says. "I'm trying to meet people at the ground level, and I'm not gonna be able to do that if I'm not keeping it real with myself.
"I just try to keep it one thousand, if you will."
After this call, his schedule becomes more of a blank slate: muffins are in the oven, he and the family might make some pizzas, a game of basketball might happen, and maybe he'll get into some drinks.
"We're just chillin', man."
As Sampson sets the scene, he might as well be sharing some of the laid-back atmosphere that permeates Aquakultre's upcoming album, Don't Trip (out July 22 via Forward Music Group and Black Buffalo Records). Originally conceived as a five-song EP about the honeymoon phase of his relationship with his partner Julia, the inspiration didn't stop when he submitted the tracks to be mixed. The resulting full-length is more like the sonic equivalent of stepping out of the bedroom ready to mingle and make introductions at a house party, its survey of R&B styles and eras nodding to the playlists he heard at those he went to growing up in Uniacke Square, a public housing residential area in north-central Halifax.
"Everybody was always getting together on the weekend just jamming. And it would always be the old-school R&B that we were jamming to," Sampson reflects. "I wanted to bring it back to those times, where everybody was just in the house while dance is happening, the liquor's gettin' splashed…"
Don't Trip is overflowing with the help of more than 20 guests and features — a network Sampson mustered on cold calls and community contributions, crediting confidence he acquired working with seasoned improvisers Nick Dourado, Nathan Doucet and Jeremy Costello on Aquakultre's Polaris-nominated 2020 album Legacy.
"If I don't feel comfortable around people, or if I don't feel able to express myself, you're probably not gonna get what I have that's boiling up inside of me, musically," Sampson explains. Although he lacks a grounding in improvised music, he says the band approached the album with a looseness that made the whole experience feel natural. "Our relationship made it that much easier for me to reach out to people outside of the band atmosphere."
Following Legacy's success, Sampson teamed up later that year with Haligonian producer DJ Uncle Fester and a handful of mostly local guests to release the 10-song Bleeding Gums Murphy. Now, Don't Trip gathers voices from around the world, including Johannesburg singer Amarafleur, New Jersey-bred rapper Ransom, Toronto's Tafari Anthony and Halifax's Zamani Miller.
More than the glue that holds the album together, relationships are the generative elements that made Don't Trip possible. The title track features a synthesizer Rich Aucoin donated to Centre Line Studios, a non-profit recording studio in Uniacke Square that Sampson helped North End city councillor Lindell Smith fundraise for; Ransom caught the attention of Sampson and local hip-hop heads in 2014 when he featured on a track from Halifax MC Quake Matthews; Sampson frequented "It's All Good" producer Tremayne "Trobiz" Howe's Gottingen Street barber shop when he was growing up; "Africvillean Funk" reaches back to Sampson's family roots in Africville — the since-razed community founded by Black Nova Scotians (many of them formerly enslaved) on the south shore of Bedford Basin on the outskirts of Halifax.
Imagining a house party in Africville as it might occur in present day, "Africvillean Funk" is produced by Howe. Sampson called him back up after watching the producer perform an earlier version of the instrumental on Instagram Live. In the video, Howe played an interpolation of the chords from the DJ Premier flip of Billy Garner's "I Got Some" that appears on Gang Starr's "B.Y.S.," and Sampson was impressed.
"Trobiz basically learned all those chords and was just like, 'Okay, I'm gonna play with this groove, but then I'm just gonna start adding stuff onto it, make it my own,'" Sampson recounts. "I was like, this is hip-hop at its core, send me that over."
Released in 1971, "I Got Some" set Black love in the wake of the civil rights movement to the sound of soul and funk music; when Premier put it on "B.Y.S.," it became the nectar of golden age hip-hop braggadocio, extracted in frenzied response to the surge of industry resources that entered the New York rap scene in the '90s after decades of divestment and white flight to the suburbs left Black Americans to build something from nothing. Following in their tradition, when Sampson made the connection that he and Howe were both descendants of Africville, he envisioned a new future for the track that also spoke to the material situation of Black culture.
"'We gotta make this,'" Sampson recalls telling Howe. "'We gotta shed light also, pay respects to where we're coming from on this one, right?'"
The Aquakultre joint doesn't merely borrow its source material — it sets the individual satisfaction expressed in the original and the boasting of the Gang Starr application to the beat of a communal get-down, its piano plunkier and more ecstatic, wah guitars lending a psychedelic looseness, an organ sounding a call for celebration. Twice removed, Garner's hook becomes the sound of Haligonian neo-funk — of Black joy and prosperity.
Of course, Africville was effectively destroyed by years of environmental racism and violent neglect, the City of Halifax refusing its residents access to the same amenities and services other taxpaying Haligonians could take for granted. (Activist Eddie Carvery, brother to Sampson's grandfather Victor, still defies orders attempting to force him from his birthplace in the area for more than 50 years.) But Sampson reaches further back to a time when Africville was a destination, reconstructing a world passed down through memories to forward a new vision.
"The one thing we've gotta remember about Africville is, man, every serious American, Canadian, Black musician that would come through to Nova Scotia, that's where they were going out to: Africville, man. Duke Ellington was married to a woman from Africville — like, c'mon, man. That was the Mecca. When they came through Nova Scotia, that was where they were going. That's where they were spending all their money."
Paying respects to the past while honouring the community around him in the process, for Sampson, it's all a matter of paying it forward.
"If it wasn't for the community around me, I don't think I'd really be here. I wouldn't be able to create music the way I do," Sampson says. "I'm trying to meet people at the ground level, and I'm not gonna be able to do that if I'm not keeping it real with myself.
"I just try to keep it one thousand, if you will."