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Represent! | Touch and Nato are bringing their block-rocking beats to Edmonton for Hip Hop in the Park.

Hip Hop in the park
w/ Touch and Nato, Politic Live, Dragon Fli Empire, and others. May 24 (noon-8pm). Louise McKinney Riverfront Park. All ages. Free.

All Canadian musicians strive to break into the finicky American market. Sometimes that takes a while. 

Born Randy Mark, local rapper Touch recorded his first song in 1988, and he’s been a staple of Edmonton’s hip-hop scene ever since. And now he can finally boast a number-one hit in the United States: in late March, the Touch and Nato (collectively known as The Representatives) track “Somethin’ Real,” from their 2007 album Intelligent Design, topped the esteemed Rap Attack college radio charts. 

The track, which features Brooklyn underground icon rapper Wordsworth, was recorded when Wordsworth and mentor Masta Ace were here in town for a show. And rapping in front of a hip-hop legend like Ace—someone Touch grew up idolizing—was a stomach-in-throat experience. “I wasn’t expecting [Masta Ace] to come along,” Touch says. “He just showed up and we were like, ‘Oh! Yeah, okay!’ I think that was the first time I’ve ever been nervous recording a verse in my life.” 

And as if recording under that sort of pressure weren’t enough, when Wordsworth went offbeat when recording his verse, neither Touch nor Nato could find the courage to tell him. “We waited for Ace to step in,” Touch explains. “You could really tell that Words looked up to Ace. I look up to Ace, and I look up to Words too—he’s one of my favourite MCs.”

When Touch and Nato haven’t been touring in support of Intelligent Design, they’ve kept busy playing shows and have begun planning their next album. Nato has recently done some outside work, producing two songs that appear on Afterparty Babies, the latest from friend and fellow Edmonton artist Rollie Pemberton, known to the masses as Cadence Weapon.

“Well, one and a half,” Nato clarifies, referencing the Afterparty Babies opener “Do I Miss My Friends?” “I don’t know exactly what I did on that one, but I was there, and [Weapon] told me he was going to give me co-production credit.”

But “Your Hair’s Not Clothes!,” is definitely his. “I showed the track to him and he started dancing around like Rollie does, and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s the one.’ I finished it off and then he wrote to it. I was crossing my fingers that it would actually make the album, because I did one for the previous album [2005’s Breaking Kayfabe] that got cut—which no one will ever hear.”

Not even if Nato or Weapon leak the track on the internet? “I can’t,” laughs Nato. “We already made a pact that we won’t.”

Touch and Nato will be performing this Saturday at Hip-Hop in the Park-, a free eight-hour music festival organized by Don Welsh celebrating hip-hop culture. The afternoon will feature performances by more than 50 hip-hop artists from both Edmonton and Calgary. The all-ages outdoor event harks back to the New York neighbourhood block parties of the late ’80s.

“That’s what we need,” Touch enthuses. “Most of the stuff in the summer is just a bunch of people that know each other getting together, nothing really organized. It’s summer—let’s get it going!”