War Club

Editors’ Notes According to DJ Shub, there was no grand design for his debut solo full-length, War Club—which is a funny thing to say about an epic, guest-stacked 19-track concept album with a narrative through line that connects the contemporary Indigenous struggle in Canada with the Black Lives Matter movement in the US. “I've been working on these tracks since 2018, and I didn't realize it was going to be an album until I realized how many tracks I had,” he tells Apple Music. “That's when the idea came to put a story behind it.” As a founding member of the DJ collective A Tribe Called Red, Shub (aka Dan General) helped pioneer the sound of powwow-step, a high-energy fusion of percussive Indigienous ceremonial chants with festival-ready EDM blitz beats. On War Club, that sound serves as the connective tissue on a sonically expansive, politically charged album that rounds up some of the fiercest young voices in Canadian hip-hop (Snotty Nose Rez Kids, pHoenix Pagliacci), unsung Indigenous icons (veteran Cree MC Hellnback, Apache guitarist Stevie Salas), traditional drum troupes (Morningstar River), and even The Guess Who's Randy Bachman, who proves he can take care of business on the mic in his debut as a rapper. (No, really—that’s him going bar for bar with Pagliacci on the raging anti-gun manifesto “Bullets.”) But as Shub admits, the conceptual framework for War Club was reverse-engineered well after he started crafting the songs. “The war club is a weapon that was used back in the day by native Mohawks—it's a club with a big wooden knuckle on the end of it,” he says. “I wanted to tell a story about a kid who gets this war club passed down to him, and now he has to use it in these times. But instead of using it in a violent way, he uses it through music—music is the weapon. Once these collaborators started putting their lyrics to my songs, that's when the scope of the whole thing came to be.” Here, Shub explains how he recruited War Club’s frontline offensive in this guide to the album’s many guest features.

War Club (feat. Snotty Nose Rez Kids)
“I've been wanting to work with these guys for a long time. I actually gave them three beats off the album and asked them to pick whichever one they like best. And they ended up liking all three! So they came to me and said, 'Let's combine all these tracks into just one, and this will be the opening statement.' Once we did that, they came with their lyrics and, wow, I was super impressed with it.”

The Social (feat. Phoenix Pagliacci)
“The sample that I used to make that track is from a social song, which are sung on reservations every so often. The communities get together, and there's singing and there's drumming—it's sort of like our check-in to see how everybody in the community is doing, and to just have fun. That's why they call it a social. So that was the idea I brought to Phoenix: When you go to the social, you're not caring about anything, you're just caring about your community. Because your community has to heal first in order to make waves into other places. Her lyrics actually made me realize the similarities between the Indigenous people's problems and Black Lives Matter, and how connected they are. She explains this so well in the song. It makes people realize the same struggles are everywhere.”

Killa Soundboy (feat. Boogat)
“I've been a longtime friend of Boogat, and we collaborated on a track when I was with Tribe. He's just an artist that I click with. When he sent his stuff back for this track, obviously I didn't understand it because it was in Spanish, but I loved it anyway. We asked him for the lyrics, and when I read the lyrics translated into English, I was like, ‘Wow! This is simply amazing. It's exactly what War Club is all about.’ He's talking about being united as one, and how you get more things done when you surround yourself with people that are positive.”

Bullets (feat. Phoenix Pagliacci & Randy Bachman)
“I met Randy through Buffy Sainte-Marie—I did a couple shows with her and we're good friends. And at one show, Randy was there and we ended up talking and just stayed in contact. He had this song 'Bullets' written 30 years ago, and he started working with Phoenix on it, and they brought it to me. It's Randy Bachman's rap debut! When we were talking to him, he wasn't sure whether he wanted to release it; at one point, he wanted to release it under a different name. Once Phoenix laid down her lyrics to that song, it kind of legitimized the whole thing.”

Shake Ya Bustle (feat. Hellnback)
“This is definitely more of a feeling-happy, celebration kind of song. Hellnback is a good friend of mine. In Native country, he's one of the top rappers out there. He came up with the hook, and everything just came together. This was actually one of the first songs written for War Club. It was supposed to be the first single. We wanted it to be a summer release—not planning for COVID—and then once the Black Lives Matter movement started happening, we rearranged the way we're releasing the singles.”

Back to the Land (feat. Jewlz)
“Jewlz is my wife. To the masses, this is her rap debut, but we met 16 years ago when I was producing, and she actually was a rapper back then. That's how I met her: She came over to record some beats. So it's funny how it's come full circle. She wrote the rap for this one, and then I jumped on and just scratched in my vocals. It's kind of like ‘our' song. The cool thing about this album is: I'm a family man. I think family is the most important thing. My daughter introduces the album—she's the first person you hear on it. And then my son has a part on 'Intermission.' So I made sure my family is on this album, and that it reflects on how we are.”

Fight for Your People (feat. Hellnback)
“Run The Jewels was my inspiration for this one. This is just one of those songs where Hellnback really makes a point about things that are happening in Canada, for the people who don't realize the struggles that are happening and all the things that we have to do as Indigenous people. I think he really hits hard, and he has some amazing wordplay.”

Pow Wow Dub (feat. Stevie Salas)
“When I first met Steve, I had no clue about who he was or his history or what a legend he is, as far as Indigenous artists go. To call him my friend is a great honor. The way we met is he reached out to me to help him with some viral-video stuff that he was doing with his group that he has in Japan. And then while that was happening, I said, 'Oh, hey, Steve, I got this song that I would love some guitar on,' and he jumped on it. A lot of people don't know this, but he wrote the music for Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and he's got that part on this track where it totally sounds like the shredding from Bill and Ted's! And Randy Bachman's on this track too—he just did some piano riffs and stuff like that.”

Redfoot (feat. Fawn Wood)
“This album is very in-your-face and aggressive at first, because it’s trying to get the point across, but then it's time for healing. So the whole album is like: what we have to do, and then where we want to go. And Fawn's track fits in that little spot toward the end just perfect. I don't have any clue what she's saying—a lot of the time, there aren’t even words. But she's such a fantastic singer.”

Old School Is for Lovers (feat. Morningstar River)
“[Chef] Matty Matheson has been a good friend since we were little kids, and he was doing his TV show for Vice, he had an episode where he goes to the reserve, and he asked me if I could get some music for him. So it was a real quick turnaround, and we didn't even have a name for the track. My manager at the time came up with the title ‘Old School Is for Lovers,’ and I was like, 'Okay, sounds good.' I wanted more melody and more of a movie soundtrack feel. We actually did some recording at the OVO studio in Toronto [with Morningstar River]. It was the first time that traditional drummers ever recorded in that studio, so we were blessed. There were eight of them, and they all fit—usually, traditional drummers don't have any space in the studio, but there was plenty of space there.”