Vancouver's KIDS bring grown-up hip hop to Westfort on Saturday

THUNDER BAY -- Adulthood isn’t all it’s cracked up to be but the KIDS are better than all right.

The Vancouver-based hip hop foursome is touring through the home stretch in Northern Ontario as they prepare to release a record on shattered dreams.

The drive is long and hostile for most touring acts but KIDS emcee Jakub “Jakub Evolved” Strouhal can host a hometown show in Wawa, Thunder Bay played host to the group’s most viewed YouTube video The Future in 2013, and Kenora crowds always come out to see their own Justin “Mizzy” Mejia. 

“I don’t know many other acts that are able to do Northern Ontario the way we do it,” Mizzy said as KIDS made their way up Lake Superior’s north shore for a Thunder Bay show on Saturday night.

Since Mizzy left Kenora for the West Coast in 2011 and landed with KIDS, he’s produced at least an record ever year as they’ve shared the stage and the studio with some of the scene’s most ambitious names.

The working title for the group’s latest recordings is Lost Children of Faust, a concept album to be released this summer about young dreams of taking the world by the horns that become the shining light in the dark reality of growing up.

“These days, I’m more writing about the internal battles, personal growth as well as the real adult struggles of the real world as opposed to being so young you think you can get away with doing anything. Nowadays, it’s more calculated moves. It’s very introspective,” Mizzy said.

“In high school, you’re in this little pond and you go to the bigger pond and that what it has been in Vancouver now. We’ve done quite a bit out here and that’s turned into a smaller pond. We’re looking for a bigger place to showcase what we’re doing.”

That bigger place is a combination of the Internet and the road. KIDS’ reams of recordings and live shows feed each other, building bigger audiences on tour every time and fueling the artistic fire to give those crowds a reason to return. That grind has helped Mizzy’s rhyme style find a pocket of soulful, melodic pitches with hints of hooks within his verses that change up the punches.

They've all has been finding ways to incorporate the craft into the work they need to do to stay alive to keep hip hop at the core of life.

“As we get older, we feel as though we’re doing well and we feel like we could be doing better. We’re always seeing improvements every time we go out on the road. It’s just this whole thing about how we can survive, keep a roof over our heads and keep food on the table,” he said.

“I know I’ll always work in this industry, whether I’m rapping or not but I don’t foresee that ending. It would take some life-altering things. I don’t ever see that changing.”

KIDS will perform at The Westfort on Saturday night with Thunder Bay’s Preme and Sault Ste. Marie’s DJ Seith.