What started out as a festival that stood in the shadows of big-ticket blowouts in Squamish and Pemberton has grown into one of the province’s marquee musical events. This weekend—July 4 and 5 at Surrey’s Holland Park—FVDED in the Park celebrates its fifth anniversary, with crowds projected to hit the 45,000 mark. Heavyweight headliners on the hip-hop and EDM bill include Khalid, Zedd, Torey Lanez, and French Montana, with the undercard long and stylistically varied. To get you primed, we dug deep on some of the showcases artists, unearthing intel on everything from pet monkeys to hockey-playing pasts to ice-cream empires. For more info on FVDED, go here.
ZEDD Maybe being trained as a classical musician had something to do with it, but the man born Anton Zaslavski didn’t spend his youth attending shows where he dreamed of being the next Carl Cox, Armin van Buuren, or Paul van Dyk. In 2012, back when his career was getting off the ground, Zedd told MySpace (that’s right—MySpace was evidently still a thing at that time) that he historically had little interest in watching DJs perform live. “I’ve never been to any real DJ shows, you know,” he said in the below MySpace video interview. “I’ve been to clubs in Germany, but clubs never really were there because of a DJ.” He also revealed in the clip that he prefers to compose his music on piano and other decidedly old-fashioned instruments, and that when he finally began performing live, that he learned how to work an audience from touring with—and watching—Skrillex onstage. What does Zedd love almost as much as Skrillex, whom he credits with helping launch his career? That would be bacon. Asked by Magnetic Magazine in 2012 if he travels with an entourage, he replied “Yes. Bacon! Every morning for breakfast! I love bacon and bacon loves me!”.
RL GRIME You probably wouldn’t expect a DJ known for his punishingly aggressive, rumbling bass to have so much connection to a 75-year-old children’s author who never appears wearing anything other than a black button-up shirt. But not only is RL Grime’s name a direct homage to Goosebumps author R. L. Stine, the two also keep in direct contact. Stine, who has been referred to as the Stephen King of children’s literature, answered a Reddit Ask Me Anything question wondering if he was aware of Grime’s existence by simply writing “R.L. Grime and I keep in touch. I do a voice-over every year for his Halloween mix tape.” (We’ll let the splitting of “mixtape” into two separate words slide for a legend who has been spooking kids for decades.) Stine actually has appeared on all seven of Grime’s extended yearly Halloween mixes that he releases on SoundCloud, commemorating the most terrifying time of year with some truly spine-tingling electronic mixes. “I hope you’re enjoying your journey to the other side! Listeners beware, you choose the scare!” Stine said in a surprisingly cheerful voice 27 minutes into last year’s edition. If you need more proof that the worlds of hardcore EDM and children’s literature should interact more often, just check out this adorable interaction the two had on Twitter back in 2014. We fully support this ongoing friendship.
TORY LANEZ Location is everything in real estate, and it’s pretty damn important in retail, as well. You don’t have to tell that to Ontario singer-rapper Torey Lanez, who last month opened an ice-cream shop. Rather than starting the business up in his home town of Brampton—which is a frozen hellscape 10 months of the year—the savvy Lanez opened Notorious Creamery in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It’s basically warm there 24/7/365, which should ensure that frozen confections will sell as consistently as wool scarves and space heaters do in Brampton. Lanez and his business partner Bobby Velez evidently know their ice cream, too; Notorious Creamery’s Google reviews have already garnered it a perfect 5.0 rating.
HORSEPOWAR Not to be outdone by ice-cream-shop proprietor Torey Lanez, Richmond-raised and currently Los Angeles-based rapper Horsepowar (born Jasleen Powar) earned her own culinary bona fides as the host of a video series called Curry Shop. Produced by First We Feast—the online food-culture magazine and YouTube channel most famous for detonating celebrities’ taste buds in its Hot Ones videos—Curry Shop saw Powar exploring the role of curry in various cuisines, from Korean to Jamaican. In Curry Shop’s six episodes, Powar hobnobbed with the likes of Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi, dancehall superstar Sean Paul, and singer Rina Sawayama. Spicy!
FRENCH MONTANA Some people tend to like animals better than their fellow human beings, the reasons for that being perfectly understandable. No dog has ever shot another dog in the head. French Montana, meanwhile, famously has a bullet-hole scar on his head as a reminder that his life wasn’t always as charmed as it is today. The Casablancas-born-and-raised rapper is noted for being a friend to creatures of the decidedly exotic variety, In April of 2013 he posted a Facebook photo of himself with a couple of small big-game cats with the caption “Got so high last night bought 2 baby tigers”. While that was Montana having fun (he was evidently only renting said animals), he got serious about pet ownership later that year when rapper Mally Mall gave him a Capuchin monkey for his birthday. Said monkey—usually shot wearing undignified diapers, which some poor long-suffering soul has to clean—was given the name Julius Ceasor upon his arrival, that having something to do with a lost night in Vegas straight out of the Hangover 2. Not done with the monkey, Montana added a Tibetan Mountain dog named Champ to the family earlier this year. One of his first Instagram posts of his four-legged friend led to the following comment: “This must be a rich person dog never seen this kind before.” Bingo on that front. The former Mr. Khloe Kardashian currently lives in California’s gated and exclusive Calabasas community, where he owns a 7.800 square-foot mansion bought off of Selena Gomez.
GLACK 6lack is getting a little fed up with people calling him “six-lack.” In the same vein as indie bands like CHVRCHES, Alvvays and HAERTS adopting simple, one-word monikers and altering the spelling for search engine optimization purposes, the R&B crooner’s name is actually just pronounced “black,” which is decidedly unmemorable. The 6 is meant to look like a lowercase “b,” although the number is so important to him after growing up in East Atlanta’s Zone 6 projects that he named his daughter Syx. All the same, you can’t really tell your friend “I’m listening to the new 6lack song,” can you? It’s somewhat telling that one of the top Google searches for his name is “how to say 6lack to Alexa.” 6lack has at least had a bit of a sense of humour about it recently, changing his Twitter bio to simply read “pronounced black,” selling shirts outlining the correct pronunciation and addressing the issue during his feature on Jessie Reyez’s “Imported.” “Sometimes people call me six-lack/I don’t mind because they stubborn/and my bank account is looking mighty fine,” he sings. We can’t help but think that none of these problems would have arisen if he just went with his actual, incredibly cool given moniker of: Ricardo Valdez Valentine. Take any two out of those three names and you have the stage name that someone who delivers as many sensual slow-burns as 6lack deserves.
A BOOGIE WITH DA HOODIE It may be hard to believe now that he’s firmly established as a rising star in hip-hop—appearing on the cover of XXL magazine as one of 2017’s “Freshman Class”, collaborating with the likes of Juice WRLD and Offset—but there was a time when A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie was too bashful to share his rhymes with anyone. Growing up in the Bronx, the rapper born Artist Dubose wrote his lyrics down in a notebook that he carried everywhere he went. But, as he told Rolling Stone, “I was always kind of shy. When it come to rapping, I ain’t really want to rap around my friends. I didn’t want to rap around my mom. I didn’t even want my mom to hear me curse.” Needless to say, he got over it.
KAYZO For the longest time the Stanley Cup, rather than a Main Stage slot at Coachella, was the ultimate dream for KAYZO, better known to his former coaches as Hayden Capuozzo. Although born in the awesomely named town of Sugar Land, Texas, the future producer—who first popped up on EDM radars with the genre-bending mindfuck mix “Escape from Wonderland”—grew up playing hockey. We’re not talking about house-league in a country known more known for baseball, football, and basketball, but instead competing at a level that suggested he might have had a shot at pro, either in North America or Europe. Among the B.C. teams that he stepped on the ice for during his junior career were the Fernie Ghostriders and Vancouver Island–based Kerry Park Islanders. It was during his time between the pipes that he learned to love—as many athletes do—the power of music. “Music was my outlet when bad games happened, and also my drive when working for what at that time was my goal, to be a professional hockey player,” he told Insomniac. “Electronic music was always in my ears. From the locker room, plane rides, bus rides, you name it. I always had headphones on. Now being a creator of what was once my biggest outlet. It’s sort of like, “Okay it’s my time to tell stories, and create that energy that once fuelled me as an athlete.” I hope there are some hockey players blasting my music in their headphones pre game right now.”
LIL YACHTY The red-haired SoundCloud savant has proudly told multiple interview outlets that not only is he a huge fan of pizza, but that he’s eaten the doughy delicacy every day since the second grade. When asked about his favourite Asian cuisine on the YouTube channel for Asian record label 88rising, Yachty quickly shook his head and said “No, I only eat pizza. I eat pizza every day for my whole life. It’s just my life now.” The rest of his diet seems to be just as confusing from a basic nutrition standpoint. “I eat a couple other things, like I eat waffles and cereal,” he told No Jumper in 2017, shunning fruits and vegetables and mentioning that he’s never tried hot sauce—despite growing up in Atlanta—during his appearance on Complex’s YouTube show Hot Ones. Yachty is 21 years old, but it seems like he’s been blessed with a metabolism from the heavens, and it’s still working overtime. After getting fed up with Instagram comments making fun of his weight last May, he posted a shirtless selfie where he was honestly looking pretty ripped. “Y’all buggin who fat,” he wrote. “I like big shirts and I got a chunky face.” In the meantime, you can visit one of Yachty’s pizza pop-up shops in New York or L.A. where he sells $100 “Yachty’s Pizzeria” bomber jackets. Of course, they come in pizza boxes.