Snak the Ripper live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 2015
A British Columbia rapper on a month-long Canadian run stopped in Thunder Bay with four touring acts and a local undercard, for fifteen dollars at the door.
Snak the Ripper
With Jaclyn Gee, Caspian, Pyke, Myriad, Chef G, KGB, Preme, Thomas James Music
- Venue
- Crocks
- Doors
- 8:30 p.m.
- Age
- 19+, photo ID required
- Ticket
- $15 at the door
Eight names were printed under Snak the Ripper’s, and four of them were on the road with him. Jaclyn Gee, Caspian, Pyke and Myriad were billed as tour support, and the rest went to local acts: Chef G, KGB, Preme and Thomas James Music. It was a long bill for a fifteen-dollar door.
The night was presented by Loffredo & Associates, with doors at 8:30 p.m. and a 19+ rule with photo ID. Tickets were sold at the door. Doors that early suggest a programme meant to run through several acts before the headliner, though no running order was published.
A tour with a gap in it
The tour was Snak’s spring 2015 Canadian run for the album Just Giver. Its itinerary, published in April, opened in Williams Lake, British Columbia, on 25 April and worked east through Alberta and Saskatchewan to Toronto and Montreal, then came back west to finish near Vancouver.
Thunder Bay was not on that first list. The itinerary jumps from Saskatoon on 3 May to Toronto on 8 May, five days with no dates, and a stop in northwestern Ontario would fit inside them. That is a reading of the map. The date on this poster is a different matter.
Which Monday
The headline reads “Monday May 16th, 2015”. That combination does not exist: 16 May 2015 was a Saturday, and the tour’s list had Snak in Barrie, Ontario, that night. Monday 4 May falls inside the five-day gap. Whichever day it was, this page does not pick one, and the firm fact is the spring 2015 tour.
Monday 16 May did exist a year later, in 2016, but the acts on this bill belong to the 2015 run. Snak’s 2016 tour, for From the Dirt, had different support and put him at Crocks on Wednesday 18 May. So the room saw him in two consecutive springs, on two different bills.
Who he was in 2015
Snak the Ripper is William Scott Fyvie, born in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, in 1982, and based around Vancouver. He came up through graffiti and the Stompdown Killaz crew, and in 2010 he joined 100 MAD, the collective started by Fredro Starr and Sticky Fingaz of the New York group Onyx.
His debut album, The Ripper, dates from 2007, and Just Giver arrived in 2014. He was nominated for a Western Canadian Music Award in the hip-hop category in 2015 and again in 2016. Later in 2015 he released The Sadchild Trilogy, a run of diss tracks aimed at the Canadian rapper Madchild, and the album From the Dirt followed in June 2016.
Company on the bill
Jaclyn Gee is the guest vocalist on two of his videos, “It’s Over” and “Alive”. A review of the Toronto date on 8 May 2015 lists Snak, Caspian and Gee together, so the touring core was a small one. Pyke and Myriad appear on the tour’s own announcement, and the local acts filled the room from the Thunder Bay side.
Snak has shared stages with Tech N9ne, and Crocks hosted Tech N9ne that October. That Special Effects night came five months later, at $30 in advance, and it is a useful measure of how far apart the two rooms of hip-hop were: a fifteen-dollar Snak date in the spring, a $30 Tech N9ne date in the autumn.
Chef G, KGB, Preme and Thomas James Music were billed as local guests, and nothing more is claimed for them here. In a market of roughly 108,000 people, a local undercard is a practical part of the plan: those acts bring their own friends through the door, and a headliner arriving mid-tour gets a warm room out of it.
His own biography counts headlining tours in twenty countries, several dates on the Vans Warped Tour and an appearance at SXSW. A run of Canadian club dates at a fifteen-dollar door sits at the working end of that career, far from the festival stages, and Thunder Bay was one stop on a month-long itinerary.
It also shows how a rapper from a Vancouver suburb built a national audience: town by town, in rooms like this one.
Frequently asked questions
Who played with Snak the Ripper at Crocks?
Tour support was Jaclyn Gee, Caspian, Pyke and Myriad. Four local acts were added: Chef G, KGB, Preme and Thomas James Music. No running order or set lengths were given.
How much did Snak the Ripper tickets cost in Thunder Bay?
Tickets were $15 at the door. The event was 19+ and photo ID was required, and doors opened at 8:30 p.m. No advance price is on record for the night.
Which tour was this show part of?
It belongs to the spring 2015 Canadian run in support of the album Just Giver. The published itinerary started in Williams Lake, British Columbia, on 25 April and ended in Surrey, British Columbia, in late May.
Where is Snak the Ripper from?
Snak the Ripper is the stage name of William Scott Fyvie, a rapper from British Columbia, born in Maple Ridge in 1982. He was a founding member of the Stompdown Killaz crew and later joined 100 MAD.
Did Snak the Ripper play Crocks again in 2016?
The itinerary of his From the Dirt Canadian tour lists Crocks on Wednesday 18 May 2016. Support on that run was Golden, Junk, Fallen Ones and Capitole D, a different group from the 2015 bill.
Who presented the show?
The local promoter Loffredo & Associates presented it at Crocks, 16 Cumberland Street South in Thunder Bay, Ontario, a short walk from the Lake Superior waterfront.