Beyond the Lyrics 604 is a hip-hop focused live podcast shot in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. The show is for everybody who enjoys hip-hop, urban culture in general especially in Canada. "Inspire. Inform. Empower." is the mantra and the focus is building upon an already thriving #VanCity urban music culture. so that artists, related business owners and specifically music/performance artists from all skill levels in Vancouver are able to chop it up in positive, solution-based environment & use the tools discussed/offered to thrive independently.
Site
RSS
Apple
Data updated on 01/09/2026
Recent rankings
Latest chart positions across Apple Podcasts and Spotify rankings.
Shared links between episodes and podcasts
Links found in episode descriptions and other podcasts that share them.
Discover shows related to Beyond the Lyrics 604, based on actual content similarities. Explore podcasts with similar topics, themes, and formats, backed by real data.
Junk on Going Fully Independent - Beyond the Lyrics 2.0 Kick off Episode!
Season 3 · Episode 15
Monday, August 31, 2026 • Duration 01:06:53
The first episode from the new room, and an in-depth interview with Vancouver Rap Legend Junk.The name is an acronym — Just Understand Nobody Knows — and it comes from the Junkie Juggler, a jester. That turns into the frame for the whole conversation: the jester was the only one in the court allowed to tell the king the truth. Junk has been doing a version of that for twenty years.The history is remarkable. Hitchhiking across the lake as a young teenager to host hip hop nights in Nelson, getting into clubs underage on a rule that let you stay if you stayed on the stage. First MC from Vancouver to battle at King of the Dot in Toronto. Third at the End of the Weak world finals in Paris. Quitting construction. Then COVID took 70 booked shows in 24 hours, and he had to face a career with no live music in it at all.What he built instead is the useful part. Going fully independent, learning every job before hiring any of it out, vinyl and CDs as a way of taking power back from streaming, and Household — an East Van crew that turned into a real business doing clothing, show production and festivals. Five years sober. And a genuinely blunt closing exchange about what he owes the city and what it owes him.Recorded at The Chop Shop, Vancouver BC.#vancity #hiphop #rap #independentmusic
0:00 Beyond the Lyrics 2.0: new set
1:37 Bastard Barbecue with Flipout
2:45 Giving flowers to the culture
3:59 Why 'Junk': the acronym
7:01 The jester tells the king the truth
8:24 King of the Dot: first from Vancouver
9:17 End of the Weak finals in Paris
11:51 Hitchhiking across the lake to Nelson
14:53 Keeping the hunger; show production
17:00 I Am No One to Stupid and Ugly
19:47 No industry here: learning DIY
22:24 Going independent; COVID kills 70 shows
24:23 Lion Eats Goats with Young Stitch
25:40 A career without live shows
26:46 Five years sober
28:18 Soul vs multisyllabic rhyme lists
31:21 Gallery of Saints; Horrible Pleasures
33:13 Taking the power back from streaming
34:55 Rating the legends, 1 to 10
38:43 Household: East Van crew to family
41:16 The Cartems donut shop cyphers
46:48 Household as a real business
48:37 Building platforms for other MCs
51:51 Learn every job before you hire out
54:10 The hardest hat: marketing
57:43 What Vancouver hip hop needs next
59:53 What he owes the scene
1:04:49 Shout-outs, releases and tour dates
Ascension: Mike Wiald vs Danny Myers, plus LOCA on Getting Sober
Season 3 · Episode 14
Friday, July 24, 2026 • Duration 01:51:42
The fullest room the show has had — seven voices, and it moves through three distinct halves.
First the card. Trewth on how the Neighborhood Kids video blew up and turned into a tour, then Red Shirt Mike arrives to break down Set the Bar's Ascension event: why the battlers aren't trash talking this time, the undercard, the rookie class, and what the league needs to get from 80 people in a room to 200. Mike Wiald talks facing Danny Myers in his first Canadian battle — a year off, the Ellipsis battle behind him, and what it means to be the face of a league. His message for Danny is twenty seconds and worth the whole segment.
Then LOCA returns, and the episode changes register completely. Raising a teenager, caregiving, 'Low Again' and the song she wrote coming down. Sobriety, step work, writing down resentments. Learning to sing after a mother who told her she couldn't. It is the most open anyone has been on this show.
Tiago Vasquez closes it — the DJ Slink single, the EP with Evan Smith, playing bass, starting his own business, sobriety and mindset, parenting teenagers, and wanting to make a Spanish and dancehall record.
Recorded at B-Side Radio, Vancouver BC.
0:00 Intro: breaking into the studio
1:50 New album, and an F on promo
2:43 An entrepreneur course; Skillmatic
4:47 Bib Gang merch and Ascension
5:33 Trewth on the Fortune cypher
6:51 How Neighborhood Kid blew up
9:08 Tickets and a four-hour cypher
12:00 Red Shirt Mike arrives
13:11 Why battlers aren't trash talking
Kavawon & Tobin: Battle Rap, Cameras, and Using AI Without Wrecking It
Season 3 · Episode 13
Sunday, July 19, 2026 • Duration 01:13:01
The guests cancelled, so Kavawon starts solo and turns it into the most personal opening the show has done — how he preps, the ten-year gap in the Chasing Destiny trilogy, starting young, the vices, and the album versions that got shelved. The FOMO that cost him a record.
Tobin joins at 15:05: Set the Bar battler, cameraman, and the person who shoots and edits the whole event. Longboard videos to film school to freelance, discovering battle rap at 15, and filling in for a dropout. The stretch on Dizaster vs Canibus — and what that collapse cost Canibus — is the best thing in the episode; Kavawon's read on it is that the man was never the same again.
From there it is craft. How acting training helps performance and memory, why non-fans need the beat, what shooting a full battle event actually involves, and how every shot keeps getting shorter. Then a genuinely level-headed conversation about using AI as a tool without wrecking your brand — testing beats with Suno, hearing another voice on your own work — that avoids both the hype and the panic.
Recorded at B-Side Radio, Vancouver BC.
0:00 Technical difficulties and solo start
2:43 How Kavawon preps the show
4:51 Chasing Destiny: a 10-year gap
5:56 Starting young; shelved albums
9:30 The Destiny series and 'No Cap'
13:25 K-Ski's 'From Barcelona With Love'
15:05 Tobin joins: battler and cameraman
16:53 Longboard videos to freelance film
18:45 Discovering battle rap at 15
20:01 Formative battles: Dizaster, Rone
22:25 How acting training helps battling
Mike Wiald & Red Shirt Mike: Writing, Burnout, and the Draft
Season 3 · Episode 12
Tuesday, June 30, 2026 • Duration 01:56:15
Three conversations in one, and the first is the one people will send to each other.
Kavawon opens on creative burnout — the funk after a big push, peaks and valleys, giving yourself grace, and the argument that anxiety is trapped energy that needs somewhere to go. Procrastination, self-worth, notification overload, and 'Eat the Frog'. K-Ski turns up with a broken hand from a slip outside the Falafel Spot and does the show anyway.
Mike Wiald takes the middle. 'I Feel Nothing' — two sides of addiction — plus how writing a battle round differs from writing a song, competition versus therapy, thirty-two bars with no editing at eight bars a day, and why he now stacks singles rather than forcing an album.
Then Red Shirt Mike, for the longest and most argumentative stretch the show has run. Why an Icon vs Set The Bar card will not happen, why cypher shows do not pay, and a real defence of battle rap against its reputation — media literacy, camaraderie inside competition, and what Jay-Z gets wrong calling it negative. It widens into Kendrick vs Drake, the UMG distraction theory, Occam's razor as an antidote to conspiracy thinking, and self-censorship versus the 'woke mob'. It closes on the draft, Vancity Eras, and the question underneath running any scene: if I got hit by a bus, does Set The Bar survive?
Recorded at B-Side Radio, Vancouver BC.
0:00 Kavawon's creative funk after burnout
1:58 Humble the Poet: you need fun too
5:52 Peaks, valleys and giving grace
6:58 Anxiety as trapped energy
9:14 Procrastination and self-worth
10:38 Notifications and negative self-talk
14:14 Turning knowledge into a course
Hogan's Alley: The Black Vancouver History Nobody Taught You
Season 3 · Episode 11
Saturday, May 23, 2026 • Duration 01:38:39
A Black History Month episode that turns into the best history lesson this show has recorded. K-Ski and Kavawon host Aisha and Miselta of the Hogan's Alley Society — the organisation working to rebuild Vancouver's displaced Black neighbourhood.
Aisha went from UBC marketing student to Hogan's Alley staffer and explains what it is like to ask "where are the Black people?" in this city. Miselta came through kinesiology and sport into community engagement. Together they lay out the whole arc: the Memorial Project, the working group, the viaducts that went through the neighbourhood and who pays when they finally come down, the garden, Nora Hendrix Place, and the 100+ social housing units planned for Main and Union — designed, they say, like a baobab tree.
The history runs wider than most listeners will expect: hip-hop as a griot tradition, the Cross Bronx Expressway running the same playbook in New York, Black soldiers who defended Victoria, and Salt Spring Island. And it lands on something practical — the Community Land Trust, a Black cultural centre, the Blackathon, and what listeners can actually do.
Jimi Hendrix's grandmother lived here. Apache was recorded here. Most people in Vancouver do not know either.
Recorded at B-Side Radio, Vancouver BC.
0:00 Back from UBC: radio and cyphers
1:10 2026 plans and a different year
2:09 Dip Clothing: 25 years in Vancouver
3:57 Copping gear on Delancey Street
4:42 Hip-hop as a griot tradition
5:46 Mas B on drums and shared ancestry
7:46 Introducing Hogan's Alley Society
9:18 Meet Aisha: betting on yourself
Ten Years of Spotify, ODB Backwards, and Finding 1,000 Real Fans
Season 2 · Episode 10
Tuesday, December 30, 2025 • Duration 01:18:12
K-Ski and Kavawon close out 2025 by taking stock — of the year, the scene, and what being an independent artist is going to mean next.
It opens loose: fantasy football misery, load management and fans paying to watch stars sit, Ronnie Lott's finger, the Herschel Walker trade, Philly fan brutality. Then it turns. K-Ski's 2025 — his wife's injury, a trip back to Trenton and Philly, and how the guns arrived back home. Kavawon's producer year, a finished EP, and ghostwriting.
The middle is the best part. Kavawon asked an AI for twenty Vancouver artists and had never heard of any of them, which starts a genuinely uncomfortable conversation about how tapped-in the scene actually is — and lands somewhere hopeful, on Detour, Dipt's 25 years, and the Hogan's Alley Society. Community builds culture.
Then the veterans: Nas, Clipse, Slick Rick, De La, RZA's Juice Crew project. MC Shan vs Big Daddy Kane. ODB storming a session and recording it backwards. Wu-Tang in Hawaii. Why veteran MCs get paid more overseas, Daz Dillinger's direct-to-consumer math, and ten years of Spotify saturation — ending on the argument that a thousand paying fans is a career, and why Kavawon is releasing four EPs instead of one album in 2026.
Recorded at B-Side Radio, Vancouver BC.
0:00 Intro: upcoming shows
1:12 Kavawon's producer year and an EP
2:22 Fantasy football and basketball misery
3:50 Load management and the fans paying
5:38 Ronnie Lott's finger
7:19 Rooting against your family's team
9:41 The Herschel Walker trade
11:30 Eagles at 8-4 and Philly fan brutality
Music Medicine: Jessaii, Karma Sounds & the Money Nobody Tells You About
Season 2 · Episode 9
Thursday, October 30, 2025 • Duration 01:53:12
K-Ski hosts without Kavawon, and Jessaii co-pilots the whole episode — vocalist, songwriter, producer, vocal coach, music educator, and a mother.
The first hour is hers. Writing her first songs in Regina, discovering reggae in Calgary, and then seven years of accidents and knee dislocations that took her income, her mobility and very nearly the rest. Single motherhood, food banks, and the slow work of picking yourself up. She explains AuDHD as gas and brakes pressed at the same time, why she now writes accommodations into artist contracts, and why she calls it music medicine — on stage the pain disappears. Queen Level Productions has pivoted to supporting artists with disabilities.
Karma Sounds — Karina Morin — arrives at 40:26. Painfully shy sax player to singer, Montreal to Vancouver, the two years of keys behind 'Wings', and how she sprinkles healing into a pop hook. She opened the stage for Lauryn Hill.
Then Tracy Pequin, a financial coach with 19 years at Primerica, explains the Registered Disability Savings Plan, the Disability Tax Credit, and the Canada Disability Benefit — what qualifies, how to apply, why almost nobody knows they exist, and which firms take a cut of your refund for filing the form you could file yourself. If you or someone you love is disabled in Canada, that hour is worth real money.
Recorded at B-Side Radio, Vancouver BC.
0:00 Welcome: intros and who's missing
1:50 A summer of rest and festival prep
2:36 Stevie Wonder and a cassette coincidence
5:26 First songs in Regina: 'Freedom'
6:31 Discovering reggae in Calgary
8:30 Vancouver's reggae scene and 'Rise'
Nige on The Imperfectionist: Therapy, Divorce, and Rapping at 39
Season 2 · Episode 8
Sunday, October 12, 2025 • Duration 02:01:13
The most personal episode the show has done. Nige is releasing The Imperfectionist — named for a superhero who ruins everything he touches — and he came to talk about what is actually on it.
He retired the "Young" from Young Nige at 39. He came up a punk kid on Epitaph Records before hip hop, started rapping late at 19 after a house party freestyle, and spent years freestyling in cars at the beach. The record is about divorce, therapy, aging in rap, and unlearning the stories you tell about yourself. His writing method now is one line per hour-long walk.
K-Ski matches him with his own history: the record deal his mother refused to sign, YZ getting signed instead, the Navy sending him to Japan, teaching slang there, and the Ice Cube security story.
DJ K-Rec is in for the first hour on drumless beats, Roc Marcy, and why depression makes upbeat beats — then leaves to feed the dogs, and the last forty minutes go somewhere else entirely: why mental illness rises as comfort increases, what a cop stopping your eldest son does to you, AI and job loss, marketing as an unhappiness-generating machine, and what success might look like if it were not a big house and five cars.
Recorded at B-Side Radio, Beaumont Studios, Vancouver BC.
0:00 Going live: who's here tonight
2:03 B-Side Radio at Beaumont Studios
3:19 Meeting Nige, and the therapy question
4:14 From Young Nige to just Nige
6:41 'Young' as a state of mind, not an age
8:10 Punk kid: Epitaph before hip hop
8:57 The house party freestyle
10:24 Freestyling in cars at the beach
Crabs in a Bucket: Estea Elements & DJ K-Rec on the Vancouver Scene
Season 2 · Episode 7
Thursday, August 14, 2025 • Duration 02:05:57
K-Ski starts solo with Paul — 22 years of guitar and teaching kids at the Roundhouse — before Estea Elements arrives and the episode finds its subject: what it costs to build something in a city that doesn't help you build it.
Estea Elements came from Jersey to Carolina to the Navy to Seattle before landing here. He works in addictions counseling and teaches curriculum through rap, and he is blunt about the crabs-in-a-bucket habit of the Vancouver scene and what a scarcity mindset does to people. The stretch on losing a rap contest to Wise Intelligent in Trenton, meeting Kid N Play and Salt-N-Pepa, and the Fat Boys coming to Vancouver in 1988 is the best oral history the show has recorded.
Then DJ K-Rec, who made a record a year with him — including one made while K-Rec had cancer. K-Rec talks pause tapes, quitting rhyming for engineering, his beat-making routine, and the cold DMs to Sadat X, Kurious and Percee P that actually worked. The email that got them opening for De La Soul at the Commodore is worth the whole segment.
It closes with three live performances and a run of fall show dates.
Recorded at B-Side Radio, Vancouver BC.
0:00 Intro: solo hosting, guests on the way
1:30 Paul: 22 years of guitar, teaching kids
2:53 Mexico, recharging, and unplugging
3:44 ST Elements arrives: from STL
4:50 Recognized at a White Rock gas station
5:51 Jersey to the Navy to Seattle
7:58 When family isn't impressed
10:16 Brains built for lyrics
11:27 Teaching curriculum through rap
LaSparka on Love Force — and the Biggest Battle in Vancouver History
Season 2 · Episode 6
Wednesday, May 7, 2025 • Duration 01:51:44
Kavawon hosts solo and gives LaSparka most of two hours. It is the widest-ranging conversation in the catalogue.
The first stretch is a life: discovering hip hop through NWA tapes and border runs in the 80s, Spleen and the Hard Luck Band, the For Love store, and what Love Force actually stands for. Then it goes somewhere most music podcasts don't — religion and politics, going from atheist to believer, God as the motherboard, a Hungarian refugee family and Indigenous teachings, and a manifesto built on free energy and no borders. LaSparka's line about the world having enough for everybody is the one people will quote.
The back half turns competitive. Mike Wiald arrives at 50:15 to explain the rematch, Ellipsis joins at 58:40 — twelve years after their first battle — and the three of them run the entire Rivals card: the draft, the seven-judge panel, the judging horror stories, and DDSS's undefeated run. It ends on Mike Wiald vs Ellipsis and the question underneath it: is a team win worth more than a personal one?
