A former jock from rural Nova Scotia, Buck 65 has never been your average hip hop artist.

He writes tracks called things like Bachelor Of Science which contain lines like, "I'd rather read the Bible than use its pages to roll joints with".

He has performed on Sesame Street, where he was "upset" to discover an off-duty Bert smoking and telling "off-colour" jokes. He tries out stage moves "picked up from the dancers at a Christina Aguilera concert".

And, when he does rap about sexual prowess, it's through the character of a classical music-loving, rice cake-munching centaur who, despite being "built like a horse from the waist down" is "lookin' for true love" and has "a complicated mind".

No, Buck 65 was never your average hip hop artist. So why are hip hop fans accusing him of selling out?

Born Richard Terfry, the Canadian decided to concentrate on rapping and turntabalism when a knee injury put an end to the BMX racing and baseball. And, after hitting the scene with a show on college radio, in 1997 Buck 65 released his debut album anguage, Arts.

A collection of small-town tales tapped over lo-fi instrumentals, it asserted his off-kilter take on the hip hop blueprint and launched a series of records which, with their gruff vocals and vivid narratives, would see him hailed as the Tom Waits of hip hop.

At a time when DJ Shadow's boundary-pushing was considered the height of cool, Buck 65 was embraced by the hip hop community as a stark and original producer.

But that all changed with 2003's Talkin' Honky Blues, the major label debut on which, as folk and country instruments joined the scratches and samples, junk yard hip hop became sophisticated, breakbeat blues.

"My motivation for going with a major label," he says, "was to get my music into the hands of as many people as I could, regardless of their background or tastes."

But then he also makes a very good case for the album as an enthusiast's foray into hip hop history there were, as he observes, "people rapping a hundred years ago on blues records".

Nevertheless, early fans were largely unimpressed by the addition of guitars, pedal steel and harps to his lo-fi turntablism still less so when Buck 65 began to talk about taking voice lessons and working on his "melodies".

And in autumn last year he hit back with a virulent attack on what he perceived as the ignorance and closed-mindedness of hip hop.

"I now hate hip hop," he told Kerrang! "The more I've educated myself about music, the more I've grown to hate it. The people behind hip hop don't know anything about music theory or have any appreciation for other kinds of music. I'm a snob and that's what I'm looking for. I'm as elitist a bastard as you could possibly find."

Faced with a backlash he swiftly apologised with a forum posting insisting that he'd been harangued into the comments and didn't "think being able to read music is a concern".

But, his bridges duly burned, Buck 65 does seem to have taken the fork in the country road.

"I'm taking steps to try to be regarded as a proper songwriter and not just someone who writes lyrics," he says of his new album, which is set to follow January's successful retrospective compilation later this year.

"It's quite different musically from anything I've done before there are lots of strings and piano, more melody, some feminine touches. I'm even going to sing a little."

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