Razor's Gruv

Chris Fielder was born in Detroit and moved across the river to Windsor, Ontario, where he honed his skills within sight of the Motor City. In 1990 he moved to Toronto, and within a year his music as Razorblayd was chosen to launch a new rap and dance label.

That label was Blast Records, run by brothers Chris and Jerry Fumo. Chris had been president of Big Shot Records International and Jerry its vice president of international affairs, and between them they had worked with producers Andrew Komis, known as Komix (Inner City, Sheena Easton), and Richard Rodwell (Dream Warriors, Maestro Fresh Wes). In May 1991 the brothers signed a licensing and distribution deal with Jeff Burns, president of Justin Entertainment, the Toronto independent that was then charting with country signings Mark Koenig and Joel Feeney. Justin’s releases went through MCA Records Canada, which put Blast product into stores across the country. RPM reported that Razorblayd would be the first release, followed by a dance and rap compilation from a Blast roster that included Thando Hyman, First Power, Christine Morrell, Tina Valdez, Heather Cerrone, How II House, Rhythm Workshop and Incog-Needle. The last two were also Fielder. Several of the Blast acts spent that spring touring schools across Ontario with People With A Purpose, a Toronto anti-drug campaign aimed at teenagers.

Razor’s Gruv came out in 1991 on compact disc and cassette. Fielder wrote, arranged and produced all ten tracks at Blast Studios, with Jerry Fumo as executive producer and the songs published through Fumo Publishing. The album opens with ‘Cruisin’’ and runs through ‘Skeezer Hunting’, ‘The M.V.P.’, ‘I Am The Hype’, ‘Jazz The Crowd’, ‘West Side Tales’, ‘To The Rhythm’ and ‘Juice’ before closing on ‘Bass Fanatic’. Most of the cuts run close to five minutes, built long for the dance floor. The title track went to clubs on a 12-inch single, backed with a remix Fielder mixed himself that does not appear on the album.

Canadian rap was still fighting for space in 1991. Maestro Fresh Wes had won the first Juno for rap recording earlier that year, but radio and the major labels were slow to follow, and most homegrown hip-hop reached listeners through independents and DJ culture. The Canadian Encyclopedia’s history of the genre names RazorBlayd among the Canadian rap acts recording at the start of the decade, alongside Krush and Skad, Top Secret, Slinky Dee, Self-Defence and K-4ce.

In 1992 Fielder turned back toward Windsor. ‘Get Ya 411 Straight’, credited to RazorBlayd featuring Shawn ‘Rizky Biz’ T, came out as a 12-inch on Windsor’s Jagged Edge Records. Fielder produced, arranged and mixed it and shared the writing credit with his featured rapper. The record carried four versions of the song, a radio edit, the ‘Bumpin’ Trunk Mix’, the ‘Bumpin’ Jazz Mix’ and an instrumental, along with a fifth track, ‘The Flow’. Shawn W. Talbot and George P. Napier are named on the labels alongside the company’s Windsor address.

Fielder’s house recordings from the Blast sessions waited more than thirty years for a release. On February 24, 2023, the European label Rezpektiva issued REZ17seventeen, a Rhythm Workshop 12-inch of tracks he had cut for Blast in 1991: ‘Take Action’, ‘Don’t Let Go’, ‘R U Ready’ and ‘Don’t Let Go (Incogmix)’, the last a nod to his Incog-Needle name. The label pitched it to DJs as a record of slow, hazy late-night grooves.

-Robert Williston