Conversing with Canyon Cody, A&S '06, is like talking to Eminem on Prozac. Animated, passionate, and approachable, he founded Gnawledge Records in his sophomore year at Boston College with the overall goal of creating "an international hip-hop movement."

Cody considers good artists to be ineffective at marketing. "They're usually really into their arts, but don't know how to advertise or market it," he says.

The latter part, producing, is Cody's forte.

"I'm not really a great musician - I can strum along for the basics - but I'm really interested in helping musicians develop their music," he says.

Along with rapper Sean Dwyer, Cody produced an album that sold 1,000 copies.




At the end of his freshman year, Cody was nominated for a study grant that allowed him to travel to Cuba to study illegal guerilla libraries.

"They contained stuff like Orwell and some other stuff like Ghandi," he says.

After his sophomore year, Cody received a grant in psychoanalytic studies and once again traveled to Cuba. While on this trip, he went to the Cuban hip-hop festival with Dwyer. They met several artists, but haven't been able to release their material on Gnawledge because of the embargo against Cuba. Cody hopes he'll be able to do something in the future when the embargo is lifted. He has also thought about releasing their work somewhere in Europe, particularly Spain.

Cody discovered his love for music while at a high school boarding school. "There were no cars and no drinking, so we had dances every weekend," he says.

Every week he would burn his mixes onto CDs and DJ the dance. "So we'd have parties in the math room or something," he says.

At BC this hobby evolved into "Mixtape Friday." Cody would burn mixes and put them in a case. He would also photocopy, cut out, and decorate the CDs with his artwork.

"Every Friday I'd be in the library photocopying stuff at like 7 p.m.," he says.

Throughout the night, he would distribute the discs to random people.

Some of Cody's favorite musicians are Bill Withers, 2Pac, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Throughout his years at BC, DJing is one of the things to which he has devoted a lot of his time and energy. During his sophomore year, Cody started messing around with turntables, buying two Technics 1200s. He expanded music mediums from CDs and started experimenting with vinyl and "real" DJing. His first gigs were at parties around BC's campus.

His first "real" job was at Roggie's in Cleveland Circle, where he started DJing on Thursday nights. He later got jobs at The Tonic Bar in Boston and Wonder Bar in Allston.

While at BC, Cody also worked at the campus radio station, WZBC, enlightening the listeners of Newton on hip-hop, and wrote a "Mixtape Friday" column during his two years as an arts editor for The Heights. He used his time on The Heights to interview some of his favorite artists, including Immortal Technique and Danger Mouse.

Recently, Cody has enhanced his DJ skills with podcasts. Every couple of weeks he records and uploads an approximately 30-minute show, which his fans download from iTunes.

Cody is a Fulbright finalist, but has not yet received notification from the government. If he receives the $20,000 grant, he plans to travel to Spain where he wants to research Spanish and Arabic music and record an album.

If he doesn't get it, he'll probably head back to his hometown of Los Angeles while continuing Gnawledge Records and possibly getting into film scoring.