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Stylin' '06 (Profile Of A Mac)
(R. MacDougall/T. Lahey)
Dir. Cal MacLean
RHEA Music Entertainment Group (2006)

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New releases: DJ Cyber-Rap, from Chartattack.com, July 17, 2006
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From Eye Weekly, July 27, 2006:

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Who Is DJ Cyber-Rap?, from The Torontoist, August 1, 2006
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From The Toronto Star, August 5, 2006:

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The Tragically Hip Replacements?, from Zoilus, August 9, 2006
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From The Globe & Mail, August 11, 2006:

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Hanging With Cyber-Rap, from BlogTO, August 16, 2006
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"I Remember What It Was Like To Be 21, NMC Track Of The Day,
CBC Radio 3, September 5, 2006
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59-YEAR-OLD CANADIAN HIP-HOP STAR RELEASES DEBUT L.P.

On June 11, Internet breakout success DJ Cyber-Rap will release his first full-length album, Funeral. Cyber-Rap, née Ronald Marie MacDougall, first made a splash in the ever-growing Toronto indie music scene in the summer of 2005, when he began posting on internet message boards and subsequently released a number of singles through his page on the popular site, Myspace. He independently released an EP, The Jay-Z Album, shortly thereafter, selling-out the entire limited pressing.

Funeral boasts a number of popular acts from the Toronto scene, including Laura Barrett (NOW Magazine, 1/06; eye Magazine, 3/06), Ninja High School (NOW, 10/05; eye, 5/04), Pyramid Culture (Toronto Star, 5/11/06), and DJ Wes Allen to name a few. Barrett's contribution, a duet cover of Ace of Base's The Sign is slated to be the second single following Stylin 06 (Profile of a Mac), the video for which will be released online simultaneously with Funeral's release in stores.

Ronald Robert Marie MacDougall has come a long way since 2001. At 54, the usually plucky guy had just undergone a devastating year. He'd just been forced to retire from a 20-year position as managing broker of a Toronto insurance company, a difficult thing to suffer while mourning the recent loss of his wife. Exacerbating this, Ron's 12-year-old son, Brendan, too young to understand the loss of his mother, developed a surly attitude that would characterize his adolescence and still looms deep over his reckless teenage years. For a guy who, not one year before, had a home full of happiness and success, Ronald's uncompromising new reality left him emotionally paralyzed.

"That was, unequivocally, the single worst year of my life," says Ronald.

April 05: the tipping point. Late one night at his neighborhood Internet café, while Google searching for photographs of Lindsay Lohan, Christina Ricci, and early girlfriend, actress Rhea Perlman (Cheers, Matilda), MacDougall discovered a message board for the first time. Energized by marshmallows and a thermos of red wine, Ron quickly soaked up all he could about Toronto's music/arts community through this website while connecting with the town's youth.

He also managed to pick up on many of the hottest musical trends from the indie circuit, including The Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, and Stars. Taken by the ingenuity of Toronto's evolving underground and the rapid-fire pace of the Internet, Ronald felt hed stumbled on the perfect medium to release all that had been pent up. During the giddy catharsis, DJ Cyber-Rap was born.

Beginning with only his lengthy, Internet-teenspeak-loaded posts, Ronald's online verve at first served only to irk Toronto's online music communities. As a simple Google search will attest, those first "blogs" on message boards reveal Ron's charm: a nimble yet sensual sense of wordplay (inspired by favorite author D. H. Lawrence), and a keen sense for perceiving the novelty within current trends.

"The Donnas? Sure, they're pop darlings but they're no The Strokes! You can hear the difference!" insists Ronald.

It was only during the record-breaking heat of July '05 did a determined DJ Cyber-Rap finally win over the secret hearts of the indie crowd by containing his cathartic flow in a structure that the youths would prefer: hip-hop.

Ronald's breakthrough first song, "Cyber-Rap, Girl," a courageously direct proclamation of his identity over the instrumental from Gwen Stefani's hit single "Hollaback Girl" hit DJ Cyber-Rap's Myspace site http://www.myspace.com/cyberrap on June 3, 2005, and the reborn hipster was stunned to note that his first song had received some 400 listens by the next day.

What followed was a succession of underground Myspace hit singles, revealing the story of a complex rap renaissance man whose perspective was so singularly unique, he couldn't be denied. How I Do (Ron's version of The Game featuring 50 Cent's "How We Do") followed. Then came his sonic plea to Brendan, "Seagull", (the Cyber-Rap edition of Eminem's "Mockingbird").

Three singles in the can, and DJ Cyber-Rap was still unsatisfied. A student of the lineage of The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Led Zeppelin, Ronald "Robert" Marie MacDougall knew that anyone can make a song but the hallmark of a true artist is an album. Several red wine bottles, a few laughs, and a few hundred dollars (the source of which was Brendan's college fund, Ronald has never shied away from admitting) later, "The Jay-Z Album", 9 songs defining Ronald's life in the key of Jay-Z, was created and released in September '05.

Kicked off by online single Numb/Comeback, (A Ronald-restyled version of Linkin Park and Jay-Zs Numb/Encore) DJ Cyber-Rap personally released a limited run of the EP at Toronto's Soundscapes independent record shop. Within 24 hours, every copy of the EP had been snatched or spoken for. It was official; DJ Cyber-Rap was an underground sensation in his city. And while other artists might have taken pause to revel in the aftershocks of a bona fide hit, Ronald got right back down to business on "Funeral", his first full-length LP. Now that it's complete and being advertised in a number of national publications and serviced to media across the continent and in Europe, Ronald calls it "the greatest thing I've ever created, next to Brendan."

Despite the movement for a greater realization of his artistic statement, by no means is DJ Cyber-Rap averse to collaborating. Quite the opposite, actually he recognizes it as a cornerstone of any music community. On "Funeral", Ronald joined forces with the elite of Toronto's musical scene, Matt Collins of Ninja High School ("I Remember What It Was Like To Be Twenty One"), Laura Barrett ("The Sign"), Pyramid Culture ("Guess Who's Back?"), Major Grange ("Hey Ya"), DJ Wes Allen ("Ron Is Chillin'"), Vagina Plow ("I Remember What It Was Like To Be Twenty-One"), Map Of A Man a.k.a. Eugene Slonimerov of Rosasia and the former Lenin I Shumov ("Guess Who's Back"), with additional contributions from producer Dynamic Danthrax The Harmonious, DJ Islamabad, and stand-up comedian Rebecca Kohler.

And of course, promoter/indie über-producer Tom Lahey's presence is strong on the record as well, particularly on "Let It All Hang Out", where, sparing no venom, the two address those who don't believe in DJ Cyber-Rap's legitimacy or the vast indie credibility he's accumulated in his short year as a star.

"Yeah, there's always going to be people trying to tarnish your shine in this game," says Ronald. "But that kind of hogwash just comes with the biz."

One of the album's highlights is perhaps its most emotional. In I Need a Woman, Ron describes his heartbreak over former flame Rhea Perlman. Whereas in one standout jam from The Jay-Z Album DJ Cyber-Rap celebrated their past romance ("05 Ronald & Rhea"), the newer guest-free, nearly seven-minute ode is a confessional full of raw emotion: "I loved her quite deeply in fact / When I heard she'd married Danny [DeVito], it broke my heart / 'Cause on the stage of life, she was the poet who wrote my parts."

Funeral will be the inaugural pressing from RHEA Music Entertainment Group, a label started by Ronald and producer Lahey specifically for the purposes of the album's release. (The label has since signed other artists with releases slated through 2008.)

Welcome to the Funeral.

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DJ Cyber-Rap's original MySpace autobiography:

Introducing Canada's 59-year-old hip-hop sensation, Ronald "Robert" Marie MacDougall a.k.a. DJ Cyber-Rap!!! p.s. if anyone's seen my fricking pothead son Brendan around The Annex, pleeaze click a fogey an e-mail!!! djcyber-rap@hotmail.com !! Thanx, and LOR! -Ronald

Hey "YO!" Wadssaaaaap!??!

This is the great DJ Cyber-Rap, also known to former insurance sales clients, co-workers, and Barnes&Castle customers and employees as Ronald (but really Robert... LONG story, don't ask!!) Marie MacDougall! I was born in 1947!! !! I'm sorry about all the exclamations!!!! BUT I can barely contain myself!

See, I used to be a "big-time" rockeroonie-o "back in the ol' day!" I was even in the first great Toronto anti-Vietnam War protest band, and we "rocked" hard at the Horseshoe once even!!! But then something happened... see, this baby here graduated from college in the mid-70s, boomed, and "sold-out" a bit!!! Suddenly, cut to me in an office in the 80s, snorting cocaine off my file cabinet!!! NOT PRETTY!!! Now, director, stop film!!

Now lets cut forward all the way to 2001 when my beautiful college sweetheart wife Lenora died "supa-dupa" suddenly!!! NOT cool! Suddenly, your old man Ronald (Bob) Marie MacD is stuck wandering around a big empty house in the Annex with nothing but some Costco boxes of Ramen, some mini-marshmallows, the complete works of D.H. Lawrence ("tho" I prefer to call him D.H. Larry!!), a despondant 15-year-old son named Brendan, and enough memories to make me cry so loudly at night, my neighbors would often call the police thinking there was domestic abuse afoot!!! NOT COOL!!!

Suddenly, looking for a place to "squeeze at my half-firm penis" to "jpgs" of "pixxxez" of "Paris Hilton" and my old flame Rhea Pearlman (Carla from "Cheers" for all you youngsters!!) mainly (no bones about it... LOR! LOL!) I started "2" frequent an internet cafe on Bloor Late at nite while Brendan was sleeping or out smoking "ganjaroo!!" FUCKING POTHEAD! !!... then, when I was "surfing" on the nu-click Google dot url server mouse wheel dot internet, I discove"r'd" something called 20hz.ca!!!

Suddenly on that message board I found a "kewl croo" of "new-ethercord indie.net hipster young highschool and 'uni' hep-cats" who reminded me of myself when I was their age!!! They were funny!! They knew all the cool "bands" and "sweet movies" and, most importantly, when I joined and "rechanged" my name to DJ Cyber-Rap (my "kewl nu-image"!!!), "they learned my story and accepted me!!!!"

Not at first "tho"... LOR!! ACTUALLY, at first they "deleted me" beca"uz" I 'sed' in one of my "on-line" posternets that I had recently grinded my crotch against the tree in my backyard until I released "white" because I was horny!!! But it took 15 minutes and that Brendan saw it all!!!! Sorry!!! But then they accepted"z" me when I re-"registered" again and I apologized!! It made me cool again!!! Like in the late '60z' "'n'" early "'70s!!!!"

Suddenly, on their advice I started listening to all the sweet nu tracks!!! Edge 102.1 and Flow 93 !!! 'nu' "PJ Harvey" and "Cold-play" and "The Arcade Fire" ("Tho I still don't get them!") and all the new "indie" and "rap" hits and I loved themM!!!!!!! :) :): ) :(

Then one day I got angry!!!, after getting fired from "Barnes&Castle" :( for being too old and dropping too many plates, I had a month where I just abandoned my whole life and went to the MacDougall cottage in Mer Bleu, and "wailed out on my guitar" and ate pizza and drank "Vermouth!!!" and then I got back home because child services had found me...!!!! The important part is, when i was there I gained perspective and found INNER PEACE!!! Like The Beatles!!!

Now, I'm BACK in my old (well, "new" actually, because my old one caught me squeezing the salami to pixxx of my old GIRLFRIEND Rhea Pearlman) Toronto "Internet cafe" stomping grounds as the cool new "DJ Cyber-Rap" and I'm spending my wife's will money for Brendan on mini-marshmallows, "Lavalife.com" points, and STUDIO TIME!!! Yes, thanks to the support of all my "USERNAME" hommys on 20HZ.ca and the "nu" 20hz, "STILLEPOST.CA"...

Now, thanks to one of my old computer-"savvy" co-workers that I used to work witha t the insuranse firm, I have this cool internet website!!!! YES!! I am back with this "myspace" are to show "U" some NU TRACKZZ "I am working on!!" Thank you to Tom and Mahmoud for getting all the personalized "pixxes" and graphics on this "internet site" up and running... well WORTH every penny!!!

Also..."2" all my "nu-fans" you're gonna hear some "rumorz" like "Lindsay Lowan" that I am just a big joke!! Or that I'm pretending to be DJ Cyber-Rap aka Ronald Robert MacDoguall!!! Let me tell you this, I don't know where all that "balderdash" is coming from, but I am SERIOUS AS A RHUBARB!!! This is no joke - My name is Ronald (Robert) Marie MacDoguall and I'm 59! (I'll get Tom Lahey to scan into this computer account my 'fricking' birth certificate - and even my wife's death certificate - if I must!!!), and a lot of people are trying to take the credit for my life and my story and my work away from me!!! "Scruu off!!" I'm just a simple "net" hipster "who'z" all about having FUN, "PUNKING OUT" and FEELING THE "MOOOOZEEEK!!!" "SHAGGADELIC BABY!!!"

And to those who think my age isn't "kewl"!!! read past the arrow, hommy --> Who cares that I'm 55? I am OFFICIALLY A "grooveadelic cooool doode again!!!" :):):) Now "shut up" like Kelly Ozzborne and listen to my "traxxxxes"!!!!

This profile was edited with DJ CYBER-RAP!