After celebrating two decades in the music business earlier this year with the release of 20 Odd Years, Richard "Buck 65" Terfry will add a third notch on his CBC microphone in September. "When I was a kid, I had a pretend radio station with a cousin. It’s something I always loved," confides the rapper and CBC Radio 2 host.

"Touring is now a challenge, but there’s no problem at all with all the other aspects," explains Terfry when asked about the impact his new job has on his music career. "It’s the opposite, in fact. I think I’m more creative now than before. With a regular paycheck, I don’t feel a pressure to do music. It opens me up."

In fact, radio and rap have long been intertwined for Buck 65. Years ago, he also hosted a hip hop show on CKDU, the campus station of Halifax’s Dalhousie University. "When I first discovered rap, I was a kid in rural Canada. This discovery had a lot of innocence to it. It was even charming, naïve… and a bit nerdy," recalls Terfry. "Rappers weren’t posing themselves as ‘super cool’ or ‘super tough’ at the time. And rap wasn’t really popular with girls!" So, free of women’s woes, young Richard embarked on a musical scavenger hunt. "From De La Soul albums to Paul’s Boutique, I had to find the sources to all these samples!"

Nowadays, Terfry’s interests go from rap to folk, rock and even pop. All of those collide on 20 Odd Years, Buck 65′s most collaborative album yet, which was recently included in the Polaris Music Prize Long List of the top 40 Canadian records of the past year. "When I started working on the new album, I wanted to try to have more melodic songs… So I needed help ’cause I’m not a great singer." Although the artist gained many friends and collaborators over the years, many of whom can be heard on this CD, he still went out of his way to make a new acquaintance: local singer-songwriter Marie-Pierre Arthur. "I’m a big fan of her work," gushes Terfry. "And she came to mind when I was working on this song [Final Approach]. I wanted that kind of voice on it. So I sent an e-mail…."

While many rappers have come and gone in the last 20 years, Buck 65 remains. "I think it has to do with my motive, the reason I do it," he ponders. "I never expected to make big money out of it. I made music before I had an audience or cash and I’ll continue to do it after they’re both gone. Music gives me a purpose. That’s all."

Buck 65

Montreal Jazz Festival at Club Soda

June 26