How Tangible 2 Breaks the Mold: Authentic Rap, Wild Shows & Grassroots Success

How Tangible 2 Breaks the Mold: Authentic Rap, Wild Shows & Grassroots Success

Monica Black Diamond’s latest sit-down brought on Tangible 2 — Wheatstock and Bagshaw, a rap duo out of Vancouver Island — for a conversation that moved from origin stories to stage-blood war wounds to a live, unreleased performance.

A friendship built on free Slurpees

Wheatstock’s rap journey started young — around 12 to 14 years old, inspired by Eminem, ICP, Tech N9ne, and Boondocks, recording rhymes on a tiny desktop microphone with a single-track program. Years later, working at a 7-Eleven, he kept running into a regular customer named Bagshaw, and the two struck up a friendship over — by Wheatstock’s own account — free Slurpees. Around the same time, Wheatstock started landing bigger solo shows. Bagshaw, going through a breakup, had started rapping too and showed Wheatstock a phone recording of his very first attempt. Wheatstock liked what he heard, and what followed was, in his words, Bagshaw sleeping on his studio floor for a couple of years while they recorded together for a year straight. Four years later, Tangible 2 was a real thing — the name itself pulled from a lyric Bagshaw kept repeating in a song.

Painted faces and a philosophy of self-expression

Wheatstock’s painted face — a different design nearly every show — started under the name “Spiral” before he settled into “Wheat,” a nod to his last name and his rural upbringing. He described the face paint as pure self-expression that doubles as branding: people who see it once, he said, remember it years later. Asked why he always seems to land on similar color combinations, his answer was refreshingly unglamorous — he just buys the same five-color paint pack.

Earning stage time the hard way

Both artists were candid about how they built an audience: by asking, and asking again, until someone gave them an opening slot, then making that show impossible to forget. Their advice to newer artists was blunt — don’t just stand there and rap, make it a big deal. That same hustle led to a pointed critique of how opening slots get filled in the local scene. Tangible 2 argued that artists deserve to be paid even as openers, that they’ve personally lost real money “investing” in shows early on, and that promoters should be evaluating openers on merit rather than just their ability to move tickets.

Scars from the stage

Some of the episode’s most memorable moments were physical. Bagshaw described trying to jump onto a speaker mid-show, missing, and gashing his shin open — then finishing the set as if nothing happened, blood and all. In a separate story, Wheatstock recalled Bagshaw accidentally poking him hard enough in the eye to feel a finger go into the socket — and he kept rapping anyway. Their shared philosophy for when something goes wrong on stage: make eye contact, feed off each other, and if all else fails, talk to the crowd until the moment passes.

Advice, influences, and what’s next

Asked what they’d tell other artists, Wheatstock offered a line that anchored the whole conversation: trying to be “the best” — better than every other rapper — is the wrong goal. The real work is being the best version of yourself on every song and every performance. Their influences ranged wide — Red Man, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Ludacris, Tupac, James Brown, and Stevie Wonder, alongside Boondocks, ICP, Eminem, Tech N9ne (who they’ve already opened for), and Slipknot, whose live intensity shaped their own stage show.

The two also touched on balancing life and music — Bagshaw has a daughter, Zoe, who he said is part of why he raps in the first place — and on the state of unity in the local rap scene, which they described as mostly humble, with the “shady” characters naturally falling away over time.

Before wrapping up, Tangible 2 performed a live, stripped-down, previously unreleased track for the stream, touching on themes of loneliness, role models, and struggle. They closed by teasing an upcoming album called “POS” and pointing listeners to their YouTube channel, Facebook page, and SoundCloud to find more of their music — with a promise that a much bigger, harder catalog is coming soon.