His shadow simply wouldn’t shrink or grow- the sun cast it tall and lanky for hours behind him, on into what felt like the dead of night, as Kyprios marched away from a Canada Day show in the North West Territories that he’d played with fellow members of Vancouver rap crew Sweatshop Union. And as the lead MC basked in that endless solstice midnight high noon, he was struck by a swooning, sinking feeling.

“It was 10:30 at night, we’d played our hearts out and the sun was still blazing, I’d never been so exhausted or seen anything so beautiful and surreal,” said Kyprios, who will play an intimate solo set at the Atha-B on March 9, of the famous endless Northwest daylight that left his sweat soaked audience sparkling that night. “That weird dichotomy kind of reminded me of my bipolar nature as a musician man. It inspired the title and the concept for the new record I’m working on now.”

Kyprios said that kind of fractured strain is simply unavoidable- that every rapper is left hapless sooner or later, caught in the trap of socially conscious songs that can leave them feeling self-conscious.

“Rap hasn’t been known as an openly vulnerable style,” he said of the challenges of opening up or staying positive in a genre that was built on a tradition of aggression and bravado. “Yeah sure, it’s cool to have fun with wordplay or just do justice to the beat, but what about touching on the heart and soul of a song? I got no other outlet, no psychiatrist, so I need to uncover them deeper meanings in my music.”

There’s no better example of Kyprios enlisting listeners as therapists and confidants than “Hit the Wall,” a single he released half a decade ago when his once simmering career stalled in an all-too-typical record label limbo.

He conveyed his dismay with lines like “They were right with the stereo types, I used to be the type of MC your stereo liked. Now I’m a loser, boozer gettin’ old, life is but a stage and I’m forgettin’ my role.”

“I was feeling the fall from grace, the abandonment,” he said of losing his manager in 2005 and having his album shelved after putting three years of work into it. “The president of BMG (Sony) took over and didn’t drop me but didn’t promote me, they did the worst thing which is freeze you. I went into the studio looking for something upbeat to rhyme over, to get my mind off it, but all them dire feelings came out over (producer) Rob the Viking’s really up-tempo beat.”

Revelling in that kind of push and pull tension still drives Kyprios to this day as he polishes off his new album, the Northern solstice inspired Midnight Sun (an upcoming follow up to the album he’s currently touring behind, dubbed 12:12). He said it started as a concept record, chronicling a day in the life and the nuanced challenges in seemingly familiar routines.

“Stringing that narrative together became kind of boring, and I realized the songs are strong enough to stand on their own without that kind of gimmick,” he said of the concept he was trying to impose on Midnight Sun. “It’s the best thing I’ve done, really bipolar-upbeat one minute then low tempo and morose the next. The Midnight Sun theme was the only way to justify having two songs next to each other like ‘Goodness,’ and ‘Mr. Miserable,’ to show off that split that I’ve always been so fascinated with.”

Kyprios said embracing that tension, rather than letting it tear him apart, was the only way he could wean himself off selfishly trite rhymes and become a better artist.

“Rappers try to be so intricate sometimes, but what happens when all your inside jokes leave 50 people (in the audience) at a show they paid for that they can’t connect with?” he said.

Kyprios will take to the Atha-B’s stage on March 9. For more information call 852-3386, or visit myspace.com/sweatshopunion7 and myspace.com/kyprios12.