Yellowknife (May 31/06) - "I go by the name Godson. I'm the 'Arctic Rapper' up here. I've been doing this for 11 years. I'm just trying to make a name for myself. This is my chance."

They were the first words spoken on Monday's season premiere of Canadian Idol, and they belonged to Aaron Hernandez, a.k.a. Godson.

Aaron "Godson" Hernandez' video "Are You the One?" debuted Monday, during the first episode of this season's Canadian Idol.- Adam Johnson/NNSL photo

In a flash, a nervous 25-year-old Yellowknife rapper trying to make an impact in a singing competition turns into a sleek, confident artist, rapping in his first nationally-televised video.

Nearly two million Canadians watched the Idol premiere, which opened with the video for "Are You the One?"

"It was a weird feeling, like my whole body just went warm," Godson says of watching himself on national TV. His initial response was a series of un-transcribable drooling noises.

In his parents' living room near Range Lake, the rapper/producer watches the screen beside his fiancee, Melissa Stead, and surrounded by his parents Moises (the "Godfather") and Ana, his siblings Noel, Moses and Anneluzelia, and friends.

Their eyes light up when Godson hits the screen, but their looks sour just as easily when a bad satellite feed cuts the sound and video briefly.

"Man, I knew something like that was going to happen," Godson jokes, visibly pained.

The video is a slick black-and-white affair, filled with breakdancers, loads of extras and cameos from Melissa O'Neil and Rex Goudie, last year's Idol finalists.

As quickly as it starts, it's over, and the room fills with adulation, applause and a few congratulatory phone calls. To ease the excitement, Godson and his younger brother Noel joke about the creation of the video.

When he auditioned at the Vancouver tryouts, Godson was denied, only to be asked to write a song for the series. The producers eventually asked him to film a video in Toronto.

"Yeah, I was bummed. I went to Denny's," Godson remembered.

"Give me the saddest meal you have," Noel prods in his best sad-Godson voice, to a round of laughter.

Just before the show, Godson gave a quick tour of the upstairs room that houses his studio: a computer, turntables, a series of keyboards and samplers, and a vocal isolation booth built into a closet.

Posters of idols and cut out magazine covers stare down from the high-ceilinged walls.

"I spend most of the summers in here," he said. "And the winters."

"Sometimes he's up until like five in the morning. I'll wake up and he'll have the headphones on, still going at it," Stead says. "He definitely deserves to make it big."

Godson got his start with school projects which led to producing and recording seven independent albums and performing around the North.

Speaking from Toronto last week, Idol supervising producer Mark Lysakowski was excited to see the video open this season of the show.

A veteran of the first three Idol seasons, Lysakowski was confident the audience would warm to Godson.

"I've seen a lot of things that have worked, and a lot of things that haven't," he said. "I think this will work."

As far as the next step goes, Lysakowski said that depends entirely on the response the song, which has been released to radio stations across the country, gets.

Just after the episode ends, Godson can only think of his e-mail inbox, which has been inundated with messages all evening.

The song and video are available on CTV's Idol website.

"We'll see where it goes from there," Godson said.

The premiere of Canadian Idol's fourth season featured a stop in Yellowknife, where Noel Taylor earned a gold ticket as one of the top 200 who get a second audition in Toronto. A second Northern performer also made the cut, but didn't appear on the show.