Here it is! It’s our annual round-up of up-and-coming beatmakers to watch. Whether they create hip-hop, R&B, or electronic beats, these five young producers will undoubtedly continue their beautiful rise on local and international scenes in the coming months.
KINGALEXBEATS
The apple never falls very far from the tree. KingAlexBeats is the perfect example. From a very early age, the Montréal beatmaker sang in the studio of his father, the Québec-Salvadorian producer and sound engineer Doc Filo. “He quickly understood I was much more interested by the production side of music,” says Alex. “He set up a computer in my bedroom so I could use my own FL Studio workstation [a popular music production software] and he sat down with me to show me how it works. I must’ve been nine or 10, and it became a true passion. My computer was to me what a PlayStation is for other kids that age!”
KingAlexBeats is now 23, and he already possesses a considerable amount of beatmaking experience. As a teenager, the Laval-based artist made a name for himself on the local hip-hop scene by working with the Canicule collective and label. By now, his quite enviable credentials include features from a plethora of well-known Québec rappers—such as FouKi, Shreez, Mike Shabb, Obia le chef, and Maky Lavender – on his two albums, the aptly titled King and Roi à la naissance (King at Birth), released in 2022 and 2024, respectively.
Renowned as much for his biting trap beats as for his pop rhythms, with the occasional Latin flavour, the artist – of Salvadorian, Guatemalan, and Ecuadorian heritage – has been able to count on a major ally in recent months: Alexander Castillo Vasquez, one of Montréal’s most internationally renowned producers, who’s worked with Pitbull, Nicki Minaj, Justin Bieber, and many other high-profile artists.
For a decade, KingAlexBeats would send private messages to Castillo in the hopes of one day being able to work with him. His dream finally came true. One day, Castillo replied saying he liked his work. The beatmakers met and worked together on “Soltera,” a track for Shakira. Released earlier this fall, the Colombian pop star’s song has become a major hit in South America, quickly surpassing 100 million listeners across all digital platforms.
Obviously, this collaboration opened doors for KingAlexBeats, and it wasn’t long before he drew the attention of M. 305, Pitbull’s record label. We may hear more international collaborations from the Québec artist in 2025, but everything’s still confidential for now.
BADMNINTO
It was through trial and error that Badmninto managed to create his first beats. At the age of 13, alongside a friend, he managed to get his hands on a pirated copy “on six burned CDs” of some music production software. “For days on end, we tried to get sounds out of that thing,” jokes the beatmaker, now 30. “Our interest in it was similar to the one we had for videogames: all we wanted was to fool around on our computer.”
However, the game became a lot more serious for the Montréal-based producer, originally from Saint-Romuald, a small town on the South shore of Québec City. After experimenting in the vast realm of electronic music – mainly in electro-trash and dubstep – Badmninto fell in love with hip-hop.
Intrigued by the “piu piu” movement – Québec’s experimental hip-hop scene from which, in the early 2010s, emerged highly influential artists,such as Kaytranada and Vlooper, of Alaclair Ensemble fame – the young artist has slowly defined his musical palette, ranging from incisive trap to deconstructed jazz-flavoured explorations, heavily inspired by the Californian label Brainfeeder (founded by one of his idols, Flying Lotus).
Badmninto started to make a name for himself on Montréal’s hip-hop scene in the 2020s, and worked with some of the most interesting rappers on the alternative scene, including Quadracup, Paperboii, and SeinsSucrer. He’s also worked closely with rapper gabWan and producer Figure 8, to whom he listened to a lot as a teen, when they were known as Omnikrom.
In all, Badmninto has around fifty releases to its name, so far. Among those is his contribution to the France-meets-Québec compilation LP, SYMBIOSE, by producer Remastered – a project that will see him travel to Paris for a release show on Dec. 19, 2024. The year 2025 will see the release of an album with electronic leanings, that focuses on the kind ofs ynthetic textures and complex, percussive, and deconstructed rhythms so typical of his sound.
WILLY WONDER
Here’s a little story about a teenager who’s still unaware of the intensity of his passion. He’s a guy who, after giving up piano lessons – a decision he later regretted – started listening to a lot of music alone, in the middle of the night, trying to decipher all the sounds he heard. That’s the story of Willy Wonder, a young artist from Montréal’s West End, now establishing himself as one of the most creative and talented beatmakers on the Québec music scene.
One day, a friend asked, “Why don’t you make beats?” Along with producer Jai Sea (another friend), Wonder took the question to heart, and almost instantly began exploring the many possibilities of FL Studio. At the time, he had a pivotal inspiration in mind: Slime Season 3, Young Thug’s 2016 mixtape. At first, he was focused on replicating the American rapper’s trap aesthetic, but it wasn’t long before Wonder broadened his horizons and founded the PLAYDAYS collective with other West End artists, such as rapper Malko. “We started making music in the small studio at cégep Gérald-Godin, with its busted speakers,” explains the 26-year-old artist.
Thanks to a contact in Malko’s entourage, PLAYDAYS attracted the attention of Cult Nation, a Montréal label renowned for having launched the career Charlotte Cardin. Following the release of a first EP in 2021, the collective disbanded, but Wonder remained very close to Malko, who continued his career on the Montréal label.
Nowadays, Willy works on every release by the brilliant rapper and singer, who was one of our five Québec rap rookies to watch in 2024. The pair has a single word in mind when they create music together: elegance. “Elegance is a state of mind, and we find inspiration in all kinds of music: rap with a bit of jazz, a touch of Afro, and a smidge of kompa,” says Wonder.
His collaboration with Malko will continue in 2025, and he’ll also release the fruit of other collaborations, notably with Montréal R&B singer Blynk. Still on Cloud Nine after an inspiring session at a song camp in Montréal alongside Parisian duo Luidji & Aupinard, Wonder is also keen to make his mark in France.
NGL FLOUNCE
NGL Flounce has played the violin since the age of 5. The artist, of Madagascar heritage, spent 12 years at the conservatoire in France. She radically changed her style in her teens, abandoning classical music in favour of rock and metal, two styles that she’s explored for years. Open other musical genres, the beatmaker has always remained curious about the music that played at home, especially the Indian and Madagascan music to which her father listened. Around the same time, she discovered the complex universe of minimalism pioneer Steve Reich.
It’s precisely that kind of open-mindedness that she champions in her own music. After moving to Montréal to study in her late teens, NGL Flounce intuitively joined the classical music club at McGill University, before immersing herself in the city’s electronic music scene. It would be an experimental ambient music project that she created for one of her classes that made her want to explore DJ-ing and music production. “That’s when I understood that I missed creating,” she says. “I wanted to let myself go with the flow, and expand my horizons.”
Thanks to the expertise of her good friend, rapper and DJ Frantz Lin, Flounce quickly learned the rudiments of djing. The pandemic that afforded her more time to hone her skills with Ableton software, during her free time after school and work.
The 23-year-old artist now has a solid track record as a DJ on the Montréal scene. As a composer, she enjoys collaborating with artists from across the musical spectrum, including Belgian rapper Anthena (on a remix of the song “Le meilleur”), and Mozambique-born Montréal singer Samito, a former Révélation Radio-Canada winner (in 2015–2016). NGL Flounce is currently working with Samito on an artistic project that should see the light of day in 2025. She’s also working on an EP of her compositions, that fall somewhere between UK Garage and traditional Madagascan music.
CHRISTIAN SEAN
Christian Sean was born in Switzerland, to nomadic American parents, who took him all over Europe and the U.S. during his childhood. Throughout this ever-changing environment, music was always a solid anchor for the producer, multi-instrumentalist, singer, and beatmaker. “At its core, my family is very musical,” says Sean. “Even if no one has worked professionally in the field, everyone sings. My mother and I used to love harmonizing our voices to songs. That’s how I became aware of all the different aspects of music.”
Officially a Montréaler since he was two-and-a-half years old, Sean was swept up in the city’s rock scene when he was a teen. He formed his first band in the late oughties with a few friends, and soon realized that it came quite naturally for him to organize the recording sessions and take on the roles of producer, arranger and sound engineer. Inspired by popular indie art bands of the time, like TV on the Radio and Animal Collective, he had a similar desire to mix psychedelic flights of fancy, strong melodies, and complex, highly fragmented production.
He still strives for that, more than a decade after the end of his rock band. The 30-year-old has completely changed his style, but his approach – at a crossroads of catchy formulas and uncharted explorations – remains the same. A shining example of this method, his first album, Hallelujah Showers, will be released by Bonsound on Jan. 31, 2025.
But Christian Sean is also a versatile behind-the-scenes craftsman. As a beatmaker, he made his mark with Sophia Bel on the album Anxious Avoidant (2022), one of the first albums from Québec to articulate the amalgamation of hyperpop and 2000s pop, a mix that’s become increasingly common in the last two years. More recently, Sean has also applied his magic touch to one of the most successful R&B albums of the year, “ReRun,”, by Montréaler Sara-Danielle.
He’s now turning his attention to hip-hop, working as a beatmaker with Kaya Hoax, an intriguing newcomer to the local rap scene. The fruit of their collaboration should come out in 2025.