Drake may be the most famous Canadian who’s worked with R&B rising star Summer Walker, but he’s not the only one. Featured on the opening track of her latest album, Over It, is a sample by Vancouver singer-songwriter/producer Teddi Jones.

“We found out only a week before the album dropped,” Jones says, of finding out that Walker has picked up one of the samples she’d created alongside producer Coop the Truth. “It was a really fun experience.”

For Jones, music has always been a hobby, dating back to the age of 9 or 10, when she first started writing songs – a process that she remembers being therapeutic. But it wasn’t until this past year that she realized she wanted to turn that into a true profession. “There are so many avenues you can take in this industry,” she says. “It’s really exciting to have the freedom to express creativity in so many ways through music.”

Another artist Jones has worked with is Montréal-based R&B singer-songwriter Shay Lia. Jones is credited on two songs from Lia’s debut album, Dangerous: the slow groove “Rock Baby,” and the more rhythmic “Find a Way.”

So far, Jones has learned to “trust your intuition and never stop learning,” something she’s trying to apply to both her work and life. Whereas 2019 was “a year of preparation,” Jones is ready to transform all her experience into even more new music in 2020.

The key, to Jones, is to connect with artists who “share a mutual love and respect for music and people. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s about for me.”