Photo by courtesy/courtoisie. Left to right/De gauche à droite : Moneyphone, Jarrel The Young, Sael, Hunnah, kmoe
New Series! “SOCAN Picks of the Month”
Story by SOCAN A&R | Thursday October 8th, 2020
Words & Music is pleased to present a new series, “SOCAN Picks of the Month,” where several of our A&R Representatives choose the freshest sounds from SOCAN members that are leaving them especially impressed. We hope that this will encourage you to check them out, and explore their work further.
Story by Errol Nazareth | Thursday October 8th, 2020
Chatting with Afie Jurvanen (more popularly known as Bahamas) about society’s addiction to busy-ness – and its perverse idea that equates being still with being unproductive – reminded me of something American author Thomas Pynchon once wrote: “Idle dreaming is often of the essence of what we do.” In other words, idleness shouldn’t be viewed as a vice; rather, we should look at it as indispensable.
“Daydreaming is still a big part of my practice,” says Bahamas, who moved to Nova Scotia from Toronto with his family two years back. “And I think getting bored is so important. I grew up without the internet and cellphones, but with so much freedom to just run around,” says the singer-songwriter, who was raised in Finland and then in Barrie, a bedroom community an hour’s drive north of Toronto. “My mother rarely asked where I was going. She’d just be like, ‘Make sure you’re home for dinner.’
Everything’s Hunky Dory
Bahamas averages more than 2.5 million regular monthly listens on Spotify, with more than 450 million streams to date. “Lost In The Light,” from 2012’s Barchords, is nearing 100 million streams, while “All The Time,” the lead single from third album Bahamas Is Afie, recently passed 70 million. Nominated for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical at the 2019 Grammy Awards, Earthtones won Adult Alternative Album of the Year at the 2019 JUNO Awards. Jurvanen also received this accolade for Bahamas Is Afie in 2015, when he was also named Songwriter of the Year.
“I’m in awe of the youth, and inspired by what they’re doing, but what about allowing yourself to be bored, and engaging with the creativity that comes with being bored?”
If you think that it was re-locating to slower-paced Nova Scotia – “it’s lots of rocks, trees, water, and space for everyone” – that impacted Bahamas’s creative process, you’re wrong. He’s always embraced idleness, daydreaming, and boredom. And it wouldn’t be off the mark to say that philosophy manifests itself in his breezy, blissful singing and guitar playing.
There is, of course, more than meets the ear on a Bahamas record. Listen closely to the stellar collection of songs on his just-released fifth album, Sad Hunk (out Oct. 9, 2020) – even he calls them “the best songs I’ve ever written” – and you’ll be equally charmed and in admiration of his self-deprecation, vulnerability, and transparency.
“How do you say something that’s lyrically memorable and meaningful?,” he asks, and you can sense that’s his raison d’etre. “But when that comes together, it’s so rewarding!”
So, Nova Scotia hasn’t impacted his creative process. But being a dad? Definitely!
“I used to spend hours upon hours playing guitar, but now the time just isn’t there anymore,” says Bahamas. “It’s made me a stronger writer, more efficient. And to be honest, I think getting better at your craft forces you to be a better person.”
Which results in songs like “Up With The Jones,” in which he questions his role in consumer culture, and in “Wisdom of the World,” the album’s blazing closer, about forgiveness. “You want to be your own worst critic,” he says. “That way, nothing anyone says about you or your craft can hurt you. It’s so empowering.
“The challenge, though, is when you sing about relationships or the world. It can be difficult working that out in real time. What I mean is that by the time that particular song comes out, that moment you were feeling has passed, and the question becomes, ‘How do you honour that moment [that birthed the song]?”
Why So Sad, Hunk?
“Something like 10 years ago, I did a photoshoot, and in all the pictures they sent back, I was lit half in shadow, looking all brooding and mysterious. When my wife saw the photos, the first thing she said was, ‘Whoa, sad hunk,’ and after that, it became sort of a joke among our friends.”
Which brings us nicely to “Less Than Love,” which he calls one of the most important songs on the record. “It’s a snapshot of a moment, and every line is killer,” Bahamas says proudly. “It hit really hard the first time I played it. My wife and I were sitting in the car and we were crying. There were no words.”
Elsewhere on the album, “Wisdom of the World,” is sonically different from anything Bahamas has recorded. “It’s in a minor key ,which I don’t do very often,” he explains. “I wrote it on the piano. I just had the chord progressions and the opening line, and the rest came pretty quickly. It’s about my brother, who’s a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Figuring out a way to sing about that was challenging.
“Addiction doesn’t just affect that person [who’s addicted],” Bahamas adds. “He retreated from me, but he was able to get into a rehab program, and his life has changed in a positive way. It’s pretty amazing to see, actually.” The intense track ends with Bahamas chanting, “I guess the whole thing’s about forgiveness” several times.
“The only way out is forgiveness,” he says. “It’s the only way out, but we have to get there peacefully, and it has to be meaningful. I’ll probably write more songs in that vein.”
Photo by studio blnk
Shreez: Changing His Life
Story by Olivier Boisvert-Magnen | Tuesday October 6th, 2020
“Pas t’m’entir, j’m’en foutais de la musique/J’suis gêné, je déteste l’attention” (“Not gonna lie, I didn’t give a damn about music / I’m shy, I hate being the centre of attention”). Shreez drops this lyric on “Plankton,” the hard-hitting single from his first solo album, On frap. With those two lines, the Laval-born rapper aptly summarizes his personality, as if to say we’ll have to work really hard to approach him. “I’m a shy person, not very sociable,” he confirms over the phone. “But I’m better with interviews than I used to be. I’ve gotten used to them.”
His family, however, is still unaccustomed to seeing him in front of the camera, or onstage. “They still have a hard time believing it,” he says. “To them, it’s a complete mystery how I’m able to get onstage, because I was so shy as a kid. I just got used to it, after awhile, that’s all.”
In other words, Shreez is now a rapper only out of habit. Raised on the sounds of East Coast rap (Nas and Wu-Tang, most notably), the Québécois artist, of Haitian descent, was a fan of Young Jeezy, Gucci Mane, and 50 Cent as a teen, before moving on to other artists such as Chief Keef and the whole Chicago Drill scene – a darker and more raw version of trap.
But far from spending his evenings at the park, freestyling – as most classic hip-hop personal histories go – Shreez had a marked interest for everything computer-related. His friends Young Mic, Le Ice, and, later, Tizzo, would change the course of his life. “I decided to have a go at it after hanging out with them in the studio and watching them sing,” he says. “But just for fun, as a hobby.”
In 2018, Shreez was by Tizzo’s side when the latter’s career exploded thanks to “Ça pue, On fouetté” (the winning song of the French component of the 2019 SOCAN Songwriting Prize), “Pour un cheque,” and other hits from their collaborative mixtapes 51tr4p Fr4p50 and Fouette Jean-Baptiste, were released a few weeks apart.
“We were roommates at the time, on Henri-Bourassa [a main boulevard in the city of Montréal North, where a sizable portion of the Haitian community lives,” says Shreez. “We got evicted after three months because we were too noisy. The guys would make beats until five in the morning,” he recalls, bemused.
And that’s where things started to change. Almost overnight, Shreez stopped not giving a damn about music. “When I saw that we were having success, it gave me confidence,” he says. “The confidence to believe that I could earn a living that way. I wouldn’t have forged on otherwise. I don’t want to waste my time.”
The ambitious 26-year-old rapper knows how to be concise, whether he’s being interviewed or he’s writing verses. “Mets-toi où tu veux/ Mais jamais dans mon chemin/ Ton opinion, garde-la pour toi/ Comme Benjamin, j’m’en bats les reins” (“Stand where you want / But never in my way / Keep your opinion to yourself / Like Benjamin, I couldn’t care less”) he raps on “Partie,” an insider’s reference to another Montréal rapper, Benjamin Dokey (“Bat les reins”).
It’s this self-sufficient state of mind that guided the artist throughout the creation of On Frap. “I’m pig-headed,” he says. “I do as I please, but I’m not an idiot either. If there’s a piece of advice that I think makes sense, I’ll abide by it… But it’s always my decision, in the end.”
Productions by Alain, P.C., DiceFly, RKT Beat, Ruffsound, and Alex DaGr8 helped him make well-informed decisions. “It all starts from the beats,” says Shreez. “I absolutely do not force anything: I listen to the beats that people send me and if I don’t get, like, two or three bars to pop into my mind during that first listen, I move on to the next one,” adds the artist, who recorded the lion’s share of his album in the legendary studio of sound engineer M-Press Live, in Montréal’s Saint-Michel neighbourhood.
It’s to him that we owe the fact of taking Shreez out of his comfort zone on “Rose,” one of the album’s more melodious songs. “M-Press constantly wants me to sing,” he says, laughing. “It wasn’t something natural for me, before, because Tizzo and I would always pick beats that were on the trap tip.”
But his influences go well beyond trap and drill, and he’s a huge fan of artists that are at the crossroads of rap and R&B, like Tory Lanez. An ever-present acoustic guitar on Alain’s compositions (“Rose,” “J’en dis,” “Caramel”) brings an original twist to his new songs. “It wasn’t even intentional!” he says. “Alain sent me a bunch of beats, and it’s only later that I realized there was a guitar on basically all of the ones I had selected.”
Shreez’s evolution between On frap and La vie gratuite, his first solo mixtape, released in January 2019, is remarkable. A lot less dark and raw than its predecessor, fraught with references to illicit trades and computer fraud, the new album tackles more approachable, or at the very least less niche, themes.
The intro of “LVG 2Q” (an acronym standing for “La vie gratuite 2e quart”) acts as a bridge between the two projects. “J’avais des CVV pis des logs/Jamais eu les mains dans la drogue” (“I had CVVs and logs / Never had my hands in drugs”) Shreez raps. as if to dispel any doubts about his past. “That intro is a transition,” he says. “I don’t do that anymore, I no longer earn a living that way. I rap, now,” he insists. “There’s the old Shreez and the new Shreez.”
“Né pour briller, j’l’ai réalisé récemment/Si j’ai changé de voix, c’est pas juste pour moi, c’est pour mes parents” (“Born to shine, I realized recently / If my voice has changed, it’s not just for me, but for my parents”) he sings on the following song, “Diamants.” “My whole family listens to my music, so I try to make my lyrics less raw,” says Shreez. “I’m also doing it for my kid, even though he doesn’t understand my lyrics yet.”
On frap marks an important turn in Shreez’s life. Besides his fondness for “kush,” which he celebrates on the powerful “Loud,” there seems to be only one element common to the old and new versions of Shreez: hard work.
“On frap is just like ‘On fouette,’ it applies to everyone,” he says. “It means working hard. Whether you have a 9-to-5 office job, you’re a fraudster, or a stripper, you have to frap,” he explains, about his iconic slang expression. “Now that I do music, I work non-stop. While we’re doing this interview, my boy is coming to pick me up and take me to the studio. I’ll be there tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that… I never take a break.”
It’s this self-sufficient state of mind that guided the artist throughout the creation of On Frap. “I’m pig-headed,” he says. “I do as I please, but I’m not an idiot either. If there’s a piece of advice that I think makes sense, I’ll abide by it… But it’s always my decision, in the end.”