Come on, finish wintering! Now that January is behind us, the organizers of the Taverne Tour invite us to set foot outside today to go to the Plateau-Mont-Royal tavern chosen to appreciate the work of more than 80 projects from all walks of life. musical: song, jazz, folk, electronic pop, psychedelic rock and hip-hop, as will be the case at the Belmont, where the electro-R&B musician Janette King, the MC 20Some and the ace composer, remixer and DJ will perform on Friday High Klassified, which announces that it will devote the new year to its solo projects.
Kevin Vincent, aka High Klassified, likes to lead a double professional life, sometimes a shadow producer for big names in Anglo-Saxon rap (Future, The Weeknd) and Franco-European (Damso, Hamza, among others), sometimes an artist already promising the release of a fourth solo project in the coming months. “If I decide to put more than six or seven songs on it, I will make an album,” the Laval resident tells us.
For a good dozen years, High Klass has played on both counts, with its futuristic production style with sharp percussion which made its first international breakthrough in 2017 thanks to the music of the song Coming Out Strongtaken from the album HNDRXX, by American rap star Future. In his jargon, composing music for rappers means making “placements”: “Over the last two years, I have worked on placements, so I have had less time to spend on my music project. album. »
“It’s a lot of work,” assures Vincent. I wouldn’t say it’s stressful for me, but I know the fans are waiting for something. Someone who is interested in a rapper will follow his work, his music; in my case, there are those who follow my work as a solo artist, then those who monitor what my next placement will be. The hardest part is knowing how to juggle both aspects of the job, and managing the time I put into it. I need to sort it out, to choose which rapper is worth spending less time on my solo projects to collaborate with him. »
Those who have followed the returns on his investments will have noticed that after the feat of having worked with Future and The Weeknd, High Klassified turned to French rap, with a series of collaborations – Vincent signed several productions of the first album, to be released, by Dau, finalist of the last season of the rap reality show New school and protégé of Niska.
The channels of communication are always open with the American scene. “But I really like traveling to Europe, so I enjoy it while working with the artists there. And then with the French, overnight, I can have a video conference with an artist and collaborate on music remotely, whereas with the Americans, the process is completely different: they prefer face-to-face, everyone in a studio. »