Two years almost to the day after the publication ofWe knockrapper Shreez does it again with I’m hot, album with which he climbed a new level in his accession to the top of Quebec rap. It jumps to the ears from the biography Plastic at the opening, the young musician made a giant leap, as much thanks to the versatility of his musical ideas as to his prosody, which is no longer limited to chanting the slogans – “We whip! “, ” Someone knocked ! — having made him instantly recognizable on stage. Conversation with the interested party and his small committee.
Shreez no longer walks alone. Having arrived in advance at the cafe where the rendezvous had been fixed, he had dragged his friends away. PC, composer in his spare time and above all manager. Joseph, who will take photos during our conversation on the terrace along the sidewalk. And Alain, his head tucked into the hood of his gray hoodie, better known by his pen name Alain Térieur, no less than one of beatmakers the most requested of the current rap scene. The guys are part of the team at Canicule Records, a record company co-founded by Shreez and Tizzo (who comes by to say hello on the song Fido), and which publishes this new album, in collaboration with Disques 7ième Ciel, “which supports us, advises us and allows us to reach another level”.
“Do you mind if I smoke? Shreez asks politely. The afternoon is radiant in Rosemont, the members of the quartet pass the joint which blunts the admitted shyness of the rapper. “It’s true that I’m a shy guy, but I’m getting used to it,” he says of the attention he’s been getting since his debut album.
He grew up in the Fabreville district of Laval, but today says he embodies the sound of Montreal, where he lives. “I slip a lot of words in Creole when I rap, but I don’t rap 100% in Haitian Creole,” which he speaks, but only writes by ear. “It will happen to me to write bars [strophes] completely in Creole, I did it for Mystical », duet with colleague Rosalvo, published two years ago.
“My rap is Montreal, slice Shreez, and in Montreal, a lot of people add Creole words or expressions when they speak. »
The topic of the musician’s Haitian roots and Creole expression was on the table due to one of the album’s 16 songs, titled Supper. The most innovative, the most visionary of the lot, otherwise composed of several of these rhythmic drills that he has loved for several years — “It’s my flavor! Shreez announces. This flavor, we recognize it on fast life (with Soft, another member of Canicule Records) and the powerful Everything I knowwhich even borrows from the codes of the British recipe for drill, this bass sound which zigzags under the percussion and seems to hiccup at the bend of a measure.
Supper, on the contrary, borrows nothing from anyone, which makes it so unique. “It’s the song that took us the longest to make, because it wasn’t originally kompa,” he explains. “With every new project, I need to try to explore everything I think I can do — not wanting to do the same song 50 times. That’s why on the album, there are a lot of different atmospheres”, rough on SPORT and Everything I know (music signed PC), more tender and thoughtful on the extract Vicious circle (with Lebza Khey), flowing on Safe in duet with Souldia, pop and light on OQP with Izzy-S or hourglasswith the young singer Naida.
“I want you for lunch, snack, supper,” he hums to the object of his attention on Supper. In the middle of this highly touted romantic song, the rhythm turns into a kompa-R&B fusion, with its distinctive keyboard sounds, and the voices of two young artists from this popular Creole scene, Dee End and Massiv3, take us to the end of title. If Franco-Creole slang is typically Montreal, this music would be just as much, a contemporary interpretation of rap, R&B and kompa, distinct from the kompa-trap popular in Haiti and its diaspora.
And Montrealer, Shreez also says to be in the themes of I’m hot. A city, a spirit, with its good and bad sides, the latter having been more in the news for several months. “Yeah, sometimes it’s as bad as they say, but not for me,” says Shreez, who also makes it clear that the expression “being in traffic” he uses in the song Plastic does not refer to smuggling, but to minding one’s business. “Being out in traffic. It’s a way of speaking, you understand? I do my business, always outside — no drug dealing, I’ve never been in there. »
“My rap tells a reality, continues Shreez. Sometimes these are things I have witnessed, sometimes others have experienced. It’s my way of being the spokesperson for our universe. »