Snoop Dogg and Pharrell Williams – Let’s Get Blown
I was born in 1992, and when I was coming up I wasn’t able to listen to all the songs from the 90s because my dad was a missionary preacher. He didn’t really let us listen to secular music, but this was an early secular song that I did listen to. I kinda understood what that stuff was about, but I didn’t know it was specifically about smoking. To me, home is a bunch of places like Canada and Florida, and this takes me back to when I felt like I had a real home. It was a summer song, and it’s very nostalgic for me. My dad used to listen to gospel, but I wasn’t really into music at that those times in my life; I was just into video games and being young and carefree.
Ginuwine – Pony
My favourite Timbaland production is probably Pony. Producers like him had everything to do with R&B locked. You just didn’t want to stop listening to whatever he touched – he taught me a lot about music and production. I kinda wish I had heard music from the 90s at the same time as everyone else. I never actually heard songs from people like SWV, Aaliyah, Timbaland, Missy Elliot, Ginuwine, because of my dad, so for me it’s like I’m hearing those songs for the first time. Sometimes raunchy music is good. When I play songs like Luv and Say It, there are some girls just screaming, crying, or taking their tops off and throwing them at me. I’ve had bras and panties thrown on stage before, it can get crazy.
Tory Lanez – I Told You
Music gave me an outlet to express myself when my mum died, because when she died, I wasn’t listening to anything. It helped me tell stories from what I saw around me. Being from Toronto, which is such a multicultural place, you put all those ethnicities into a melting pot, so the music is a melting pot, too. I take stuff from Indian music, Asian music, from Spanish music, things like that. When it comes to “swavey” sounds, which describes that mixture, you can pick anything from my album to reflect that. I Told You is a song on my album that really summed up my life at that time. It talks about when I got kicked out the house and I was on my own and homeless, and then it talks about success and being able to fly private and things like that. There’s a kind of poetry.
Tanto Metro and Devonte – Everyone Falls in Love Sometimes
This Tanto Metro and Devonte sample is what I used on Luv. It takes me back to when I was younger, meeting my first girlfriend, falling in love and being in basement jams in Canada. I was 14 or 15 and going to old-school Jamaican parties and reggae jams in people’s houses. When I was in high school in Brampton, that’s where we had most of our basement parties. The whole of Toronto has a big West Indian community but after I moved downtown, I realised that Jamaican was everywhere. This and songs like Wayne Wonder’s No Letting Go remind me of being young and in the club with girls. I’ve always approached girls, I’m not shy. I’m a Leo which means I’m very blunt at times, whether it be in that kind of emotion, or anger or happiness or whatever it is.
Notorious BIG – Hypnotise
When I first heard Life After Death I felt like I was watching a movie. It took you on a journey. This is my favourite song from it – not the one that’s on the radio, but the album version with all the girls calling up his phone at the start, and you hear the voicemail and then he starts rapping. He definitely helped with the inspiration for my skits – I like them and there’s a lot on the album. Life After Death just felt like someone was talking about things that we were into as young men. There’s a lot of moments. He says a lot of real stuff. He comes on one of the verses of Sky’s the Limit and says: “A nigga never been as broke as me.” I feel that way, too. I’ve been super broke. I’ve had very unfortunate situations and now I’m happy to show people that you can persevere through it. That’s what my whole album is about, just persevering. A lot of people didn’t know that. Everything you want, you can get.
• I Told You is out now Virgin EMI.
