Since its launch in 2013, Red Bull Sound Select has hosted over 400 events to support hundreds of emerging artists in 15+ cities around the world. Sound Select’s artist lineup is incredibly tight pushing forward such promising acts as Jazz Cartier, River Tiber, Tre Mission, Frigs, The Darcy’s, a l l i e, and ShaqIsDope, among many others.

According to Nelsen, the team supports the artists by “providing performance opportunities at monthly showcases, chances to collaborate with mentors, and support at festivals like SXSW, Lollapalooza, NXNE, Austin City Limits, Manifesto, Fun Fun Fun, and Wavelength.” The artists, however well known, get to collaborate together which often opens up doors the artists couldn’t have gotten to otherwise: “I did a show in LA with Kaytranada, and while I was out there I did a three-day session with Childish Major from Atlanta” Toronto’s Tre Mission gives as an example when talking about his last few years of collaboration with Sound Select, “The [opportunity], the weather, the hotel, the show, the studio, it was all perfect.”

Miller’s friends from Red Bull came to him with the opportunity for Arts & Crafts “to bring resources to different artists [they] believe in” and since artist development is what A&C does it was an easy Yes. In parallel, Manifesto received a similar offer alongside NXNE and Wavelength as additional support. As an organization with deep insight into Toronto’s hip-hop and R&B/soul scene, Ohtake jumped on the opportunity to curate that chapter of RBSS.

“I personally had been a promotion and ambassador lead during Red Bull Music Academy’s launch in Canada back in 2006, and Red Bull had been a supporter of Manifesto since our launch in 2006, so there was a natural progression when Manifesto was asked to be involved in their next music related program.”

When asked how the artist selection is made it was clear that for curators it is all about passion and gut feeling: “I wait until something is undeniable to me, where I can’t help but try to be involved and stick my nose in. It only happens once in a while, so those are the moments where I know I have to go for it. I am not a scientific mind, my gut is all I have” he laughs.

Ohtake keeps his ear to the ground in search of promising talent, looking for “artists that have strong growth potential and can accelerate their development through the support of a program like Red Bull Sound Select is the type of act that we look to work with. Manifesto and my personal concert production already puts a focus on the selection of strong young new talent” he goes on, “So really we’re doing what we’ve always been doing through our artist selection process. Red Bull Sound Select is simply a natural next-level resource that we can provide to these key artists to perform in front of bigger audiences and improve their live show presentation.”

Although it has only been a few years, Red Bull Sound Select has plenty of success stories to share. In Ohtake’s opinion, the best success stories are “Jazz Cartier, Keita Juma, and a l l i e. To be honest, we caught Jazz Cartier as he was about to become a household name by Canadian hip hop audiences” he adds, “[Cartier’s] performance at RBSS was only a small part of a huge wave of opportunity for [him], but the Red Bull relationship has definitely created additional perks.”

“Keita Juma and a l l i e are definitely two very talented, hard-working artists who have been developed via Manifesto Festival, and provided added exposure via Red Bull Sound Select (including performance with other Toronto Sound Select curators).”

Miller is similarly proud of his finds: “It’s been amazing watching River Tiber move through the Sound Select ranks. When we started working together a couple of years back we did a show at Adelaide Hall in Toronto with BADBADNOTGOOD. A couple of weeks ago we released a track with Sound Select where he collaborated with Pusha T. What Tommy (River Tiber) is doing right now is next level for sure.”

More recently RBSS became a major support for The Darcy’s reappearance who released a new album with Grammy-award winner Shawn Everett: “It is shameless and fun and catchy and relentless. Few bands are as willing to put themselves out there as far as they do. You have to respect the hard work they put in and the sheer variety and quality of what they consistently produce.”

I clearly remember one of my favorite RBSS showcases at Adelaide Hall last year when Charlotte Day Wilson made her first live appearance. No one in the room would’ve guessed it was her first time playing most of those tracks live. “Charlotte’s is a name you will be hearing a lot of in the months and years to come,” says Miller, “She has one of the best voices I’ve ever heard.”

One of this year’s hottest RBSS tickets was Ty Dolla $ign with KEITA JUMA, Jo and Nasty Nigel. It was a full house of all sorts of cool people many of whom left with a mental note to follow up on ShaqIsDope. Having recently released his mixtape Black Frames Shaq proved to that dark sweaty room that he was only getting started. Naturally, talent like that caught RBSS’ attention and this was just one of many platforms he got an opportunity to step up on.

In addition to the annual summer festival Manifesto will be celebrating a 10-year anniversary this September for which they are looking to bring in some of the Sound Select talent. Looking over this year Miller’s focus is on the new records from The Darcys, Charlotte Day Wilson, and River Tiber who will also be performing at the Montreal’s Red Bull Music Academy festival this fall.

Reality may not be as fantastic as becoming famous is on TV but good things come to those who try hard and with as many eyes on talent as there are at RBSS you might have more than just a standing chance.

Images: 1: Jazz Cartier poses for a portrait at Red Bull Sound Select Presents 30 Days in LA, at Teragram Ballroom, in Los Angeles, CA, USA on 30 November, 2015. 2: Tre Mission-Portrait Tre Mission poses for a portrait at The Echoplex in Los Angeles, CA, USA, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents 30 Days in LA, on 22 November, 2015. 3: Allie poses for a portrait for Red Bull Sound Select at Tattoo in Toronto, Canada on April 23rd, 2015. 4: ShaqIsDope poses for a portrait at Red Bull Sound Select at The Opera House in Toronto, Canada on April 29, 2016. All images courtesy of Red Bull Content Pool.

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After much anticipation and success with his debut album Malmaison last year, 22-year-old Tre Mission is releasing a follow-up: Stigmata. Having composed and shared on the web for years, Tre Mission, though young, has had a strong international following in the Grime scene, which is characterized by fast-action beats and quick turns of phrase. The new album, however, gets a bit more mainstream.

The Grime music scene started over in England, with Dizzee Rascal being its most well-known denizen, so it’s not surprising Stigmata is packed with British rappers. Skepta, his brother JME, and Merky Ace – all well-known Englishmen make appearances as well as some homegrown Canadian talent like K-OS and Andreena. Both Tre Mission albums are heavy with outside influence, his lyrical content is kind of west-coast gangster with some English slang thrown in, reggae beats in the background, and of course the staccato Grime rhythm shepherding each song along. But where Malmaison was a true Grime album in the sense that it sounded like it was recorded in a garage with a MacBook and a drum machine and all the songs were bangers, focused on being the kind of music you blare from your car while rolling up to a party; Stigmata gets a little commercial. Though his lyrics come at a million miles-an-hour, the background beats are slowed down, the content gets a little melodramatic, and there are extended refrains.

Oh, the refrains. When you speak with the pacing of a racecar engine it’s understandable that you’re going to struggle to make a song last three or four minutes after you’ve said everything there is to say. What Tre Mission seems to have done is just fill up time with refrains. The most frustrating example is the song “Money Make (her)” where Andreena repeats the phrase, ‘Money make her, money make cu-cu-ga, money make her’ – which takes up about a third of the track.

As stated before, Grime is at its core street music. Part of its appeal is the low production value and focus on the primary rapper. But with Stigmata, and its endless refrains sung by pretty-sounding ladies, Tre Mission has moved away from Grime into pop-rap. This is fine, maybe even natural, artists change and adapt between albums all the time. The problem is that he’s still relying on cheesy drum machines and Spartan production methods to layer his music in a not-very-sophisticated way. If he wants to be a pop-rapper, he’s going to need to get himself a real drummer and read up on sound design.

This isn’t to say the album is bad, because it isn’t, but it does have the feel of transition. Tre Mission has gotten quite a bit of attention since Malmaison and all the producers, journalists, executives, got signed by Big Dada, and fellow musicians he’s been around this past year have no doubt had an effect on his style. Therefore, Stigmata can best be described as a piece of a larger project, a step to Tre Mission discovering a whole new style and becoming a star – or – a dalliance before he reverts to his roots and takes Grime to another level – either way it seems he’s destined for something big. We’ll see after the album drops on the eleventh of this month.

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Thursday night at Tattoo, CMW was the host to the Noisey Canada hustleGRL showcase.

The evening started off fashionably late (an hour and a half behind to be precise). The said host of the party, Karla Moy, aka hustleGRL, local writer/blogger, DJ’d for the first few hours keeping the crowd occupied. Shortly before 11, Toronto’s local twin duo A-Game came on.

The boys have been around for some time, opened for the likes of Big Sean, Tyga and Kardinal Offishall, wrote some chart-topping singles and throughout that journey acquired a solid fan base. By the time A-Game got to their claim to fame track “Money Made Me Do It”, the room was in heat, participating in a full-blown singalong.

After a rather detailed full band set up, The Airplane Boys (A.P.B.), Beck Motley and Bon Voyage, took over the stage. And the venue. Don’t let the basic name fool you or their Scarborough upbringing, these two are not the next ‘N Sync. The A.P.B. music repertoire is walking a fine line of pop hip-hop, especially in your headphones, live however, this is some bad shit that will blow your mind. With heavy synths and a pronunciated bass guitar, the live set was shaking bodies from the front to the back. The lyrics are clean-cut and sharp with a solid contrast from Motley to Voyage.

During the break the technical difficulties kicked in. Tre Mission wasn’t able to bring his full band on stage and quite frankly had a daunting expression of disappointment on his face, not filling the set while the crowd was not filling the rapidly falling quality of sound. Having seen Mission before we have a clear idea of his scope of talent, last Thursday night was just bad luck falling in to all the wrong places. Don’t worry Mission, we’ve got faith.

While there were other hip-hop showcases at the CMW, this one felt like home. There is a common feeling around the city, Canada really, that our hip-hop scene is limited to Drake, if it’s there at all. This showcase brought together some local artists who have been around the block a few times and are only a few of those out there today.

The reality is that Toronto has a very alive hop-hop scene, and a very clear, lyrical, razor-sharp hip-hop style that is slowly coming up and out from the underground.

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With the world’s eyes locked on Drake, there is a lot of discussion happening around the lack of the hip hop movement in Toronto, but dare we say, people should pay more attention. The hip hop scene is alive and well, thriving in smaller venues on various weekdays. Last Thursday night, this hip hop underground crowd gathered at Tattoo for the Isaiah Rashad and Tre Mission show.

Though barely in his twenties, Mission has already found a unique sound: hip hop patched up with snippets of dubstep, grime and bass. Mission is a sharp MC and a talented producer, and as expected, his lyrical delivery live is clean and cutting.

The narrative in the tracks hits close to home for everyone in one way or another, and who doesn’t appreciate hearing the word “Pussy” in the chorus. Playing tracks from both Malmaison and from a forthcoming album (release date to be announced), Tre Mission tore the dark Tattoo up.

This is no luxury; his music is available for free, you too can, and should, enjoy it.

The post Born and raised in TO: Tre Mission live appeared first on Quip Magazine.