The walls seem to be closing in on 24-year-old rapper Wasiu as the haunting production by HESK & Paveun scrapes and screams through the corridors while the Montreal native unleashes an onslaught of rage and frustration on âBlkkkout.â Premiered by Okayplayer in honor of Black History Month, Wasiu overpowers the prejudices heâs faced with, crashing through speakers with or without a formal invitation. “The double entendre is to keep blacks out,” Wasiu explains, “so the reaction is to blackout against them wanting to keep the blacks out of their terrain. Weâre not happy, weâre not happy accepting the limited freedom, and the limited rights.”
Wasiu is young, but he speaks with a wisdom beyond his years. “Blkkkout” follows Wasiu’s fiery “Stereo Type” single, which debuted via EARMILK. As the son of first generation Haitian and Nigerian parents growing up in Montreal, Wasiu used a combination of his own experiences and general stereotypes to spit racist lyrics from the first person perspective of a racist white man. Prior to “Stereo Type,” Wasiu shared his first video single, “Physical,” which was produced by Kaytranada. The track premiered with HotNewHipHop and its accompanying visual released via Noisey.
âWhere I grew up made it so Iâm able to understand things or view things from a lot of different perspectives,â says Wasiu, who raps with the dexterous singsong cadence of Mos Def and the cultural omniscience of Nas. His forthcoming debut album funnels his life experiences into a culturally defining opus that balances both optimistic and pessimistic perspectives on human themes. âIâm showing what people view as both the good and the bad,â he says, âand how without the bad, you canât have the good, and so you start to appreciate the bad… for the good.â
Listen to “Blkkkout”:Â https://soundcloud.com/w-a-s-i-u/blkkkout
Check out the Okayplayer premiere: http://www.okayplayer.com/news/okp-premiere-wasiu-blkkkout.html
Please contact Michelle or Rory if interested in talking with Wasiu.
For Wasiu, being a pariah has always been a constant. A child of divorce from a Nigerian Muslim father and Haitian Protestant-Christian mother, he was torn between worlds, seen by both communities as impure, and a âmixed breedâânot entirely Haitian, not quite Nigerian. Even though heâs QuĂ©becois (a QuĂ©bec native), his immigrant parents tainted his claim to the province. Raised by his mother after his father moved to Toronto, he felt obliged to fit in with her side of the family. Resentments towards his fatherâs beliefs and culture led him to drop his father-given middle nameâWasiuâso that he wouldnât be teased in his predominantly white school, where he battled black stereotypes by pushing his intellect past expectations.
âI wanted to fit in and didnât want to feel like a stereotype, so Iâd force myself to excel but make it seem like it was no sweat,â he says, âIn a sense, I was assimilating myself to white Christian standards, and dropped my middle name to evade humiliation. That same name now is the one I use to represent myself, and it empowers my blackness due to its African origins.â
Overcoming adversity and using those lessons as lyrical fuel is Wasiuâs strongest suit. He is preparing his debut album which funnels his life experiences into a culturally defining opus that balances both optimistic and pessimistic perspectives on human themes. âIâm showing what people view as both the good and the bad,â he says, âand how without the bad, you canât have the good, and so you start to appreciate the bad⊠for the good.â
official site | twitter | facebook | instagram | soundcloud
“Blkkkout”:Â https://soundcloud.com/w-a-s-i-u/blkkkout
“Stereo Type”:https://soundcloud.com/w-a-s-i-u/stereo-type-produced-by-nezrio/
“Physical”:Â https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cj_6Ed6fjY /Â https://soundcloud.com/w-a-s-i-u/physical-kaytranada/
Bio, photos, and streams available here:Â http://www.audibletreats.com/wasiu