Song: Wasiu – “Daddy Issues” (prod. by Thomas White, Dear Lola, & WYLN)

The Upstart Canadien Rapper Shares a Deeply Introspective Strip Club Track, Premiered by HighSnobiety

05.4.2017

Critical Praise for Wasiu:

“Wasiu is the hip-hop voice of Montreal.” – i-D

“The young Montreal rapper has been working steadily to make a name for himself and it looks like he’s on the right track.” – Pigeons & Planes

“Wasiu is another one to look out for this year.” – Complex

“Many rappers twice his age would be wise to take notes…” – Okayplayer

“Wasiu is pretty much the embodiment of Montreal’s cultural shift.” – Noisey

“Wasiu is a rapper in a league of his own” – HighSnobiety

The Song:

A deep-thinking emcee with endless bars, the hugely talented Wasiu puts Montreal on the Hip-Hop map. Inhabiting a textured electronic production complete with military snares, subterranean bass, and tip-toeing pizzicato strings, Wasiu recounts the first time he ever went to a strip club on “Daddy Issues,” his latest single. Produced by Thomas White, Dear Lola, & WYLN and boasting some of the most politically provocative cover art you’ll see all year, “Daddy Issues” is a critical meditation on the moral dilemma of patronizing strip clubs, as well as the practical problem of making it rain when your country’s $1 note is a coin: “I’m tryna figure out which hole to put my loonies in/Fuck it, I just threw them shits/Hit her booty, bruised her skin/Shook her, but she started twerkin/Sorry I’m just new to this.” Premiered by HighSnobiety, “Daddy Issues” is the latest single from Wasiu’s upcoming project MTLiens 2.

Wasiu had the following to say about the song:

“The song is about my first experience at a strip club, wasted. In America, they have dollar bills. In Canada, our dollar is called the Loonie, and it’s a coin. I was familiar with making it rain thanks to music videos, so I just threw them shits at the strippers. Throughout the night, I had voices in my head questioning my morality, and though I felt wrong about it all, I gave in to my urges. Yet, I would become that guy who has conversations with strippers telling them, ‘you don’t have to this.’ I end my night by throwing up on some strippers and bouncers throwing me out. I made a song like this for 3 reasons:

1) This track was originally supposed to be a Dear Lola & Thomas White release. They’re instrumental EDM artists, and the filename was originally called ‘The Stripper Joint’. They had gotten WYLN to hop on it and contribute the gliding bass throughout the song. I took the joint and added my vocals to it, they loved it and agreed on having me include it on MTLIENS 2.

2) Strip clubs are an important part of Montreal. With that in mind, I knew that I would need an anthem for something that was dear to my city. Outsiders love our titty bars because our legal age is 18, and $5 gets you full-contact at any joint. In addition, it would honor the original title and intent of what the track originally was for.

3) There are certain themes in rap that everybody talks about, and it sounds redundant, cliche, or the same. I wanted to show and prove that I could do a song about an oversaturated idea such as a strip club anthem, but giving it an unique twist, making it more artistic, or being more original with it. I tapped into how I thought Slick Rick or Nas would have wrote this story, while sprinkling my vocals with a familiar aesthetic in its texture to a Future, Weeknd, or Fetty Wap. I just combined influences that people normally do not mix together, and that’s how I made it a unique song.”

A strong conceptual thinker and rhyming technician, Wasiu is perhaps known best in his homeland for his commercials for Kijiji, Canada’s answer to Craigslist. Viewed by over 4 million people, the commercials showcase Wasiu’s charisma and prodigious skills behind the mic. After a yearlong break from releasing music, Wasiu returned earlier this month with the VIBE–premiered “Snow Mexican,” a sinister track based on a fake (yet believable) Donald Trump tweet about Canada. In the past year, Wasiu performed at SXSW, The Montreal Jazz Fest, POP Montreal, and Canadian Music Week, and opened for Little Simz, Jazz Cartier, BadBadNotGood, Grandmaster Flash, Dead Obies, Sean Leon, and others. His single “P.K. Subban” garnered over 150k plays on Spotify, contributing to a combined 1.2 million total. Look out for MTLiens 2, hitting stores later this year.

Listen to “Daddy Issues”: https://soundcloud.com/afrowasiu/daddy-issues/s-ix93o

Check out the HighSnobiety premiere: http://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/05/04/wasiu-daddy-issues-premiere/

Please contact Michelle or Dharmic if interested in talking with Wasiu.

Wasiu Background:

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 “mixed breed”—not entirely Haitian, not quite Nigerian. Even though he’s Québecois (a Québec 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 father’s beliefs and culture led him to drop his father-given middle name—Wasiu—so that he wouldn’t be teased in his predominantly white school, where he battled black stereotypes by pushing his intellect past expectations.

Overcoming adversity and using those lessons as lyrical fuel is Wasiu’s 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. “I’m showing what people view as both the good and the bad,” he says, “and how without the bad, you can’t have the good, and so you start to appreciate the bad… for the good.”