Toronto Sound is a composite of influences that range from dark & murky to super melodic. Omari Jabari, an accomplished producer having produced for, among others, OVO Sound artist Roy Woods on the influential Waking at Dawn project (viral track ‘Menace’). His strength as an artist is his formidable curation skills and an unforgiving eye for ultra-detail. So it’s with great intrigue that his minimal-rap EP debuted featuring some heavy production. One of the producers that really stands out is T-Minus (“She Will”, “HYFR”, “Im On One”, “Moment 4 Life” and so forth).
Martyr is complex and much like the artist, places him clearly in the woke mystic rap-realm but he’s not at all in the wordsmith class that Jay Electronica inhabits. He instead weaves his brand of sonic expression with the expected polish of a rapper-producer but his approach is obtusely Young Thug.
The intro, which doubles as the album-title track is beautiful as it rides the sine-wave seamlessly between sordid introversion and prophetic hope. The project overall has a melodic, bouncy approach and if it wasn’t for Jabari’s eclectic punch-line driven hyper-rap on “Ye Story”, it would easily be a perfect fit in the sing-rap category. It’s instead a unique piece of melodic mumble-rap with flourishes of great rap-work.
