Music/Album Reviews

When Snotty Nose Rez Kids connect to our Zoom interview, they’re in a state of bliss.

They’re stoked because the duo’s newest album, Red Future, has just been released after a year of fine-tuning. It’s their first album since signing to Sony Music, and from Red Future’s first track, it’s clear that the record is a big step forward for one of Canada’s buzziest hip hop acts.

The Haisla rappers are psyched, too, for their upcoming TV show, Snotty Nose Rez Kids, which will premiere on CBC in 2025. The half-hour comedy will share some of the mishaps from the pair’s time on the road, and Snotty Nose Rez Kids say the show will bring some needed representation of Indigenous culture to Canada’s mainstream media.

So, yeah, you could say the guys are having a good year.

“It feels amazing,” says Quinton “Yung Trybez” Nyce, joining Zoom from a bustling cafe. “I don’t even know how to describe it. When I got home from our release party last night, I stayed up for hours. I just couldn’t sleep, thinking about the album.”

“We just held on to it for so long,” agrees Darren “Young D” Metz. “We worked so hard towards this album, and it’s finally out in the world. We’re just really zen right now. We’re really feeling in the moment.”

Don’t mistake the band’s contentedness for fatigue — Red Future is a bold, blistering album that begs to be blasted at a high volume, particularly at one of the group’s high-energy concerts. The record’s opening track, Welcome to My World, offers a glimpse into what will follow: “A restitution,” promises the very first lyric. “A war cry.”

“Welcome to My World is a reality check,” explains Metz. “Not only what me and Trybez go through, but what our people as a whole go through. And you hear it from that opening spoken-word section; you hear it in Trybez’s opening bars. It hits you in the face right away — we wanted to paint a picture, and that track is the starting point.

“We end the album on Red Future,” he continues, “which is looking forward, really moving forward in a positive light. It’s really a journey.”

“The album’s based on Indigenous futurism — the idea that we can see ourselves in the future,” adds Nyce. “For us to do that, we need to deal with the hardships and all the shit we went through growing up, everything our people went through. Welcome to My World lets people know that this is the shit I had to deal with in order for me to be here.

“I’m angry,” he continues. “I’m angry about kids being murdered in residential schools. I’m angry at the way things are going right now. But we’re letting people know what we went through, and that we’re here.”

While that anger never fully dissipates from the album — tracks like the standout No Dogs Allowed crackle with rage — Red Future often experiments with emotional dissonance. On Shapeshifter, for instance, Snotty Nose Rez Kids refer to a creation story about Raven and oscillate between high-impact beats and more lo-fi soundscapes.

“There’s a lot of layers to that track,” says Metz. “Not only the creation story, and the shapeshifters across culture, but it’s also us shapeshifting to a whole new level that we’ve never been to. We’re changing and learning and unlearning.”

That learning curve is one of the most compelling threads of Red Future — you can hear the growth in the duo’s production choices, which Nyce and Metz credit to their partnership with Sony.

“We had a lot more resources, production-wise,” says Metz. “We really wanted to continue pushing things on the production side with this record. This was the very first time we were really hands-on with the production. We’re working with the stems, and our engineer, to really bring it to life. The most fun part of writing and making the record was honing in on the production side.”

“Sony really gave us the resources we needed to make Red Future dope, and we had final say on the creative aspect of everything,” agrees Nyce. “That was a good start to that relationship, for sure.”

Metz and Nyce say they finished the Red Future development process with over 30 tracks — far too many for the album. Snotty Nose Rez Kids had to make tough choices about what to cut, and some of those unreleased songs still hit close to home for the duo.

For any other musical group, those tracks might be lost to the vault, with one or two hauled out for a deluxe edition or live performance. But Snotty Nose Rez Kids have another means of sharing those songs: Their upcoming TV show.

“All of those songs are bangers,” says Nyce, laughing. “We’re looking at putting a lot of the music into the show.”

“Over the years, we’ve had so many mishaps happen to us that were unfortunate and shitty at the time — looking at it now, we realize some of those stories are comedy gold,” adds Metz. “But with the show, we want to make you laugh and feel good at the same time.”

Of course, no album’s complete without a live tour, and Snotty Nose Rez Kids say audiences can be ready to have a great time if they come to a show. The duo generally plays intimate spaces — the average gig clocks in at under 2,000 people — but that proximity makes for memorable, visceral concerts.

“We just want to make you feel good,” says Metz. “We want to make you feel amazing.“It’s important that there’s chemistry between me and Trybez, but chemistry with the crowd, too. We’re learning how to engage with them, and really making sure we’re present in the moment — and that the audience is present in the moment, too. Whenever we do that, the shows are just fucking insane.”

“Vancouver and Toronto are two of our favourite cities, and levelling up in those cities is really important to us,” adds Nyce. “When everybody comes out and has a crazy time, it just … it makes you feel like a million bucks.”