{"id":132672,"date":"2025-02-06T15:07:37","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T20:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2025\/02\/06\/montreal-rapper-skiifall-talks-reimagining-lovers-rock-with-jorja-smith-kenny-beats-i-have-to-make-sure-that-its-done-well\/"},"modified":"2025-02-06T15:07:37","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T20:07:37","slug":"montreal-rapper-skiifall-talks-reimagining-lovers-rock-with-jorja-smith-kenny-beats-i-have-to-make-sure-that-its-done-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2025\/02\/06\/montreal-rapper-skiifall-talks-reimagining-lovers-rock-with-jorja-smith-kenny-beats-i-have-to-make-sure-that-its-done-well\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal Rapper Skiifall Talks Reimagining Lovers Rock With Jorja Smith & Kenny Beats: \u2018I Have to Make Sure That It\u2019s Done\u00a0Well\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tFrom Theodoros Bafaloukos\u2019 classic film Rockers<\/em> (1978) to Steve McQueen\u2019s more contemporary anthology entry Lovers Rock <\/em>(2020), the luscious melodies and charming lyrics of lovers rock \u2013 a particularly romantic reggae subgenre \u2013 have been enrapturing and inspiring artists for decades. Montreal rapper Skiifall (pronounced \u201cskyfall\u201d) is the latest rising star to be bitten by the lovers rock bug, but he\u2019s not wholly unfamiliar with the style.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tHailing from Barrouille in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Skiifall moved to Montreal, Canada, with his family as a child, and spent his high school years falling in love with Atlanta rap, moving away from the soca and reggae that soundtracked in his childhood. After a few years of toiling in local bands and honing his chops with partially government-funded studio time, he released his breakthrough debut single, \u201cTing Tun Up,\u201d in 2020. The song garnered massive buzz in the U.K., leading to a remix with Knucks and increased eyeballs and ears on Skiifall. Though his sound morphed into something closer to hip-hop than soca, Skiifall\u2019s sonic profile never completely abandoned his roots: think of the infectious dancehall pulses on \u201c2 Charming\u201d from his 2023 Woiiyoie Vol. 2 \u2013 Intense City<\/em> EP.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMontreal-based producer and DJ YAMA\/\/SOTO is billed as a co-lead artist on \u201cTing Tun Up,\u201d and that song kicked off a professional relationship that would soon bring both parties into brand new creative spaces. The idea of making a lovers rock project started with \u201cYama sharing this playlist with me in 2022,\u201d says Skiifall. \u201cFrom there, I went to Spotify and learned how to use the algorithm to find new music. Once I found one, I couldn\u2019t stop there. It\u2019s now a 12-hour playlist, filled with lovers rock.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his exploration of lovers rock, the music became more than the background noise he used to disregard it as. He and Yama worked on a few early cuts and \u201cfrom that first session, we knew that we were going to make a whole project \u2013 but we didn\u2019t know exactly what we were going to make,\u201d Skiifall recalls. In less than two weeks, the pair had three songs they worked on with Kenny Beats, a genre-agnostic producer whose penchant for live instrumentation made it easy to wade into the world of lovers rock. Their sessions eventually culminated in Lovers Till I\u2019m Gone<\/em>: a breezy, earnest seven-song lovers rock set that explores stories of contemporary Vincy love and includes a guest appearance by Grammy-nominated U.K. R&B star Jorja Smith<\/a>. The full set arrived on Jan. 10, with the Smith-assisted \u201cHer World\u201d garnering over one million Spotify streams in less than a month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a candid conversation with Billboard<\/em>, Skiifall recounts how his producers helped him find the coverage to reimagine lovers rock for the 2020s.<\/p>\n

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