The Maritimes’ most promising young MC peered down from high atop his tower. But he hadn’t always known such heights.
Before Mi’kmaq rapper and producer of the Pabineau First Nation (near New Brunswick) Wolf Castle starred in his new video “Get Lit,” set, ahem, in a castle, he grappled with far more humble origins. Even without seeing the clip—in which the swiftly ascending artist born Tristan Grant dons a regal robe and bops with stately backup dancers in a medieval palace—the song’s themes about classism immediately hit home. Chalk much of that up to its lofty string sample. Wolf Castle tells Complex Canada he wanted to start off his forthcoming album, Da Vinci’s Inquest, with “a cinematic feeling, and orchestral strings seemed like the perfect fit. I flipped the sample and threw it on some 808s to tell a story about rebellion and finding freedom.”
Just what was he bucking against? “I grew up on the rez, and really that’s saying all you need to know,” the First Nations artist says about the song and its clip, in the latter of which he takes hold of one of his people’s cultural touchstones, sweet grass, at one moment, while coming to grips with his elitist surroundings. “To find myself in a luxurious castle is a situation I didn’t think I’d ever find myself in to say the least—but from now on that ain’t the case,” he triumphantly adds.
And while the song assuredly bares the socially conscious rap torch, it also nimbly stops short of preachiness. Case in point: the magical monarch mirror Wolf Castle raps before, before long, is revealed to be a glass-less frame that he comically pokes his head through.
In the end, he says the song and video “‘Get Lit’ was my way of telling people that a new generation is here, and you better swim before you sink,” Wolf Castle says.
Check out the video for “Get Lit” above.
