Toronto rapper Road Runner has been steadily building hype for his forthcoming album Trapistan since announcing it in his interview with Complex Canada earlier this year. Now, he’s out with the title track from the project.
Built on a sample of popular Indian song “Tu Jaane Na” reimagined by Toronto R&B artist M1rza, “Trapistan” grabs you by the throat with urgency and melodrama. Over somber piano keys and haunting, reverb-drenched background vocals, Road Runner sings about some fairweather friends he’s parted ways with. “I fell out with some brothers I got tired of showing love/And even if you lit you gotta thank the man above,” he sings.
“I got tired of one-sided love with some people. We fell out,” Runner tells us about the track. “No matter how big you get, never forget about God.”
The music video for “Trapistan,” edited by Mikita and directed by Tango, sees the rapper pour one out with his friends in front of East York Town Centre and tool around his Thorncliffe Park neighbourhood in an orange Lambo.
Compared to this previous release, the gentle, soul-sampling “First Day Out,” this track is a heavier-hitting affair, and perhaps a sign of things to come on Trapistan, due out later this year.
In our interview with Runner, the rapper said the new album will be faster-paced than his last project, the EP Forever Alone. ”This new one is very upbeat. I think my favorite songs are on this one,” he said of Trapistan, most of which he wrote while under house arrest. “Some of the music I’ve made in the past couple months is the greatest music I’ve ever made. Being in the house has given me more time to write. When I’m outside, I’m lazy. But now I’m always writing.”
