And all that Jazz
Toronto’s Jazz Cartier is on the verge of international stardom, and he knows it. The rapper, self-proclaimed Prince of the City, may be our next top export
Jazz Cartier is sauntering through Kensington Market in an Iron Maiden T-shirt and camouflage pants, brandishing a gleaming 24-carat custom gold pendant and trilling to no one in particular: “Beep beep! New chain alert!” This is his version of keeping a low profile. Minutes later, he’s slouched in a booth at Spadina Ave.’s Red Room lamenting the arrival of a text message.
It seems that despite Cartier’s, ahem, extensive discretion, a distant acquaintance somehow spotted him during his Kensington stroll.
“I haven’t heard from this person in so long,” he says. “Most times I’m in Toronto, I can’t even walk down the street. “I’d rather people not know who I am.” Such is life for the self-proclaimed Prince of the City: he’s the wallflower swinging from the chandelier.
With the February release of the claustrophobic and charismatic Hotel Para
noia — his second mixtape in the span of a year — Cartier has announced himself as The 6’s next top export.
He’s also an exception, one of the first to emerge from our suddenly fertile urban-music nursery without a co-sign from Drake.
He stands alone and he stands out, with a sinewy, pugnacious flow that sounds a world away from the high thread-count comedowns often favoured by the OVO and XO sets. And lately, his life is starting to resemble one of his dizzying rhymes. The 23year-old has been bouncing back and forth to Los Angeles to work with producer Lantz while filling his summer with weighty festival gigs on both sides of the Atlantic, including Lollapalooza and Osheaga.
Recently, he dropped the bubbly tribute “Lil Wayne” and only had to wait a day for Weezy to weigh in: “My new favourite song . . . I f’n luh dat shyt! Preshiate it!! Funny as fk but dope!”
If success has brought instability, Cartier’s prepared.
Though the rapper (real name: Jaye Adams) was born in Toronto, his stepfather’s U.S. government job meant that the family lived a nomadic life, with stops in Idaho, Barbados, Houston, Kuwait, Georgia, Connecticut, Virginia and Maine. That meant a lot of time in isolation, which meant a lot of time to rhyme; Cartier’s mother first caught him rapping at age 9. “To tell you the truth, he got into trouble for that,” his mom, Charm Price, recalls with a laugh. “He always said his mom was his biggest hater.”
While he lived in the U.S., Cartier returned to Toronto frequently, staying with his dad and working on music. In 2007, he met Lantz here at a studio. When his mom finally persuaded Cartier to spend a summer with her, he created a makeshift studio in his bedroom closet.
He was accepted at Chicago’s Columbia College but instead retreated to Toronto. Initially, he had to couchsurf because crashing with his father was no longer an option. “A few years ago he went MIA,” Cartier says. “I haven’t spoken to him much since.”
Soon, Cartier seemed to assemble a new family: a close-knit circle of friends and like-minded artists (including Derek Wise and Drew Howard) who called themselves the Get Home Safe crew. Together, they converted a sprawling Kensington apartment into a hedonistic headquarters dubbed the Palace and began establishing a rap rep as a reckless downtown counterpoint to the moody OVO sound.
For cash, Cartier sold drugs, endured one “horrible” night chopping chicken at the Hooters on Adelaide St. W., and hawked pricey jeans at Scotch and Soda until they fired him (to be fair, he admits to dealing out of the change room). Eventually, Get Home Crew had a “falling out” and Cartier was suddenly alone again.
“For the first time in a long time I had let my guard down,” he says, staying vague about why they stopped talking. “I lost all my best friends, so what do you do? Am I going to f---ing cry about it or am I going to snap? I snapped. Now I’m here. It’s a solo mission for me from here on out.”
Drama does seem to find Cartier. On this afternoon, as a reporter and photographer drive him to a post office to pick up that aforementioned chain, it’s a more minor personal conflict gnawing at Cartier. Periodically, he answers his phone to bicker with his longtime girlfriend, Koza Kurtulus, who he says is aggrieved about another of his solo missions: an upcoming trip to L.A.
For Cartier, the argument is sort of dampening new-chain day; at one point, he deletes a Snapchat celebrating the bauble when he frets how it will make his girlfriend feel. For what it’s worth, he’s a lot less worried about ruffling egos in the Toronto rap scene. “Everybody in the States compare me to Drake,” he raps on “Talk of the Town,” “because not many in the city can carry the weight.”
In person, he’s blunter still. “I have no competition whatsoever. Nobody is in the same tier as me,” he declares. “The only person I see as competition, more so inspiration, is Drake.”
Cartier is most frequently compared to Houston rapper Travis Scott, but that parallel seems mostly inspired by Lantz’s ominous production and shortchanges Cartier’s skill. As a rapper, he’s dexterous and theatrical, a champion chest-puffer comfortable flowing with gritted-incisor intensity or deranged playfulness.
Still, he’s yet to bait a hit-sized hook and his multiple-personality versa- tility might carry the threat of character-actor status. He’s keenly aware of areas he wants to improve and the power of his mixtapes is that all the tightly coiled aggression is underpinned by vulnerability.
After Hotel Paranoia spans battle rhymes, party rap, protest music and bedroom balladry, it closes with “Save Me From Myself,” which simultaneously finds Cartier violently marking his territory and contemplating suicide. His vulnerable side is visible in person, too. He’s still ner- vous enough performing live that he wears sunglasses and sometimes closes his eyes so it feels like he’s alone. Asked about what he needs to improve, he mentions a barely perceptible speech impediment.
“He’s comfortable in the spotlight, but he’s also shy,” his mom says. “One on one, he does not speak.”
Well, he talks to his mom every day. If he misses a day, she threatens: “I’m going to send out an APB, a missing persons report and put him on a milk box.”
In Cartier’s life of turbulence, his mom has been the constant. She had him when she was 19 and, until she remarried, it was often just the two of them. It was later her eclectic CD collection — spanning Jodeci, Jamiroquai, Beethoven and KRS-One — that fuelled his early curiosity. And yet, Price was intent that her son find purpose in anything but rap.
“I wanted to give him the things that most people said black kids couldn’t do: piano, taekwondo, tennis. That stemmed from me, not him. Music was the No. 1 priority to him,” she explains.
Cartier dreams of buying her a house, plus spreading financial security to his three little siblings, not to mention his inner circle.
“I want to get to a point where my girl, if she’s nagging me: get her a vacation. If my mom’s nagging me: get her a vacation. They can go together and talk about how much they hate me.”
Still, it can be a lot to worry about. “I feel like I’ve got the world on my shoulders,” he laments. When he shakes his head, his new chain jingles. He reaches down and caresses it for what feels like the 50th time. Hey, it’s a reminder that this new weight isn’t just on his shoulders, but around his neck.
“This thing is f---ing heavy,” he says admiringly. “Everyone wants something from me (and) I just want to enjoy my time with my chain. Soon it’s going to be iced out.”