Backxwash
It’s an appropriately volcanic day in Montreal when I speak to Backxwash about her prize-winning debut album, God Has Nothing to Do With This Leave Him Out of It. “It had reached that point where I realised this was my sound, this was my style – it was different from anything else that I’d done,” the rapper and producer explains. A dark, bilious, scorched-earth attack on the hypocrisy of western civilisation, the record introduced the world to a brand-new mutation in the hip-hop canon, which pits metal’s eldritch howls and guitar clamour against stuttering hi-hats and 808s.
Coming from a city better known for its -approved indie-rock than beats churned in a cement mixer, the album seemed to arrive out of nowhere. Yet in the year since Backxwash attracted global attention – she won Canada’s coveted Polaris Prize in 2020 – a surge of goth-minded innovation has sprung up in the city, redefining what rap music can be. Around Backxwash in the city are the black metal-infused bars of Amideluxe and
