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Album reviews Music

Safe

Safe – Stay Down

The latest mystery act loosely affiliated with Drake/OVO to bubble up in Toronto is Safe, a young MC whose aesthetic clearly evokes hallmarks of the OVO Sound sound, though he’s not signed to the label. The buzz around him started on Instagram and SoundCloud in the spring and was substantial enough to land him a headlining gig at the Mod Club this weekend. Now we have an eight-track debut EP to gauge what he’s all about.

The first thing that jumps out is how the whole “mystery rapper” angle feels more and more like the marketing strategy it is (though apparently it’s still effective). Beyond that, Stay Down has evocative sub-bass, vaporous atmospherics and plaintive half-sung, half-rapped lyrics about self-reliance, ambition, mortality and, of course, women. Safe is pushing an on-trend narcotic aesthetic set apart by his calm, dusky delivery and his way of drawing out syllables into sticky melodies and flows that frequently shift paces.

He’s an ambitious vocalist, but there’s a sameness to his tightly conceived sound that sometimes grows stifling.

Top track: Feel

Safe plays the Mod Club on Saturday (December 12).

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