Op.Ed.: Belly’s "The Greatest Dream I Never Had" Listening Party

RESPECT.‘s Peter Marrack recently attended Canadian rapper Belly‘s listening party for his new mixtape The Greatest Dream I Never Had. Download here.

Read what transpired after the jump, and be on the lookout for our exclusive video interview with Belly dropping soon.

There’s a new wave of hip-hop music sweeping through the ave.’s of downtown Toronto, spearheaded by Drake and the OVO monopoly, including XO counterparts The Weeknd, producers Illangelo and Doc McKinney, rappers like P Reign, and of course, Mr. Godfather himself, Belly. It’s truly a remarkable era for hip-hop in the city, as followers multiply daily, and enthusiasts speculate as to whether Drake will exit Ca$h Money and establish his own label in Toronto. Hell, a label run by Drake and co. could only improve the chances of this new T.O. sound reaching ‘movement’ status, which would be a first for the “lonely country of Canada”, as P Reign dubs it. When I spoke to Toronto-based producer Burd & Keyz the other day, he described the new Toronto aesthetic as, “40 [Drake’s producer] mixed with the Kill Bill soundtrack and 90’s R&B”. Slow-tempo beats, vocal pitch experimentation, hard bass, trembling hi-hats, 90’s samples, A-bar-influenced content, introspection, pills, syrups, greens, and an eerie admiration for the ladies… Imagine a small basement studio on the outskirts of the city, consumed by marijuana smoke, “a room full of n*****”, and what you get is OVOXO’s slow-cooked appropriation of the hottest genre in AmeriCanada, hip-hop.

While we’re on the subject of smoke-filled basement studios, not so long ago I was asked to attend Canadian rapper Belly’s final listening session for his new project, the DJ Drama-endorsed The Greatest Dream I Never Had. Belly, for those of you unfamiliar, is a Palestinian-Canadian Juno Award-winning rapper. He won ‘Rap Recording of the Year’ at the Juno’s, Canada’s equivalent to the Grammys, for his debut album, The Revolution, and won MuchMusic Video Awards for “Pressure” and “Ridin”, respectively.

When I pulled up to Wellesley Sound Studio on Ontario Street in downtown Toronto, bumping RZA’s “N.Y.C. Everything”, it was just before 10:00 p.m. I admired the graffiti art on the wall of Wellesley SS, before ditching the Saturn across the street by an auto garage. Belly’s producer, DaHeala, had already parked his car there, and was waiting in front of the studio to be let in. Upon entering the studio, DaHeala and I travelled down a short set of stairs, hooked through a hallway, and entered into the basement studio, with an adjacent instrument and recording room on the left side. Belly was already there, loitering around the middle of the room, smoking a blunt, blowing O-rings, while his entourage, including Toronto media staple Lola, of ILuvLola fame, crowded onto a black leather sofa along the wall. “What up?” I said, reaching out to slap hands. “I’m Peter from RESPECT. Mag.” That immediately hit a lightbulb. “Ah, I wondered who this cat was coming in.” Belly chuckled, inviting me to pull up a chair. He was swagging a pair of chinos, which sagged below the legal measurement in Coconut Grove, a black tee, a cross between desert boots and wallabees, shiny black shades, and a black diamond chain. Belly is a rather large dude, with braided ponytail, scruff on the beard, squinty black eyes (because of the weed), tattoos, and a refreshingly hygienic facial complexion. Belly’s a nice guy, generous, yet imperious enough to tell me he didn’t want to conduct our video interview before the grande piano in the recording room. “Naw,” said Belly, “Let’s do it under the lights.”

The Greatest Dream I Never Had is Belly’s follow-up to Sleepless Nights, the DJ Ill Will assisted mixtape which chronicles Belly’s insomnia problem… stemming from demons personified by a chick with red eyes on the back of the album art. Coming into the listening session, I had only heard “Num8ers” off TGDINH, an eerie Hallow’s Eve banger dedicated to pills of all kind. “Five pills, I fucking roll,” riffs Belly, after one of the most-epic beat drops of late, and a cluster of stuttering hi-hats. To my surprise, “Num8ers” ended up being one of my least favorites on the project, and I fucking love that record. TGDINH is a remarkable progression from Sleepless Nights, as we get to experience vintage Belly, mixed with a new Belly increasingly prone to sprawling sonic experimentations, whining 90’s samples bordering on horrorcore, and brief vocal manipulations. Followers of the XO clan will also appreciate a stellar sample of Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games”, while immediately recognizing the helping hand of Abel and co. on the boards. The tempos on TGDINH are slowed-down considerably, the beats roofied. Long instrumental sections transition into conversation, a la My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, during which Belly provides vivid soliloquies on love, loss, and of course, the trending topic of the month, recreational drug use. In my blunted opinion, Belly does on TGDINH what Lil Wayne failed to do on Tha Carter IV. He utilizes clever wordplay wherever the record allows, however, he also divulges enough information about himself to keep listeners fully-engaged, so they may relate.

After wrapping up our video shoot for RESPECT., concluding the listening session, Belly launched into one last story about —————- up in ———— [cut at insistence of our attorneys]. Apparently, he and ———— [cut at insistence of our attorneys, again] had been fishing all night long, and in the morning they gutted their catch out on the deck, discarding the carcasses in the lake so they ran up on the adjacent neighbors’ property. As Belly began to imitate his neighbors’ cries for sanctum, deviating from his accustomed laid-back tone, like, “Can you not gut those darn fish and throw em down to us,” I was finally able to discern what made TGDINH such an appealing listen. The finest moments on the tape occur when Belly either switches up his flow, abandoning gruff conversational rhymes for vulnerable melodic sections, or when he and DannyBoy extend the production into RZA soundtrack territory, aligning the disc’s pulse with new T.O. counterparts like The Weeknd. Hell, we all know Belly can command a beat by his voice alone, a la Prodigy of Mobb Deep, however, it’s moments when he exits his dojo ethereally, e.g. to imitate a neighbor, or to flow more like Drake, that we get to witness his improved versatility as an artist.

My only concern, and it doesn’t even relate to TGDINH, is Belly’s recent single with Snoop Dogg, which will appear on Belly’s forthcoming studio album. The record, “I Drink I Smoke” is a poppy mishmash of FloRida artificialness, and the kind of party jam outlawed from Grade 8 dances in Oakville, Ontario. Of course, I’m being hard on the dude. Belly spits fine on the record, the production is on-point, Snoop does his thing, and there’s enough commercial viability for Belly to purchase a Rolie for each member of his crew when all’s said and done. However, compared to the joints on The Greatest Dream I Never Had, and how much Belly gives us on those, “I Drink I Smoke” begins to sound rather pedestrian. After making his way along highway 416 from Ottawa, down the 401 and into Toronto, one might think Belly would quit making music to pay off his old mortgages. After all, the crib in Greenly’s history now, along with all the bullshit that went with it.