Featured Review

IT’S TOUGH TO BE A TWENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD RAPPER living in the shadows of the Six. For Jazz Cartier, a product of fancy boarding schools and the underground Toronto rap scene, it’s enough to stake him as our next great hope. Marauding In Paradise, Cartier’s self-released mix tape, is a confident collage of brutal breakup dialogue, biblical references and samples that include Toro Y Moi and Mista.

With sixteen tracks that travel through Toronto’s after hour clubs, cab rides and graveyards, Cartier destroys the downtown cliché for something real.

Mostly, he describes an urbane guy living a reality much grimier than the sub-tweets and sycophants found in Drake’s penthouse. (Although Cartier still knows how to drop an Annie Hall reference like it’s hot.) While he’s developing his voice with a flow akin to Travi$ Scott, Cartier spits fire and brimstone on standouts “The ...