Reema Major hailed as Canada’s next rap star
By Lenny Stoute
The future of female rap is calling from the beauty salon where she’s primping for interviews amidst the flurry of activity surrounding her biggest gig to date — a spot opening for Outkast rapper Big Boi at Toronto’s The Guvernment entertainment complex this past November. The future’s name is Reema Major. She is all of 15-years-old and enjoying the heaviest hype for a Canadian urban act since Drake.
Poised and upbeat, Major confesses she’s not at all sure how the show came together, noting that like much in her meteoric rise, it’s all due to the grace of God. And some canny hustle on the part of her manager and producer Kwajo Cinqo, who has been around the block a time or two as a member of Ghetto Concept. Cinqo was the initial link to Gene Simmons, which in turn led to Major’s current signee status with G7/Universal/Interscope. But we’ll get to that.
It’s all a long way from a jail cell in Khartoum, where the Sudanese native was born. Major says her jail cell birth was the result of a mistake on the part of the authorities, and her parents were released. But the sheer terror of the error wasn’t lost on the family and they left Sudan to embark on a trek that would see the young Major live in Kenya and Uganda before landing in Windsor, Ont. in 1998.
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Musically, Major broke through on the strength of her mixtapes and that continues to be the strategy. Currently, she’s simultaneously at work on a mixtape and her debut album. She reveals that sessions are going very well but hesitates to name drop any collaborators, stressing that Cinqo continues to contribute the majority of the beats.
As befitting her rapping roots in freestyle, she’s fierce as a lyricist, often demonstrating a worldly insight beyond her tender years. “When I’m freestyling, I don’t know what I’m going to say next,” she says. “Freestyling is completely in the moment and I love that. It’s what you do right there and then that counts.”
It was quite possibly that raw talent is what Kiss front man Gene Simmons saw when he met Major this past summer. “When Kwajo first told me Gene Simmons wanted to meet with me, I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ He’s a man of tremendous knowledge in the music business and he was just really supportive and easy to talk to. I was humbled that someone like Gene Simmons would think that I have ‘it’ — that thing you need to succeed.”
Up next in Major’s journey is her mixtape The One. But after that, the future’s all stardust. With so much up in the air, there’s no telling what she’ll be doing next. The likeliest thing is the full-length album release. “At this point, my music is all me,” she says. “I’m writing from my direct experiences, my ups, my downs, my hopes, dealing with my life. Writing is always how I have dealt with things. I only spit what I know.”
It’s no surprise she has a lot to say. Until 2009, Major split her time between Kansas City and Toronto, relocating to Toronto permanently as it has a more creative rap scene and a better launch pad for her success. Case in point, she was the youngest performer at this year’s prestigious urban music showcase Honey Jam, an annual Toronto event, and was the first Canadian female to participate in a hip-hop cypher at 2010’s BET Hip-Hop Awards.
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I was puzzled when I saw this piece in the print publication because I honestly do not know why SWAY would highlight a 15 year-old girl whose image is not only too provocative for her age, but perpetrates racial and sexual stereotypes about young black women. It seems to be the direct opposite of the somewhat bourgeois image SWAY is trying to convey.
15? Where the hell was this girl’s parents when these pictures were taken? And you want teenagers to read SWAY? Give me a break.
Are we Black Canadians so desperate for the next “Niki Minaj” that we have to publish this ‘ish? There is nothing wrong with profiling a young female musician, but when I see a young girl who obviously feel that in order to make it in the ‘Hip-Hop’ world she has to resort to looking like a hooker, it makes me sad. I also feel that there is a powerful American influence here, that we always have to emulate what they are doing south of the border. When I was a kid, I always felt that Black Canadians do not have any discernable culture which led us to emulate American Hip-Hop culture, and with this profile, I see that not much has changed over the years.
I have previously contributed to SWAY and pitched stories to other publications on Canadian and American Black alternative / rock artists who do not feel that in order to make it in the urban music industry they have to resort to racial / sexual stereotypes. The response that I have gotten is that the artists are not ‘Black’ enough, so when I see this crap, I get a bit pissed. But if this is what is considered as “ black Canadian culture,” I’ll pass.
I honestly feel as though you did not read the article. This is who reema major is and she only spits what she knows. You cannot go on comparing every female rapper to nicki minaj. Reema is her own person and she has something to bring to the table so let her shine and let her do her. If this is how she chooses to dress and talk, if this is what she knows, then let it be. accept her for who she is. Your saying all of this, but at the end of the day she will make it and will amount to something one day. What 15 year old you know that is making moves like her? no one.
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