Music Existence Because of Music, We Exist
Coming up in the hip-hop game has never been that easy compared to some of the other scenes out there, but it’s been especially tough coming off of the influx of major new talent we’ve seen in the last three years. A boon for concert promoters and the live music underground, 2023 did many young rappers a lot of favors, and many took advantage of the period to get back into the studio and develop as much as they could to keep pace. One of the few players to grow exponentially in the past year in his scene is none other than Sheldon Universe, and in his new single “Poor Boy,” the credibility of the talent he’s cultivated is hard for even the most ignorant of critics to overlook. I had the chance to check out the track just recently, and it was surprisingly refreshing to hear, to say the least.
Right off the bat, one of the first things I noticed about “Poor Boy” is the potential for live energy in the performance Sheldon Universe gives here. He’s lighting it up between two distinct walls of white noise, alluding to a rich juxtaposition that has been hard to come by in pop music as of late. His lyrical symbolism is cutting but not impossibly inaccessible due to any politicized narrative; contrarily, I would be the last person to call this a protest song over a single promoting the drive that comes from wanting something more than the necessities in this life. It takes more heart to compose the latter, and if there’s anyone who can do it, this rapper’s name immediately pops into my mind.
Getting into the compositional integrities of “Poor Boy,” I really cannot get enough of the bass in this mix. For starters, it melts directly into the percussion and seemingly creates a super beat that would be otherwise inescapable or oversized were there any other man straddling the spotlight in this piece. Sheldon Universe does a good job of demonstrating how much of a trademark technique he’s got in this single, and although I don’t think he’s hit his highest mark just yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find a critic alive who’s going to say this latest release isn’t a bar-raising addition to his discography. He has major ambitions, and if that wasn’t clear before, it’s made more than obvious here.
2023 is a big year for the Toronto music scene, no doubt about it, and thanks to the strenuous efforts of artists like Sheldon Universe, it’s getting the soundtrack it deserves and then some. “Poor Boy” isn’t the first song of its kind to inspire a ripple effect in the press and among fans this autumn, but for what it stands to potentially accomplish if given the right platform on indie radio, it’s one of the best tracks worth spending some time with this month. Sheldon Universe is as real as they come and provided he sticks with this present formula for success, he’s bound to see even more than he has in the time since releasing his official debut.
Bradley McClure
