Five “Québ Rap” Rookies to Watch in 2025

For the eighth consecutive year, making it a firmly entrenched tradition, here is the 2025 list of Québec rap artists who will surely reach a greater audience in the coming months.

Trapmat Savior

Trapmat Savior still remembers vividly experiencing a freedom he felt deep inside when he started walking around Montréal, after spending his whole life in Haiti. “My parents shipped me here to study,” he says. “But obviously, when I got here, I did everything but go to school. I discovered a kind of freedom that I’d never experienced before in my life. I was curious about everything I saw.”

The 23-year-old rapper mainly speaks English, because he went to an English-speaking school in Port-au-Prince – where he had a troubled childhood. “I wasn’t poor, I had everything I needed, my family loved me,” he says. “But the stuff I had to deal with on a daily basis was not ‘normal.’ I can tell you that from 2010 on, after the earthquake, we started living in a lot of tension and constant danger. Port-au-Prince is an amazing place, but it’s also completely insane.”

It was in that environment that he discovered rap, a form of expression that would soon become his lifeline. His brothers and sisters introduced him to Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, and other key players in Southern rap. Trapmat then dove into the Soundcloud rap scene of the second half of the 2010s, with particular interest in Playboi Carti’s music.

However, the future rapper felt too intimidated in Haiti to display his passion, and he kept it well hidden until he got to Canada in 2018. Then he wasted no time making a place for himself in Montréal hip-hop, and soon crossed paths with Mike Shabb – a producer who would become a great source of inspiration.

His most recent musical project, 1st Coming, was released in December of 2024, and was produced by the great Nicholas Craven, now an undisputed master of raw sampling. Combining his relaxed, on-the-ball flow with Craven’s soulful, minimalist productions, Trapmat has laid the foundation for what he calls his “mumble bap,” a combination of mumble rap and boom bap subgenres.

Several more projects are coming in 2025. In the meantime, Trapmat is busy making a place for himself in New York City, an endeavour he began a while ago.

 

Sensei H

Sensei H remembers exactly when she first encountered rap. It was in her family home in the heart of Villeneuve-d’Ascq, just outside Lille, France, that the Franco-Algerian artist, then age 12, stumbled upon the musical genre that was going to define her life. “I plugged my mp3 player into my sister’s computer – it was her computer, I was forbidden from touching it – and I copied all of her music onto my player,” she says. “That’s how I discovered Trait pour trait, an album by Sniper [an influential French group during the 2000s]. I sat down on the floor to listen to it, and it was a revelation!”

The song “Eldorado,” which tells the story of two North African brothers trying to illegally reach Europe by boat, particularly caught the imagination of the future rapper. The stories the group rapped about echoed what many people around her had also experienced. “They told stories no one was telling me,” says Sensei H. “What they were rapping about became a crucial source of information for me, because they were rapping about my identity.”

She started writing rap lyrics discreetly in her corner, and when she moved to this side of the Atlantic – to study naval architecture at the Institut maritime du Québec in Rimouski – rapping became a more serious endeavour. Two years later, she moved to Québec City, where she’s still based, with a firm intent to break onto the scene there. She released her first album, Le but du jeu, in 2020, and it didn’t take long for her militant flavour of rap to attract attention in the fertile rap environment of “La Vieille Capitale.”

Last fall, Sensei H widened her musical horizons to include more pop and house influences, on her third album La mort du troisième couplet, created alongside her producer and long-time ally, Vérone.

After finishing second during the last edition of the Francouvertes competition, the 27-year-old artist intends to release various collaborations throughout 2025, as was as album-launch shows in Montréal (March 21) and Québec City (March 22).

 

Kaya Hoax

When she was still a little tyke, Kaya Hoax believed that Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” was the best song in the world, ever. “I got the cassette as a gift and it shook me!” remembers the young Montréal artist. A few years later, at the height of her teens, she discovered rap, and that had basically the same effect as the planetary mega-hit had, years before. “I discovered Kendrick Lamar, Mac Miller, and Lil Wayne and that blew my mind for a second time,” says Hoax.

At the crossroads of these powerful aesthetic shocks, the 28-year-old rapper and singer is now evolving as an artist, somewhere between hip-hop and high-energy pop, driven by a maximalist musical direction, infused with punk spirit. All this is the fruit of her artistic relationship with crafty producers such as INFOPOLICE (Steven Blais and Robin Turcotte) and Funkywhat (one of our “Beatmakers to Watch” in 2023).

Add to those influences her love for artists that are habitual transgressors of musical barriers, like M.I.A., Santigold, and Charli XCX. “I discovered those artists when I moved back to Montréal at 17,” she says, talking about her teenage years in the small village of Pointe-Fortune, near the border with Ontario. “Access to culture there was minimal. I’d listen to the radio and whatever my friends were listening to… I didn’t come into contact with a ton of different styles.

“Once I came back to Montréal, I started having tons of ideas,” she continues. “I’ve always known I would make music, but I had no clue where to start. I started getting acquainted with musicians, and immersing myself in the scene. I got myself a Roland MC MC-505 [a piece of gear combining a MIDI controller, music sequencer, and drum machine, among other things] and I started making beats.”

Her first EP, Baby Gear, came out in May of 2024, and is a hodgepodge of lyrics she wrote over the last few years. “It’s like the pre-teen phase of my career; the lyrics are a reflection of my teenage arrogance and partial immaturity,” she says.

Her second project, created alongside Christian Sean (another one of our “Beatmakers to Watch,” who’s part of the 2025 cohort), will be the incarnation of growth, on the human side as well as on the musical side of things. “The pre-teen has gained some maturity. It’s completely different, but still crazy. It’s definitely not an album of ballads!” she says.

 

Mosez Jones

Mosez Jones‘s path is anything but typical. After being wrongfully expelled from his school, the rapper from Île-Perrot (a suburb on the West Island of Montréal) experienced something few people have. “My mom sued the school council, and during the whole process, I was home-schooled. My mom has always had a big personality,” he says, with a smile in his voice.

At home, music was queen, and artists like Whitney Houston and Earth, Wind & Fire shared the stereo with AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. Jones’s grandparents, with whom he was very close, also introduced him to jazz and classical music. On one of those home-schooling days, the TV was on in the background, and he discovered the music that would change his life. Eminem was ruling the airwaves on MTV with his video for “The Real Slim Shady.”

Having penned a few poems already, young Jones immediately started writing rap. “I tried singing my poems and I liked it,” he says. “But when I heard rap, I thought to myself, ‘OK, so I can put poems over music!’ That realization triggered something in me.” Still a child, the artist sampled the outros of hip-hop classics such as Nas’ masterpiece “Illmatic,” so that he had enough time to rap his lyrics over them.

A bit later, when he was attending St. Thomas high school in Pointe-Claire, things became more serious. He and a bunch of friends started making music. “It spurred me on to showcase what I was capable of,” says Jones. “In the end, I’m the only one from that whole gang who carried on making music… Then, in Cégep, I went tree planting in Western Canada to earn enough money to buy musical gear.”

In 2018, Jones released ihs first tracks, on Soundcloud. Since then, the rapper has evolved tremendously, and his jazz-, soul- and pop-tinged hip-hop shines through on his first EP, Safe in Solitude, released in 2024.

A new musical project will come out in 2025, and he also intends to start exploring the American market with shows in New York City in March.

 

Halo

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Halo wasted no time: he bought two huge speakers and started obsessively composing music, 15 hours a day, for two and a half years. “I’m very intense when I’m passionate about something,” says the man who, in his teens, was equally passionate about sports.

Born in the West Island area of Montréal, Halo grew up in a highly inspiring musical environment: his father, Pierre Lachance, is co-owner of Les disques de la cordonnerie, a record label that represents Luc De Larochellière, Gilles Valiquette, and many others. His music-loving dad inspired Halo’s love of jazz and soul, genres that are now an integral part of his creative DNA.

This natural inclination towards Black American musical genres naturally played a major role in Halo’s interest in hip-hop throughout his teens. “I’d filled up my first iPod with the music my brother was listening to, stuff by Kanye West, Jay-Z, and Kid Cudi,” he says, “and a lot of the samples in their songs really resonated with me. But they did it differently, in a fresh way.”

That’s about the time Halo started dabbling with FL Studio software, with his friends. Shortly after, he moved into his own place in the heart of downtown Montréal, and the young adult started developing his expertise at Planet Studios, alongside producer and composer Jay Lefebvre (Roch Voisine, Ginette Reno, Simple Plan). His acquaintance with the members of the PLAYDAYS collective – notably Malko, one of our “Rap Québ” rookies in 2024, and Willy Wonder, one of our “Beatmakers to Watch in 2025 – enabled him to sign a contract with Cult Nation, the label behind Charlotte Cardin’s phenomenal career.

Halo’s melodic hip-hop – which includes elements of jazz, pop, soul, and electronic music – was defined on his 2023 debut EP, Bad Jazz, and throughout several singles released in 2024. “Freedom and exploration are very important to me,” he says. “I can’t make the same thing over and over. That, however, isn’t necessarily only a strength: I’ve released so many different styles of music that I can be hard to follow,” he readily admits.

A “major EP” will come out in 2025. Until then, the 24-year-old rapper is headed to France in March to collaborate with various artists.