Montréal hip-hop trio Planet Giza are keeping it real

“The visa prices,” offers Rami B, one-third of Montréal’s Planet Giza, when asked about the effects of Trump’s second-term aggression. For the group, it’s been very poorly timed – a first headlining tour of the nation remains one of their short-term goals. “We actually inquired about it and saw that the price really went up,” Rami adds. “So it really does affect us because we have to prepare – we can’t just go on tour like that right now. It takes like eight to ten months just to get the visa for a year. So it’s changed from the Biden administration. But, I mean, it is what it is. There’s really nothing you can do, you just have to go along with it.”

The group – Rami, Tony Stone and DoomX, all speaking to me on Zoom via the latter’s phone – emerged about a decade ago in Canada’s second-largest city, where an insular rap scene often incorporates the language and culture of its former French colonisers. Conversely, Planet Giza’s sound could be described as regionally neutral, though they are adamant that the city’s melting-pot methodology has been crucial to their development.

“The culture is different, the sound is different,” says Rami, whose speaking voice carries a French-Canadian lilt. “I feel like Montréal is always trying to do what’s happening in other parts of the world – with their own twist. So I couldn’t really say that we have a specific sound. But, you know, there was a time there was this thing called ‘Artbeat’ [a loose community of producers said to have got its name from the local pronunciation of ‘heartbeat’]. That was probably ten years ago. And that, for me, was the only time I felt like Montréal really had its own sound.”

Planet Giza’s aesthetic is earthly, soulful and righteous. Their sound is one of jazzy chords, neo-soulful grooves and lessons in Baduizm. Planet Giza appeal not only to the cool Soulquarians out there, but may also reach the outsider kids who identify the group as something of an antithesis to the jocks and popular kids of this world. The group’s first album Added Sugar, released in 2019, even featured a skit featuring vocalist Tony sliding into the character of an anxious young man in the moments before losing his virginity.

“The intent is still the same in that we just always want to be honest,” Tony tells me. “We just always want to be real. That skit with the losing-the-virginity thing was kind of like a juxtaposition to me putting out a first album with my vocals on it. So it was my first time doing something, that’s extremely real. And so we just painted that picture in that way. And with all the other albums, that’s always what we want to do. We want to create something that’s timeless, something that’s real, because when it’s real and honest, it just resonates with people.”

The composition of Planet Giza is atypical. All three members serve as producers, but only Tony performs on mic, and so commands a huge amount of responsibility for their sound and personality. A multifaceted vocalist, his soft singing offers an appropriately light touch to the jazzy beats; as a rapper, his book-of-rhymes prose often rings with a wide-eyed wisdom. Sometimes, he finds the pocket between both disciplines.

“I really liked the duality of rapping and singing,” Tony says. “I find the rap songs that I listened to growing up, like in the early 2000s, that was the height of, like, you have a classic R&B song and then you have the rap verse on it. And so I wanted to sometimes tailor my style to that, where it’s two different types of feeling I can bring to a song at the same time. I was always good at rapping. I had a nice voice, but then I really honed the singing and harmonising, and I really feel like I perfected that blend of two vibes. And so it creates more options when approaching a song.”

It’s true – the 2000s were a magical time for the rapper-singer link-ups Tony references. I mention both Ja Rule and Ashanti, and Mariah Carey and Busta Rhymes, as examples of the collaborations that once dominated MTV. “Yeah, I thought it was so cool that I could just do the whole song and have that same vibe,” Tony confirms. “And, it’s like, ‘Well, we don’t need to get someone to sing because I can sing. We don’t need to get that person to  do the rap verse because I can rap as well.’”

Feelings of nostalgia flow through Planet Giza’s music. I correctly identify the vocal tics embedded in the beat of WYD, from second album Ready When You Are, as being inspired by super-producer Timbaland. Nobody Else, from their excellent forthcoming EP TSIRM, could have been a deep cut on an unfairly forgotten Marques Houston record. “That’s the thing about having influences,” Tony says. “They just seep into the music you create.” But don’t call Planet Giza retro-revivalists – their sonic forebears are in service to something modern, something daring. “It’s not giving a tribute, but just taking elements from the past without trying to make it sound like it came in 2000,” DoomX says.

Nonetheless, it begs the simple question: What artists from the turn of the millennium are they putting on their Mount Rushmore? Their collective answer takes mere seconds: The Neptunes, OutKast, A Tribe Called Quest – and “Polo the Don, because he was having hits back in the early 2000s”, DoomX chimes.

Now, there’s the new seven-track EP TSIRM – set for release this autumn. It maintains Planet Giza’s tactic of putting out shorter releases to complement their full-length LPs, just as the Don’t Throw Rocks at the Moon EP served as a bridge between albums one and two. “It keeps us in the loop, keeps us relevant,” Tony says. “It also allows us to test out new sounds and ideas to see what direction we should go for the album. This one was a bit different because we wanted to still put out enough work where it could consist of an album, but we just split it in three pieces,” he adds teasingly.

TSIRM lays bare the importance of Planet Giza having the ability to move freely into the USA. Sessions took place during a month-long trip to Los Angeles, where they collaborated with producer Kiefer (“A really talented pianist,” DoomX says) and saxophonist Braxton Cook, adding new elements to their sound.

“It was a very seamless effort,” Tony says. “They have ideas that we might not have thought of, but we’re used to outsourcing, finding people to play instruments and bring our ideas to life. But it’s always a collaborative effort and it’s extremely enjoyable to see these projects come to life.”

“It’s always an evolution because we never want to do the same thing twice,” he adds. “And I feel like the more we grow as people, we understand things differently, learn more and apply that knowledge to the music we create. It would be a disservice to us and to the listeners if we were stagnating.”