Artist Profile: Sheldon Sabastian

Sheldon Sabastian, the rapper reigning from Brampton, Canada, has known that hip-hop has been his calling since he was just a teenager experimenting sonically with his friends at school. Now, over a decade later, he still calls rap his home through the trials and tribulations of life, always fighting his way back into the act of creation and, in the process, leaving an expansive discography in his wake.

As a child of Jamaican descent, Sabastian’s childhood was filled with the sounds his parents loved, including the reggae and R&B he heard around his community. Yet, what truly captivated him were the sounds that were shown on the BET Channel. As a kid in Canada, his access to local hip-hop was extremely limited, and seeing artists like 50 Cent and Chris Brown grace his television screen gave him a sense of a different, and enamoring, culture.

“Coming up in Canada, before Drake, we didn't have hip-hop heroes. There were definitely cats that were bubbling in the city, but there was always that Canadian ceiling.. As a consumer, you didn't really respect that, especially at that age, and so you just look to the United States; you just look to the East Coast.”

Yet, as Sabastian entered late middle school and early high school, he became immersed in a group of friends that would rap together, making extensive posse cuts and releasing them online. At first, he was attracted to it for the attention it brought on from his peers, but, as he progressed into his teenage years, he felt more and more strongly that he had found a calling.

As the rap groups he joined slowly dissolved, Sabastian realized that he was going to have to build up his confidence to take a shot at being a solo artist. He released his first song solo, “bank”, on SoundCloud in 2018. While it was among the earliest efforts of his artistry, the positive response it got within his community encouraged him to keep going.

His first EP, “Vista 2001”, still represented a series of experiments in him feeling out his sound, earning his confidence in his lyricism and his presence behind the mic. 

Yet, it was his 2019 track, “Blue Acura”, that truly opened his eyes to the potentialities his artistry carried with it. Originally, he only put out “Blue Acura” because he hadn’t dropped anything in a month, and, at that time, it was the only polished song he had in his archives. When he released it initially, he didn’t think much of it, but, as he kept checking back over the coming months, the streams and the motion that came with them continued to rise astronomically.

Although Sabastian had never truly been in it purely for the commercial success, the positive reception of a track was enough to propel him forward, and he hit the grindstone again with a refreshed energy.

In the years since, Sabastian, despite whatever obstacles life may have thrown in his way, has continued to return to that grindstone, releasing a steady stream of quality tracks that, over time, have come to mirror the ever-evolving nature of his creative mind. Moreover, through this time, it has been the singular knowledge of his calling that has drawn back again and again into the act of creation.

“The most difficult part is starting over because the internet's always moving; it’s always changing… It's a tough pill to swallow, and I think what brings me back to music is [the fact that] I was born to do it. I love it, so I don't know how to do anything else… It's been difficult; there've been challenges, and some of that is my own doing. I think what brings me back is the realization [that I] didn't do XYZ, so it's like ‘Alright, we try again and do XYZ and see what happens’.”