When people think of music from Vancouver they tend to think of Nickleback or Michael Buble. Sure, those two acts have had huge success around the world (Buble’s Christmas album was the #2 album in terms of sales in 2011) but Vancouver has far more to offer than that. One artist on the rise in my fair city is SonReal.

2011 was a busy year for the rapper, born Aaron Hoffman. He played at the musical festival Shambalah for the first time, his mixtape Where’s Waldo? came out and got rave reviews all over the interwebs, he toured all over this great country (he even went to New Brunswick, where I am from) and he has released what seems like a video for each song on the Where’s Waldo mixtape. To get 2012 started off right, he agreed to find some time in his busy schedule to sit down for a lil’ chat with me for WRG?

Seeing as this site is called “What’s Really Good?” I decided to ask SonReal that when we got together. “To be honest everything is right now. 2012 is what’s really good.” SonReal acknowledged how busy and hectic his 2011 was with the touring, recording, shooting music videos and all that is involved in trying to break it in the music business. “2011 was like the set up year for us. The Where’s Waldo? mixtape really turned a lot of heads and got a lot of eyes and ears on us. 2011 was the set up year, now in 2012 we gotta make some power moves. More importantly just keep doing what I do and get better at it along the way.”

Like most people who call Vancouver home, SonReal was not born here. He actually comes from Vernon, BC, and moved here with the well wishes from his family to go to audio engineering school in 2006. Wise advice from his mom has lead to SonReal being able to take on more of the production duties involved with recording an album. But like all success stories, it wasn’t straight to making money in the music industry. “Yea, I came here to do that, but before I was able to focus on the music full time, I had ALL SORTS of shitty jobs. I was mainly on construction sites. Carpentry; landscaping; paving; vinyl siding installation. I was doing that shit until partway into 2011 when I was able to live and feed myself off of the music.” Hearing that a talented young rapper used to work in construction, I had to ask if he still had the safety helmet and steel-toe boots. “Nah man. I got rid of that stuff. I’m never going back bro.”

I had to ask SonReal (he having found some success lately) if he has any new artists in Vancouver who he thinks are on the ups “Matt Brevner is a guy who, if he makes the right moves, can have a big year here in 2012… One new artist to look out for this year who is a really, really talented singer is Ali Milner. She helps out with hip-hop stuff. She does hooks and whatnot but she generally does more jazzy-type stuff.”

Turning the table in the interview SonReal asked me “Wait. Are you coming off the top again?” I was in fact “going off the top of my head” in the interview. “That’s insane. You’re like one of the only dudes who comes in straight off the top with your interviews. That’s impressive.” After I regained my focus I had to ask SonReal what was coming up next for him “I can’t even tell you. We are going to be dropping new material this week. We are gonna keep coming out with new material all the time. Music and videos… we are gonna have some live in studio. Performance videos… with the music videos, I wanna start to have well-thought-out and intricate, innovative videos. More importantly than anything is I wanna keep giving my fans good music.”

Moving forward into 2012, we all have goals, hopes and aspirations on what we want to achieve this year. Some of us are not quite sure how to get to our goals. Hell, some of you might not know exactly what they are. SonReal had no delay when saying what his goal is in 2012. “I want to play the Commodore Ballroom this year, straight up. Headlining! That’s my ultimate goal of this year.” My goal is to lose weight and pay off more of my debt. To be honest, I think SonReal & I will both be able to attain them.

Official SonReal site: here.
SonReal on Twitter: here.
She Gone Music Video: here.