Freddie Dredd

Freddie Dredd makes rap music like he remembers it sounding in his youth: ominous, lo-fi and a little bit warped, like a tape that’s been left on the dashboard. Born in 1997 and based in Ontario, Canada, Freddie maintains a dual identity. When he’s not on the mic, the rapper produces beats as Ryan C. Along with his peers in the Doomshop crew, founded in 2014, he reps a sound called “phonk”, a woozy strain of hip-hop that’s steeped in the bare-bones trap beats and chopped-and-screwed effects of '90s Memphis and Houston. On early releases like 2016’s Death Valley EP, he spit violent fantasies in clipped rhymes over thudding beats that were hazy with tape hiss, but over time, unexpected colours started leaking into the frame. “Opaul”, from 2018, sampled Brazilian bossa nova, and “Metà Vita” laced its 808s with easy-listening jazz. In 2019, he leaned further into contrasting textures and themes with “Cha Cha”, dealing out murder and revenge over a loop of singer Lisa Ono’s lilting, Hawaiian-themed 2001 song “Sway It, Hula Girl”. That contrast between darkness and light earned Dredd a new audience as the song went viral. But if fame changed him, he didn’t let on: his 2020 album, Suffer, found him comparing himself to Donnie Darko (“Dark like Darko/I’m so psycho”) and proudly doing “the Devil’s work”.