21 year old Wolf Castle is a two-time ECMA Nominated Mi’kmaq Rapper, Singer, Producer and Songwriter from Pabineau First Nation in New Brunswick.

Fresh out of University with a degree in Theatre – Wolf Castle is a natural showman and emcee making waves in the rap world with his unique style of music. Seamlessly blending traditional hip-hop with modern pop swagger. His vision and creative mind doesn’t follow the ordinary and delivers a message and perspective that is honest and original. Always writing music and striving to evolve, he tackles a wide range of musical styles from fun pop-party tracks to dark and brutally honest stories.

Growing up, Wolf Castle was surrounded by a family of artists and creators, his mother and uncle were both Rappers performing under the names “M03” and “Red Suga”. Inspired by the self-made artists in his family, Castle followed in their footsteps and continue the family business of music and artistry. At the age of 17 he decided to start taking music seriously and self-released his first commercial album “TG17” under the name Tristan Grant which was nominated for the “Aboriginal Artist of the Year” award at the East Coast Music Awards. Since then he’s been working under the name Wolf Castle and has released two more albums, 2016’s “Exit Cranium” and 2017’s “The Artificial to Original”.

Wolf Castle’s music can be found on iTunes, Spotify, TIDAL and Soundcloud. Read Wolf Castle’s interview with the S.A.C. below:

How did you learn your craft? 

Basically the most informal training you can imagine, zero informal training. The most I ever got was that I took 1 or 2 music classes in high school. It was important, I learned my major and minor skills on piano but that was about it. Other then that, when I started making music I didn’t know how to do anything, I didn’t know how to structure a song, I didn’t know how to play any instruments, I didn’t know how to record myself or write anything. I basically just did it so much that I learned, just from doing it. I got addicted to song writing through the process of just becoming obsessed with it and not willing to be a perfectionist at all.

Do you have a process to songwriting?

My songwriting, instrumentation, and composing method is extremely sporadic and insane and definitely doesn’t have a lot of planning before hand. It’s more of a “figure it out as I go kind of thing”. So basically, most of the time I start writing a song I don’t even know what it’s about yet, I just figure it out. I guess you could compare it to free styling. I’ll listen to music that I really like, that inspires me, and I’ll get a vibe from that and words will just start coming to me. I’ll start free styling over it and sometimes it works and I’ll get a bunch of lines out of it and when I read it over again I’m like “Oh, this could be something”. And then I develop a song from that point. I don’t necessarily sit down and say “Okay, I’m going to write a song about love and the key is going to be “A” and it’s going be this tempo.”  I mostly just write lyrics and create something out of whatever shows up. I write songs sporadically and very quickly. I can’t stop, it’s like an obsession. I write a lot on my phone too, so if I’m waiting somewhere, or if I’m driving I’ll park (and write), basically anytime lyrics pop in my head. Thank god I have a phone with a notepad I can write in, I write in the tub, I write in my car, I write everywhere.

My family is also very musical. My Uncle for a long time a rapper, he went by Red Suga. He operated on the East Coast and he showed me how to make music also. We used to get together over the Christmas break at my Grandparents house and we would make a song every night over the Christmas holidays. He taught me how to not be a perfectionist, just got for it, get in the vibe it, and just create. We would come up with a hook, we’d make a beat, we’d write, we’d rap it, mix it, and put it on SoundCloud that night.

If you could collaborate with any other music creator who would that be?

If I could pick anybody on planet earth .. I would totally pick Tyler, The Creator for sure. He’s definitely someone who has influenced my sound. Him, Odd Future, or Mac Miller, anyone who came up independently or from there own clout really inspired me and showed me “Oh, I should do it too!” right. His sound is so awesome, I just love anything he puts out. He’s definitely one of those creators that influences a lot the way I want to approach music, being a rapper, and putting music out as an art form in terms of presentation, cool pictures, good outfits, and all the artistic direction surrounding the music as well as good music.