Award-winning blind Indigenous hip-hop artist and producer Mattmac is back with his third studio album, Smoke Signals, a project that explores the connections between the sounds, communities, and lived experiences that shaped his journey from Garden Hill First Nation to Winnipeg and beyond.
Inspired by smoke signals once used by many Indigenous Nations to send messages across distances, the album explores the concept of smoke, and how its signals carry information, spark memories, share warnings, force displacement, and inspire connection.
After devastating wildfires forced the evacuation of his home community and brought his family to Winnipeg, smoke evolved from a negative symbol to one of communication that connected his community experiences, memories of the music that shaped him growing up, his journey from Garden Hill to the city, and his resulting career success.
Created in collaboration with QuestionATL, an Atlanta-based rapper from Blind and Famous, a collective of nine blind music producers across the globe, Smoke Signals brings together Mattmac‘s earliest musical memories of listening to mixtapes and his appreciation for the Atlanta Trap-Hop sound to create a project inspired by the signals that made him who he is today.
Smoke Signals has 14 tracks that the pair say capture the highs and lows of career progression, sharing stories of struggle and success, displacement and transition, ambition, resilience, friendship, and pride in their roots.
Lead single “I Remember When,” looks back at Mattmac and QuestionATL’s lives before their music careers and the early influences that eventually became part of their work together.
The song began with a conversation about childhood and the music each artist grew up listening to, including Mattmac’s memories of burned CDs his sister gave him in Garden Hill that introduced him to Atlanta hip-hop and inspired his love for mixtapes.
Combining the sounds that first connected them with the experiences they discovered they had in common, Smoke Signals turns years of conversations, collaboration, and friendship into a message about struggle, progression, community, and the importance of remembering where success began.
Mattmac spoke with Darrell about the album, how it compares to his previous ones and getting to work alongside a friend.
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