who is twentythree

One year ago, twentythree was an unhappy college student with 1000 monthly listeners on Spotify, who avoided going to concerts because it made him depressed to be in the crowd, and not on the stage. People don’t know this, even though twentythree now has over 1.6m monthly listeners, because people don’t know twentythree. They know the song he blew up with (‘Queen St.’), but not the budding Toronto rap subgenre (they call it 6pop) of which it is a prime specimen. They know the sound, but not the life behind it. So we went to Toronto to get to know twentythree. The person we met was not 23 years old but 22, perpetually smoking, a college dropout (happily so), headlining sold-out shows fans print fake tickets to try to get into, and deeply invested in seeing his city win. It’s time to get to know twentythree. Watch our introduction. Dir: Danny Cole Edit: Fraser Grut