Could “America’s Next Top Hitmaker” be a Cree gangsta rapper? On June 25, Hank “Jigap” Visitor learned that he’d been selected for the popular contest run by Rolling Stone magazine. The winner will receive $10,000, a concert showcase in Austin, Texas, and a mentoring session with hip-hop legend Busta Rhymes.
Jigap’s entry is an impressive one-minute cover of Outkast’s 2000 hit “Bombs Over Baghdad”, matching André 3000’s frantic flow with rapid-fire rapping in the Cree language. He said the whole process of writing, recording and taking the cellphone video took less than 10 minutes.
“I got a text in the middle of work saying I’ve been selected for America’s Next Top Hitmaker,” Visitor recalled. “I couldn’t believe it. I’ve heard some people say they knew me for years and I didn’t speak the Cree language very well. I worked on it.”
Having lived in each community except Whapmagoostui, Visitor is working on a concept album blending inland and coastal dialects that will feature a song for each community in Eeyou Istchee. One of his newest songs namechecks almost every street in Waswanipi, where he’s currently based, even a drinking party at the old baseball field.
Visitor’s also working on his “first album” that mixes English and Cree, with one crunk-style chorus showcasing local slang like Chisasibi’s “ouwah” and Wemindji’s “neh.” He worked with Merkules on “Straight James Bay Coasting” about two weeks before Snoop Dogg signed the BC rapper to Death Row Records.
“Merkules said don’t you want to do solid English because most people don’t speak Cree?” Visitor shared. “I said most people don’t speak Spanish, but they’ll still listen because they love the beat and the way it sounds. I will not be told not to speak my language.”
The song was produced by Cree musician Paul Napash, who has amassed over 500 beats since the early 2000s when the two first met as teenagers in Chisasibi. They recently reconnected with plans to collaborate on upcoming productions featuring artists on Visitor’s independent label, Screaming Eagle Sound.
“If an artist makes me want to make a certain kind of beat, I can make something similar,” said Napash. “I have over 5,000 sounds on my computer, and everything is categorized so I can easily find the sound I’m looking for.”
Given the name Hank Williams by his late father, Cree country music troubadour Robert F. Visitor, Jigap remembers being a kid “hepped up on sugar” walking around almost every community with a plastic suitcase full of his dad’s tapes. Selling for $15, he’d often outsell other family members, earning hundreds in tips when people gave $20 bills.
When they once went to Val-d’Or without money, his father said, “Don’t worry, I brought my guitar.” After starting to play in the Chateau Laurier, the bar was soon filled with Crees who quickly filled his guitar case. He then went to the Moose Hotel and did the same thing.
“Then he said, ‘Son, go down to the Continental and get us a room for three nights’,” said Visitor. “He said, ‘I have money wherever I go. As long as our people are here, they love to hear the Cree language’.”
Writing verses daily since hearing Eminem at age 13, Visitor was seeking a rap name when Nemaska teacher Annie Whiskeychan told him “jigap” was the Cree word for marijuana. As he smokes when he writes and feels like “the dopest rapper” when he sees people react to his music, the name stuck.
Freestyling with friends at school and parties, Visitor’s first brush with fame came in 2004 when Wemindji youth arts animator Sarah DeCarlo asked who could do a Cree language rap. Paid to play the cover of 2Pac’s “Changes” at a talent show, Visitor was “mortified” when he heard the recording repeatedly playing on local radio at the grocery store.
“I had the biggest anxiety attack,” said Visitor. “I walked home so fast and every single car at the mini mall was playing Changes. It was an unfinished demo I had intended to put more Cree language on. I was very upset about it – then I started getting phone calls to come to other communities.”
With everyone asking about the song, Visitor retreated from this “surreal” popularity, wanting to release his own originals when he was ready. Now when he hears Changes played at parties, he can appreciate being “the first guy to ever do Cree language hip-hop on JBCCS radio.”
“That was the first time I had a taste of Cree rap,” said former schoolmate Steve Einish. “I would see Hank around my buddy’s place creating stuff. Last time I seen Hank I was like where’s that song, man?”
After getting back into music creation during the pandemic, Einish has taken Cree hip-hop to new heights as Kong, a nickname Visitor said was bestowed by “the hood.” As he prepared for a prestigious opening slot for Wu-Tang’s Method Man, Einish suggested any Cree success is a team effort for the Nation.
“It’s good for our youth to see people from our area can get that type of exposure,” said Einish. “It’s powerful to see people who came from not so good circumstances rise above it – I want to tell him to keep on pushing.”
While Visitor raps about his past selling crack on the toughest streets of Montreal and Ottawa, he knows this life only leads to jail, overdose or death. He left that behind when he had his daughter, embracing the Cree traditional life. Spending months in the bush with his Aunt Louise Mayappo was a full immersion in the Cree language.
Now working as a translator for CBC, Visitor has recently been dubbing Aladdin songs and Rick and Morty cartoons into Cree. With multiple projects nearing completion, perhaps even a heavy metal album, Jigap is in it for the passion and the fun.
“I’m seeing youth relearn the language because they find the cartoons funny and the music catchy and want to know what I’m saying,” said Visitor. “Ever since I got on Top Hitmaker, I see rappers start trying to do Cree language. I’m pretty happy about it – I want to revive the language.”