For Mattmac’s highly collaborative third album, All Eyes on Us, the award-winning Oji-Cree trap-pop musician worked with 15 Indigenous artists from across Turtle Island to create a powerful statement that apans the spectrum of hip-hop and its numerous sub-genres.
Blind since birth, Mattmac (aka Matthew Monias) used music to help overcome hardships growing up in Garden Hill First Nation, a fly-in community nearly 500 km north of Winnipeg. Since his debut album 20/20 in 2020, his music has amassed over 30 million streams as he’s won prestigious awards like the CBC Searchlight Contest and Canada’s Walk of Fame RBC’s Emerging Musician Award.
“All Eyes on Us is about accepting where I’m at,” said Mattmac. “It took me a long time to get comfortable in the industry, and I’m proud to be able to stand with my community and say look at us. I’m never going far from where I came from.”
While he moved to Winnipeg a few years ago, his music continues to communicate relatable struggles with hardship and mental health, ultimately celebrating the power of community. As his stages grow bigger, hearing from his audience how much his music means to them makes it all feel worthwhile.
“Putting yourself to music is a bit more personal and hopefully in one or two lines someone can relate,” Mattmac told the Nation. “My newer songs talk about moving from the rez to the city. I’m not straying too far from the lessons I learned growing up on reserve.”
All Eyes on Us sets the scene with its opening words from the late Cayden Carfrae: “I want to provide for this community because this community’s taken care of me.” The 24-year-old Winnipegger known as Caid Jones, Mattmac’s close friend and collaborator, was fatally injured during an altercation in Thunder Bay in February.
Surrounded by his collaborators on the colourful album artwork, which includes braille and was designed by Nehiyaw artist Chris Chipak, All Eyes on Us seems to signify that as Mattmac’s popularity soars he’s bringing the Indigenous community up with him. This mutual respect is demonstrated in the uplifting verses of “Give It Time” from Rex Smallboy, known as one of the founding fathers of Native rap.
“It’s such a powerful blessing to see how his music has the ability to touch people’s souls,” said Smallboy. “I tried to empower people with my verse. In between negative comments about my appearance [on social media], people said this is what they needed to hear in their life. That really touched me.”
The album reveals Mattmac’s increasingly confident beatmaking and lyrical flow. With more beats accumulated than he could realistically write to, sending them out to other artists he admired became almost a necessity for the prolific musician. He’s excited about online collaborations formed with US rising stars like Rezcoast Grizz and Stella Standingbear.
“Some beats I had a specific sound in mind, so I thought why don’t I hit up some Indigenous artists and that’s basically how it started,” explained Mattmac. “I know Rezcoast Grizz has been blowing up – I can’t wait to see how people react to it. Everything is levelling up constantly.”
Mattmac’s collaborations with Cree artists CJAY GRiZ and Mariame stemmed from their shared roots with N’we Jinan, a mobile production studio formerly helmed by David Hodges that enables Indigenous youth to produce professional songs and videos. In 2016, N’we Jinan visited Garden Hill when Mattmac was 16 and just starting to explore music production.
Immediately recognizing Mattmac’s natural talent and eventually becoming his manager, Hodges introduced him to CJAY GRiZ, aka Chisasibi’s CJ Monias. It turned out the two are distant family relations and they hit it off right away, trading ideas back and forth before finishing “Come Thru” in 2019.
“I’d send him some loops and he made a beat out of one of them,” recalled Monias. “I started writing and recording. One day he said I really like what you did – I turned it into a full song. When he sent it back, I was like ‘oh man.’”
While their song was created before Mattmac’s debut was released, Monias said it’s been worth the wait to have a proper album release. Since the single and video was released last year, he’s gotten accolades from radio play on Ottawa’s Indigenous station ELMNT FM and new opportunities in the industry.
“He became the glue that’s bringing all these Indigenous artists together,” asserted Monias. “This album is getting quite a bit of buzz everywhere. It’s sparked some motivation to get back to releasing stuff. There are so many different sides to this – it’s like a 10-sided coin.”
Hodges also made the connection with Chisasibi R&B singer Mariame, the first artist to be signed to N’we Jinan Records. Her silky yet punchy vocals make “Find My Love” one of the album’s highlights. After recording tracks separately, they first met each other when shooting the music video in Winnipeg, which was released last September.
“This project was all online, but it was cool I got to meet both of them in person for shows and filming,” Mattmac said of Monias and Mariame. “To vibe with them, they’re fire and such amazing artists and people. Hey, Eeyou Istchee, the Cree Nation represents!”
Naskapi hip-hop duo Violent Ground similarly met Mattmac when he visited to shoot the “Capture the Flag” video for their album. As brothers Chris and Allan Nabinacaboo are accustomed to long-distance collaborations on their own work, connecting with Mattmac for multiple songs wasn’t a stretch – “The Greatest” is their joint effort on the new album.
“When people ask us to jump on their songs, they send it over and we’re used to it,” said Violent Ground. “That’s the new age anyways. We feel honoured to be part of a project like that – it’s next level when it’s everybody from Turtle Island.”
Mixing live instrumentation with studio trap elements to take the ambitious album on the road, Mattmac’s star seems destined to rise with no end in sight. However, Garden Hill will remain with him, as he raps on lead track “Still Got Love”: “I just want to come back home and show all my cousins we made it.”