It’s no exaggeration to say that hip-hop saved Snak the Ripper’s life. The B.C.-bred rapper—born William Scott Fyvie in 1982—nearly didn’t make it out of his teens alive, due to addictions that had him mired in a life of petty crime. But since his early 20s, he’s devoted himself to hip-hop, both as a prolific graffiti artist and as one of the nastiest MCs in the Canadian rap game. Channelling both the street swagger of the Wu-Tang Clan and the nihilistic punk attitude of Nirvana, Snak became the balaclava-clad face of Stompdown Killaz, a Vancouver-area collective/lifestyle brand comprising MCs, graf artists, and clothing designers, as well as his own label, Stealth Bomb Records. While Snak’s public beef with Swollen Members MC Madchild—documented on the blistering 2015 diss-track collection The Sadchild Trilogy—helped build his national notoriety, his gritty-voiced, pugilistic style only turned more lethal on 2016’s self-edifying manifesto “From the Dirt” and 2018’s fiercely funky “Knuckle Sandwich.”