SonReal Essentials

As a teenager in the late ’90s, MC and songwriter SonReal (né Aaron Hoffman) spent time in the skateparks of his small hometown of Vernon, British Columbia. There, he mastered stunts and absorbed East Coast flows by the likes of Nas and Mobb Deep, who inspired him to try making his own tracks. Those formative experiences fused with a breezy West Coast vibe and evolved through a series of late-aughts mixtapes to become the SonReal sound. The rapper flexes with ease on tracks like 2013’s “Everywhere We Go”, a swaggering crew anthem that became a viral hit and shows his softer side on 2019’s “Healing”, a soulful collab with Jessie Reyez.