When Lxvndr thinks about the theme she steers most toward in her songwriting, it’s one short word: death. The Nova Scotia-based rapper has a fixation on the spiritual and the otherworldly, and she comes by it honestly.
“I like the macabre, the dark things, I’ve always been fascinated with them since I was a child,” she explains. “My first books that I started reading with were R.L. Stine. I used to have a large suitcase of them that I would carry around, and my mom used to be freaked out because I would sleep with them under my pillow.”
It’s not a depressing fascination, though: the rapper weaves this darkness and her metal influences into spitfire flow and melodic verses, creating that just-right juxtaposition of a light goth touch with the perfect bounce to your step. It’s a duality that Lxvndr, a.k.a. Chelsey Moisan, is acutely aware of, but doesn’t play into — it’s just who she is, and it’s getting her noticed.
WATCH: Lxvndr and Niimo’s official video for ‘Sunsh1ne’:
In 2019, just a year after she started releasing music, Lxvndr won Halifax’s Hopscotch Festival’s Each One Teach One rap battle, and has prolifically produced singles and albums since, racking up Music Nova Scotia Award nominations in 2021 and 2022, as well as a couple of East Coast Music Award nominations last year. And while she’s moving to Toronto at the end of this year to see what awaits her, the Maritimes will always have her heart.
Casual P.E.I. beginnings
Lxvndr grew up in Summerside, P.E.I., and moved to the province’s capital after graduating high school. “A little bit more excitement going on there,” she says, smiling. By the time she got to Charlottetown, she already knew rapping was in her cards.
“The first time that I figured out I could rap, I was at a house party with some of my best friends, I was 16 years old,” explains Lxvndr. “We were getting into some drinks and they put a beat on and I just started freestyling and I just kept going.” Lxvndr says she surprised both herself and her friends, and that party made her realize that she has a gift and passion for the genre.
“As time went on, I would just write my own raps and do a little amateur rap thing on Facebook, and it usually got a lot of likes. Looking back at them now, when they pop up on my Timehop, it’s so cringe, like I can’t even watch them,” she says, laughing. She lists Nicki Minaj, Kendrick Lamar, N.W.A. and J. Cole as influences, but it was the people around her who really helped shape who she’d become.
LISTEN: Lxvndr’s first official single, 2018’s ‘Trash 2 Mouth’:
Her P.E.I. community was instrumentally supportive, and past acquaintances including rapper Slime da Garbage Mane, producer Niimo and rapper Vince the Messenger became frequent collaborators, close friends and, essentially, extended family. When CBC Music interviewed both Niimo and Vince the Messenger in 2021, the two artists name-dropped Lxvndr as an inspiration for their own work.
Opening her heart to Nova Scotia
Lxvndr’s community stretched to Nova Scotia when she moved to the province with her family a handful years ago. Fatt Matt, a rapper based in Charlottetown (via Vancouver) who had started working with Lxvndr on the island, introduced the emerging rapper to her new Nova Scotia artist family member: DJ Moves, who then connected her with Tachichi, Ghettosocks and Black Buffalo Records, an indie label based in Halifax that specializes in underground hip-hop.
“It’s been an awful lot of people putting me on and helping me find that type of value within myself that I maybe at the time didn’t know that I had,” says Lxvndr. “They are like my rap family here,” she later adds. “Always, you know: Christmas parties, Thanksgiving events; we’ll all be hanging out.”
They’re also all names that you’ll find somewhere in Lxvndr’s catalogue: she’s released one solo album, 2020’s Warmth, and everything else has been a collaborative effort, including her most recent album release with Tachichi, 2023’s summer full-length Found Money, which also features Buck 65, Ghettosocks, DJ Moves and reggae artist Jah’Mila.
LISTEN: Lxvndr’s opening track on Warmth, her debut solo album:
“I love [collaboration] because I feel like it gives me a challenge and I really love all types of music,” explains Lxvndr. “If you go into my playlist, I have heavy metal on there, which I love; thrash metal. I have pop. I have hip-hop. I have even some folk stuff, rock ‘n’ roll…. it just kind of seems like a fun little challenge I could do and see if I can fit that mould.”
Another collaborator on that list is Shay Pitts, one of the many women MCs that Lxvndr name-drops as a strong emerging voice in an Atlantic hip-hop scene that’s seeing more women onstage, along with fellow rappers Megz, General Khan and R&B artist Wren Kelly.
“It’s not even unlikely to go out to a show anymore and have more female or non-binary acts playing, which is much different than it was,” says Lxvndr. “It kind of just creeped up on everybody, right? And we’re like bam, there it is.”
WATCH: The video for Shay Pitts’ song ‘Gimme Some’ featuring Lxvndr:
One thing is constant for Lxvndr: she’ll always be changing. Her music doesn’t fit cleanly into any one genre, incorporating boom-bap, pop and metal — she also plays emo songs on guitar at home, which might materialize into an album some day — and she emanates a hunger and fierceness in her music that is insatiable. It’s an addictive elixir that she plans to keep building.
As she said on 2022 song-of-the-summer contender “Sunsh1ne”: “Honestly man I’m just really weird/ with no intention of changing.”
Beyond the 6 is a CBC Music series that highlights hip-hop artists and scenes across Canada, beyond Toronto. To read up on more artists, head to CBCMusic.ca/beyondthe6.
