The Habibi Collective

November 03, 2020

Growing up in the west after 9/11 as a child from South-West Asia and North Africa, was an experience characterized by isolation. Your narrative was taboo. Your access to others of the same experience was treated as an act of conspiracy. Accessing your own culture, your heritage, and your people not only othered you, but it was also difficult. It meant watching people that look like you experience unimaginable hardship on the eight o’clock news, and you had to pretend like they were some unknown, far away character of fiction. It meant knowing you were lying to yourself.

Yet, there are those of us who felt the isolation and chose instead to reach beyond the material into the virtual. The internet provided escape routes out of cultural solitude. For those who understood it, it was not a means of communication, but rather a rapidly growing and infinite archive, waiting to be explored. And, simultaneously, it was empty, waiting for stakes to be set in the ground for others in case they ever got lost wandering through the same fields looking for familiar faces.

Interview by Saam Niami
Photos by Malini Vaja
Stills from films featured in The Habibi Collective archive

One such adventurer I have come to know is Róisín Tapponi, an Iraqi-Irish film curator, film programmer, and writer, known to many inquisitors as The Habibi Collective. Róisín has single-handedly created one of the most comprehensive archives on the internet on South-West Asian and North African film, period—but the specific mission of The Habibi Collective is to act as an archive for women filmmakers from the region. The Collective is far-reaching in its implications and archival value. And, as it is staged on Instagram, it has an international reach on a massive platform available to anyone with an Instagram account, circumventing the exclusionary nature of academic and artistic institutions. With almost daily posts of movie stills, videos, presentations, and online screenings shared directly with over twenty thousand followers, the outreach rivals decades-old institutions. Róisín is possibly one of the most successful contemporary film curators in what she has created and proven with The Habibi Collective.

And the emotional gravity, too, of the project is almost as valuable as its successes. It's an instant, approachable archive to culture unavailable to entire generations of both those living in the diaspora as well as those without access to institutions in the region. The Collective is a bridge to culture kept away by distance, politics, and trauma. What once required academic resources or institutional support is now available in your pocket. It’s a project of healing. And it began, exists, and will remain all on Róisín’s phone.

On almost a daily basis, I see people I follow within the diaspora share something from The Habibi Collective. Often, I see people who have never met each other, in different parts of the world, share the same post. And when one does post something from The Collective, it sparks a dialogue, usually difficult to begin in the first place, about the art and culture we all, as one, are searching for. And that’s perhaps one of the most shocking parts of all, that the entire “Collective” so-called is all done by Róisín. Something so significant to so many people is performed by one single person. Entire conversations around culture building begin because of what Róisín decides to post one day.

And I wondered about that throughout writing this article, but never actually got the chance to ask Róisín about it: why is it called The Habibi Collective if it’s just one person? I have begun to interpret, whether this was the intention or not when she began it years ago, that perhaps it’s because we, all of us that receive the archive, are a part of the Collection. Róisín, in real-time, is performing the priceless labor of diaspora building, collectivizing us in spite of the borders that have separated us.

I spoke to Róisín over Zoom, me in Los Angeles, she in her London flat, an appropriate accommodation for a conversation about what is possible at a distance. We spoke on The Collective, future projects in film, and Róisín’s background in journalism.

Hi Róisín, how are you doing?

I'm doing good, thanks. it's been quite a hectic day. I just got back to my flat and I fully crashed, fell asleep. I'm working on a project with The Anthology Film Archives in New York. It’s a really exciting project. Pre- Lebanese Civil War cinema, which isn’t mainstream. There’s no archive, basically. I'm working with a critic and we're trying to make the archives. That's a fun research-led project. but yeah, so that, so I just had that, so I just came up with that. How are you, how was your day?

Where are you right now? Are you in London?

Yeah, I'm in London.

Which area are you in?

I'm in East London and I've always kind of lived in East London when I've been in England. it's very nice.

All of my family is completely displaced, I grew up in a million different places, constantly moving. I'm still living out a suitcase, but this is officially my home and yeah, I very much like it here. It suits me and I have my friends and everything.

I want to get right into the Habibi Collective. What is The Collective to you?

It’s not a business or anything and it's very much based on my motivation. It’s a grassroots initiative, a community-led project. It’s a resource. An open-access site, that's the weird thing about it. It doesn't exist solely in academia, where a lot of my research lies, but also it's not completely divorced from critical inquiry. So it's operating in this weird ground. It's also very much now operating outside of institutional spaces which was a conscious decision I made in the past year or so. If you had to have a geographical map of the arts, cultural film scene, I don't know where it would lie. Yeah. I don't feel like I can explain what it means to me without being able to place where it is for other people.

How did it come about?

It started in 2018, but my research started way, way before that. I grew up primarily in Ireland in the middle of nowhere. I watched a lot of films. I'd watch a director a night. so I would watch a lot of like, John Casavetes I loved, I loved Harun Farocki, I loved Cheryl Dunye, I loved Trinh T. Minh-ha, a lot of essay films. I'd watch a director and night by the stove.

This was very much at the time when I didn't have any cinemas near me. I wasn't in a city, but it was social media platforms started to become a thing. A lot of what I was discovering was online. It’s not like there’s much of a diaspora, apart from my family, in Ireland. Everything I found was on me. I started making a film log, which I still keep to this day, a chaotic 2003 Microsoft document.

I saw that there was a lack of films by Arab women. And that was a huge part of my identity that I wasn't seeing represented on screen. So, my practice is, and always will be, and has been research-led. So I started researching, and I remember watching Measures of Distance by Mona Hatoum. She’s a Palestinian-Lebanese visual artist who studied in London. It's an essay film about her mom, a correspondence. It's very beautiful. That was a huge turning point for me.

I started from that, from that moment on, actively searching for films by Arab women. There was nothing natural about my finding these films. They weren't available to me. Arab women's film especially is very prominent right now. It's very famous. When you think of big films from the region, you think of Haifaa al-Mansour, Nadine Labaki, Shahad Ameen, Charien Dabis, you think of women! But it was not like that at the time.

A lot of people in interviews ask me, “Why are you focusing on women films when programming seems pretty equal now?” My programs, the non-Habibi ones, are always fifty percent men, fifty percent women, or like more women, but there's nothing natural about that. I get sent 98 percent of films by men. And then I have to do that hard research to find women and then somehow make the program equal. So there’s nothing natural about this growth in women filmmaking. It has been the result of a lot of people working hard behind the scenes.

Again, the same premise of people thinks that the most famous films are the best. Which is so not the case. They’re the most famous because they have the most money and they have the best producer and they have the working distributor.

And so I started Habibi, on Instagram, for a few reasons. I was interested academically, in the archive and in an open-access site. I think accessibility has always been at the heart of what I do. Instagram is super accessible. You don’t need a JSTOR password to access it. So I started posting stills from films that I was watching. Now, I usually get some sent to me or I can reach out to other curators. There's no business plan or anything. It's a community that just grew. None of the people that engage with the Habibi Collective are there because they love film. They’re not film buffs. They're there because of representational purposes because they're seeing themselves represented on screen.

So a lot of people started asking, ‘Where can we watch this work?’ They still ask me that every single day and it fucking drives me mad, but that's how I started curating screenings because, I was like, ‘Okay, people want to see these films. I want to see these films.’ So every screening has been sold out to date and they've kind of been everywhere in the world or wherever I'm invited. And I curate around themes. Climate migration. Queer identity. I don’t like to curate around national borders because borders are so precarious in the region and also that's so homogenizing. We never see a festival around ‘American cinema,’ so why should we have one in Lebanese cinema? Though, I have curated in that vein when I have a mission, like a fundraiser. So for example, I did a Sudanese experimental film festival in Sweden to raise funds for the revolution when it was happening. And also I recently did the Beirut artists festival. And of course, the Independent Iraqi Film Festival. And the screenings I do are always free. They’re always after work hours and always attended, which I think is a really strong accomplishment in London. The audiences are young diasporic people of color, people who work in the arts. They're not the white, neoliberal people that are managing the arts in London.

Left — Serheldan (2003), dir. Serheldan Ahmad and Christine Chamas

Top right — Mussolini's Sister (2018), dir. Juna Suleiman

Bottom right — The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni (2011), Rania Stephan

Wow, that is such a huge accomplishment.

Yeah, I'm pretty proud of that. I think that's what I'm most proud of. For Habibi Collective, even now that it’s getting more popular, the people that it’s made for are the people that are consuming it. Maybe because I'm a very shrewd businesswoman. I have my very strict politics of production. I'm very strict with how I run things and that has helped me keep control. It hasn't been swept up by brands.

What is your relationship with the films that you deciding? I read something you said in an interview, a film archivist is the part of the film industry that isn't appreciated but they're doing the most work. And I wanted to know what is your actual mentality behind choosing a film and how do you engage with the politics of the films you choose?

Well, there’s a lot to say about politics. The people that I admire in the industry are, first and foremost, P.K. Nair, who was an Indian film archivist, and also kind of Henri Langlois, who was a film archivist in Paris. We don't have an equivalent in the region. In London we have the BFI, in New York, we have the Anthology Film Archives. In the region, I get friends sending me all the time film reels that they've saved from the garbage. And with the heat, people don't know how to preserve these reels. Everyone wants to be a filmmaker. Yet, there’s so much work to be done. So much work. And there's a huge lack of people willing to do that work. So I guess I'm just trying to inspire other people to do similar things.

As for the politics of how I choose films, when I started getting commissions it was from London-based white institutions. And then I realized the program's presence in their public program was just to tick those diversity boxes that would get them more funding that I should have been getting. I've always rejected them because they're fine showing a Black artist, but they're not willing to represent that diversity in their boards or in their staff. So a lot of what I do is working beyond the politics of representation and towards the politics of production.

And by that, I mean supporting the filmmakers beyond just screening their films. And, I'm a moving, breathing film. So I will link people up with suitable people like scriptwriters, producers, or I'll help submit their films to festivals or I'll offer advice or give talks. It’s kind of like a directory. I feel like a feel directory. I come across people like that. And then that's how I gain exposure to their work. And then I work with their film. So that's how I find films. The whole project came out of a lack of resources. There’s no online directory where you can search for an Iraqi film on the revolution in Tahrir Square. Everything I receive is from contacts, from people in the film industry who I know and hear.

I'm a bit bored of institutional critique. I used to think that my presence in these spaces would help diversify them, but it doesn't. I like to work in my own kind of space. I have quite a lot of freedom within how I program the films. For example, I directed the Queer MENA Film Festival and that was something that I never would have been able to do in collaboration with an institution in the region. And even distribution is very political. So, distributors, especially now that we've all moved online, have to do this thing called geo-blocking. Neighboring countries who they don't like don't get to see the films.

I was looking into the Independent Iraqi Film Festival, and I wanted to know what that whole experience was like and the reception of it. I read too somewhere that you were talking about how doing it online and independently from an institution in the region saves you the trouble of going through the politics, but how was the actual process of the festival, and did it start online or did it move into that with the pandemic?

I don't particularly like film festivals. They're very, very cold. They’re culturally gatekeeping. They're very exclusive. With Cannes, the biggest independent film festival in the world, they didn't even show it online and it's just that kind of behavior.

So it was built on being creative and finding a new way that film festivals can be run. I was working with three really incredible, amazing people, Israa Al-Kamali, Shahnaz Dulaimy, and Ahmed Habib, all Iraqis. I was directing and doing the programming mainly. We decided, well, I kind of put forward that we don't charge. If you're a filmmaker applying for a film festival, you need to pay an entry fee, usually quite an extortionate one. You need to have a certified producer and you need to have a European distributor among many other things. So we scrapped all of that. Anyone who wants to apply can apply. And also, we were going to pay you as well. We're going to pay your screening fees. And we eliminated the competition element because that's something I really hate. If we wanted to mobilize filmmakers and create an industry, create community, I'm not going to pit them against each other.

We made it open internationally to anyone for free. Obviously no money in it at all. Zero. We didn't apply for any funding. And, it was online because it could reach more people, and also, none of us are living in Iraq. There’s a huge diaspora and the diaspora is very, very strong. I don’t think there’s any other SWANA community that compares. I guess because of the war.

So yeah, that's why we wanted to make it online so most Iraqis could access it. We also had everything in Arabic and English. and I think that's a big part of how we managed to get the huge Iraqi viewership, which is, again, the thing I'm most proud of. We managed to get our biggest viewers were Iraqis in Iraq.

Wow.

As for selecting the films, I watched over eighty films, and they were all very lo-fi, handhelds, all of this documentary, some really beautiful ones. We showed, obviously the ones that were of the highest quality. The women filmmakers were actually really difficult to find for Iraqi cinema. All of the women filmmakers, apart from Zahraa Ghandour, were a part of the diaspora. I think it's maybe because Iraq is a war zone. It’s very easy to ask, ‘Why aren’t there more Iraqi filmmakers?’ You have to respect that. People can’t just do that. It’s not safe.

We're going to have it next year as well. and we might have it. We'd like to have in real life. It will be very, very easy to have it in London, but I'm more interested to have it in Iraq. Although, I don't think the Iraqi government likes me much. I just don't think it will be a good idea or safe.

So you’re starting a streaming service, Shasha.

Yeah! So Shaha is Arabic for 'Screen.' That’s taking up all of my time right now. It’s a huge operation. There's a lot of us. I’ve always run Habibi Collective, I'm the only person involved. I didn't have money to pay a salary and free labor is one of the worst crimes in the art industry. So that was always my reasoning behind that. It’s just me on my phone. But, obviously, I need a lot of people to make a streaming service, so a huge web development team, UI designers, UX designers, graphic designers, brand identity people, programming, team marketing, blah, blah, blah.

So I made it separate from Habibi because we’re going to show films by men. Habibi's women and women-identifying folk, but Shasha is going to be everyone. And also it's a business, it's a streaming service, there's money, there are transactions. Habibi, I want it to stay beautiful, pure. Me on my phone.

It’ll be ready in January. It's the first independent streaming service for SWANA film, which is very exciting. It’s going to be like 20 films per month.

Left — 3eib (2020), dir. Sarah Bahbah

Top right — Be Like Others (2008), dir. Tanaz Eshaghian

Bottom right — Leila and the Wolves (1984), dir. Heinry Srour

Wow, really?

It’s not going to be a normal service. It’s going to be curated each month. I'm really excited. It probably wouldn't have happened without COVID because I was so busy with screenings. So many work trips planned, which all got canceled. I panicked. But now there is a higher demand for online screenings and also it just reaches more people. You can reach anyone in the world. so I guess it fits in with that whole digital foundation that Habibi was.

I wanted to know, too, about your online magazine ART WORK Magazine.

My first job was as a journalist. And this was at a time when fashion bloggers were a thing. I was writing about fashion stuff, then I lost interest in fashion, although I was a model and I was in the fashion industry again, but from a different position. And then I started becoming interested in art and my academic background is in comparative literature.

So, I never studied film or art. I've always studied literature. I started writing for the magazines I was reading. And also, I have a huge love for academic journals. When I first moved to the UK, South London, I remember being in the big Tesco's and seeing a copy of Vogue, which I had never seen before, and I was like, ‘Mum, can I, can I have this?’ And she was like, ‘What do you want that for?’ My family isn’t even remotely interested in the arts.

You don’t have to explain that one to me. Well acquainted with the attitude.

I was just very attracted to that world. I was working my first full time, journalist position at an Arab youth culture magazine, and I was freelancing at i-D and The Guardian.

And then, just like with film, I didn't really like how things were being run. I had all of these problems and I wanted to create a magazine that was completely moved away from that. Just have friends and people I admire write for it, cultural workers living on the margins. It's very chill. I don't want to try to make something big. We'll have the magazine, not stress about it. No bullshit.

It was a very slow process as well. In journalism, you have to file in like two days, whereas I literally worked on these texts for months with the writers and we'd meet up over coffee and stuff. When I’m freelancing, I never meet the people that I actually write for. So we built those relationships. It was collaborative. There was no hierarchy. And they were present through all of the editing. It was not about the actual output, but more about the process. I never really care about the outcome. The value for me is in the process.

Others of us would like to do the work that you're doing, not specifically archival film work, but more spotting holes in academia or ephemera within the region or about the region. Do you have any advice on how to get up and do the work to inform on the region?

I think the number one main thing is to do your research. I didn't, in no way shape, or form, start any of this being like, ‘I want to change something. I want to change the industry.’ I was just pursuing my interests. And I think that's the number one thing. When people ask, ‘How do I change things?’ You need to, first of all, know everything that you can know about film. You do the work first. I work with so many big institutions where the film team doesn’t know about film. People get into these high positions but it’s not because they know shit, most of the time. It’s about connections.

So, value that interest. And if people do have that one thing that they know a lot about and love, then go for it. Pursue whatever you want to change. You don't need a lot of money. You don't need loads of followers. That will come naturally if you are really persistent with what you want to do.

What I try to do is be really honest and transparent about money. And be open with your contacts, too. People are so weird about sharing their contacts. Share your contacts with everyone. That’s so important. Especially as a journalist. I’m always sharing. I have a database of about 300 press contacts which I share all the time so that other people can pursue careers in journalism, to pitch.

Don’t worry about making change, becoming activists, worry about actually doing your research and doing your hard work, and staying up all night, reading about whatever you're interested in. I think that's key, knowledge. Knowledge is power.

Culture

The Club Is Coming to the Stage

We enter and make our way to what is approximately front left of the DJ booth, where we’re accustomed to dancing at clubs in New York. “So is this a techno club or a dance performance?” yells an uncertain participant in my boyfriend’s ear. He laughs, bouncing along to Ben UFO, and yells back, “It’s both!” The club has long been a hot topic in European contemporary dance but it is only now making its way into New York performance venues, largely through transatlantic tours. R.O.S.E. follows recent examples like Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1 (May 2024), (LA)HORDE’s Room with a View at NYU Skirball (October 2023), and Gisèle Vienne’s Crowd at BAM (October 2022).

Do these performances compromise the club’s spirit — a space idealized for its anonymity, dark lighting, and thundering music? The notion of the club as a utopian escape is admittedly just that — an ideal — because of how its intense conditions can create barriers to entry. Still, the club remains sacred for many, a place to forge connections and embrace an alternative state of being. Looking at how performances transfer this spirit to new settings reveals what aspects of the club are essential and those that aren’t.

Sharon Eyal, R.O.S.E. 2024. Photography by Stephanie Berger, courtesy of Park Avenue Armory.

Eyal’s dancers make their entrance. The lighting shifts from roving blue to yellow spotlights as Ben UFO’s tracks transition to more melodic beats. Clad in deconstructed lace Dior lingerie with dark red tears painted on their faces, the dancers move cautiously in a tightly maintained pack, slicing paths through the horde with hoof-like steps and jerky leg extensions. After around ten minutes of this controlled choreography, the dancers vanish as the lighting shifts back to blue and Ben UFO picks up his dubby beats. The club, as we knew it, resumes. This cycle of tightly executed movements and free-flowing club-goers repeats several times, each time emboldening the dancers to plunge further into the crowd.

Clubbing in a building once built for the U.S. Army National Guard on Manhattan’s Upper East Side turns out to be surprisingly successful — at least for the audience. What starts as an awkward, scattered group searching for their non existent seats gradually gels into an engaged, bouncing crowd that erupts in cheers each time the dancers enter and exit. Performance patrons who might never step foot in a club find themselves swept up in its potential for communion, moving in unison with fellow ticket holders. But it isn’t until the very end of R.O.S.E. that the dancers finally break free from Eyal’s choreography and join the fired-up audience in a brief moment of improvisatory movement with the music. By keeping her dancers at arm’s length, Eyal seems more interested in the club as a backdrop for her signature movement style than wholly as a space with meaningful stories to be told.

Michele Rizzo, HIGHER xtn. 2024. Photography by Cameron Kelly courtesy of MoMA PS1.

Back in May, I attended Wire Festival, a multiday electronic music event at Knockdown Center that had no shortage of organically united dancefloors. It attracted a crowd of seasoned ravers who were eager to celebrate the start of spring as they danced alongside DJs who played well into the daylight. I left Wire in an afternoon daze to see Michele Rizzo’s HIGHER xtn. at MoMA PS1. My sleepless euphoria only deepened as the performance unfolded, starting with a lone dancer who looked plucked out of the festival.

The dancer, dressed in sneakers, baggy jeans, and a tight tank top, shuffled slowly into the gallery, perfectly in sync with the looping bars of an understated electronic melody. Soon, other dancers, clad in the same staple rave uniform, joined him — each having traveled from Europe for the U.S. museum debut of HIGHER xtn., which premiered at the Stedelijk in Amsterdam in 2018 and quickly became a fixture at kunsthalles and festivals across the continent. As the score’s tempo climbed, the choreography locked into a 16-count sequence, which the dancers executed with precise synchrony. They remained intensely focused, never making eye contact with each other, as they sought release in the endless repetition of synthesized beats. Once the dancers reached their limit, they stopped the sequence and exited the gallery, one by one.

HIGHER xtn. used the focused daylight of the gallery to highlight the meditative release found in the repetitive movements that dominate dark dancefloors. The performance’s restraint brought more consistency and intentionality than Eyal’s all-encompassing club construction in R.O.S.E. Yet both performances offer enticing entry points into club culture for those who may not frequent raves. Rizzo’s ecstatic, hypnotic repetitions reveal how the club can mirror other meditative practices, while Eyal’s interpolation of performance and clubbing helped hesitant audience members blossom by the end. Still, both works overlook one of the most underappreciated aspects of clubbing — its potential for individual expression. HIGHER xtn.’s pristine uniformity especially risks promoting the outdated techno trope that there’s a “right” way to dance to electronic music.

Maybe this shortcoming is, in fact, a benefit. For habitual ravers jaded by one too many sunrise sets, it’s a reminder to return to the club with more intention. If you pause and peer through the darkness, you’ll see hundreds of people moving to the same beat, each with their own subtle variations. This collective choreography is a ready-made spectacle that doesn’t need validation in a theater or museum. And when the music shifts slightly, you can watch the ripple effect sweep through the crowd while feeling the new beat in your body. Maybe this small bit of magic is best left on the dance floor.

Culture

Real Slick, Jack: Psyche Organic Arrives in New York

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Culture

Porsche SCOPES Brings Art, Music, and Design to Toronto

The festival was a full immersion into Toronto’s dynamic creative energy. Day one set the tone with DJ collective Living Room, followed by an experimental performance by Claire Rousay that captivated the crowd. Jewelry designer Steff Eleoff unveiled her Porsche Taycan 4S art car installation—a bold fusion of automotive and wearable art inspired by her Sedona ring—while OVO Sound’s Naomi Sharon and DVSN wrapped up the night with powerful, genre-defying performances.

We witnessed SCOPES Toronto bridging underground and mainstream with day two’s lineup. DJ Korea Town Acid’s set paved the way for Angelphroot and Dameer’s debut of BASSMATI, a track blending South Asian influences with bass-driven sounds. Chippy Nonstop’s return to Toronto and Richie Hawtin’s extended set were milestones of the evening, proving that the city’s underground scene has a global resonance.

The final day featured standout performances from local pianist Harrison, Indigenous artist Tia Wood, and hip-hop visionary Sean Leon, who elevated his set with a live choir. Moonshine Collective’s film and musical performance explored themes of African utopia, showcasing art’s power to bridge culture and technology. Rising Toronto star SadBoi, who paused her tour to perform at SCOPES, further underscored the festival’s commitment to nurturing local talent.

Throughout the weekend, we experienced installations from artists like Mitsu Mitsu and culinary creations from Bar Mordecai, capturing the multifaceted creativity Porsche SCOPES brought to Toronto. This milestone 10th edition, open to all, allowed Toronto’s vibrant arts scene to thrive, underscoring SCOPES’ mission to celebrate local talent while connecting it to a global audience.

office had the chance to connect with rising star SadBoi ahead of the event. In our conversation, she shared insights into her creative journey and reflected on what performing and growing up in Toronto means to her and her work.

How are you, and where are you at right now? You told me you were traveling.

Um, I’m good, I’m feeling really good right now. I’m traveling back to Salt Lake City. I had a show yesterday in Seattle. I’m on tour right now with Coco and Claire.

How is touring life treating you? Do you like it?

I love being on the road. To be honest, I feel like I don’t know—like I’ve had good experiences and bad ones—but this time it’s really fun, especially with the people I’m surrounded by. It’s also the longest tour I’ve been on; I have about four more weeks to go. I’m trying not to think about how many days I have left.

Do you feel homesick?

Yes, because when I start thinking about how many days are left, I start to miss my dogs. I’ve just been trying to stay in the moment—I don’t even know what day of the week it is, to be honest with you.

Oh, sweet! What are your dogs’ names?

Jillian and Winston. I know, they’re crazy names.

You’ll be performing at SCOPES in Toronto, which is where you grew up. Do you feel like the crowd is different when you perform in Toronto compared to other cities?

Yes, I mean, Toronto just feels different because it’s home. Every time I come back to perform, something in my career has changed. The last time I performed in Toronto, people just wanted to have a good time, and I’m excited to perform back home again to see everyone’s reactions. I know it’s going to be different from the last time. It’s exciting to see your own growth. Toronto is a tough crowd, though. If we’re with you, we’re really with you.

So, they’re super picky? You have to gain their respect, or what is it?

I think Toronto people are in their own world, but when something really connects with them, they’ll lose themselves in the moment. But it takes something to bring them out of that. Toronto crowds are tough because even if they like you, they won’t show it outright until they’re really vibing with you.

It’s like a vibe check, right?

Exactly. They’ll enjoy your performance, but it’s hard to explain. When people visit Toronto, they often say, “Oh, you guys are so nice,” and I’m like, “I don’t think we’re that nice, we’re just polite.” Like, you can walk down the street, and no one will say anything, but it’s just our mannerisms.

You mentioned Toronto can have a moody energy, especially at night, and that the underground night scene there really inspires you. Can you talk more about what makes Toronto's nightlife so influential for you?

Absolutely, Toronto has this unique energy that comes alive at night. Similar to New York, there are the popular clubs everyone knows, but you need to find your niche—the people who know where the real parties are. I remember going to raves in high school yards, sneaking in because I wasn’t old enough. Events like Baby, Jerk!, and Yes Yes Y’all were pivotal, exposing me to DJs blending dancehall with EDM—something I hadn’t seen before. Toronto nightlife is moody and intense, but when everyone’s out, it’s like the whole city is alive.