Steps To The Peak

It’s a rare event to see such a truly international project released onto the Canadian Hip Hop landscape. Cee (the MC) hails from Melbourne, Australia, while Dr. MaD (the producer) was born and raised in Algeria, and the two connected online over their mutual love of music. After meeting in person at Hip Hop Karaoke MTL, the idea for this project was born and it quickly escalated from a 3 track online release to an official full blown EP.

‘Steps To The Peak’ is the debut project from the duo, which is essentially a ten-track love letter to the city of Montreal. Dr. MaD’s dusty soul and jazz samples blend effortlessly with Cee’s conscious flows and tales of immigrating to a foreign land to follow a dream. All guest MCs hail from the 514 – with the exception of Cee’s brother and The Movement Fam co-founder Notion, who resides in Toronto – maintaining the Quebecois vibe of the project. Dr. MaD’s crew Alaiz (home to the über-famous Kaytranada, High Klassified and soon-to-be-famous Da-P) is well represented, with Nox (‘Another Day’) and Green Hypnotic (‘Don’t You Know’) swinging by for 16 bars a piece; Trinidad expat Richeus brings his Caribbean flavour to ‘Dear Life’; Montreal pioneer D-Shade (of Shades of Culture) shows love on ‘New Routine’; Notion reps TMF on both ‘Another Day’ and the so-MTL-it-hurts bonus track ‘Le Belmont To The Bell Centre’; and Dr. MaD himself spits some bars on the Frenglish (or Franglais) #CVB. The two bonus tracks are only included on the physical digipak CD.

Montreal’s CJLO (Concordia University) has heavily supported the project, so much so it hit #1 on their Hip Hop Charts in the last week of September 2013 and #4 on their overall charts in the first week of December 2013; ‘Steps To The Peak’ returned to #1 in that same week, beating out Shad’s chart debut with ‘Flying Colours’.