As a punk singer he released his first record at 15, and spent his late teens and early twenties traveling around Canada in that guise, but it wasn’t until moving to Toronto that he began unpacking a different kind of sound. Following the break up of his band, and relatively alone in a new city, he found himself casting about for collaborators and caught the ear of Grammy award winning Toronto producer Boi-1da (Drake, Rihanna, Jay Z) and several others in his orbit, who invited Stevenson to write on their beats. It was a new kind of approach to making music for Stevenson, but one that aligned with the direction of his tastes, and it was creatively fruitful, as his first singles under his own name, the Megaman and Zalezy (Lil Wayne, Drake, Kanye West, Nicki Minaj) produced “Left You Behind,” and the Boi-1da produced “Falling Off,” generated international attention, and anointed Stevenson as an artist to watch in the increasingly hyped Toronto scene.
