A reunion with the most

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This article was published 28/03/2024 (904 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In a quiet Exchange District nightclub, Billy Pierson and Tyler Rogers are running through the tracklist for a reunion concert more than a decade in the making.

“Prior to this show, we never even had to think about this,” says Pierson, or Jon-C, one-third of local rap crew Winnipeg’s Most, an award-winning Indigenous hip-hop trio that reached its peak in the early 2010s, winning nine Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards — now Indigenous Music Awards — for its two albums.

“We used to have this all down pat.”

Turn back the clock and hits by Winnipeg’s Most — which also featured Charlie Fettah (Rogers) and the late Brooklyn (Jamie Prefontaine) — were at the top of local radio charts, not just on the hip-hop-centric Streetz FM, but on the playlists of mainstream radio DJs such as Ace Burpee.

Whether listeners liked what the group said or found it offensive, there’s no denying that Winnipeg’s Most was a force to be reckoned with in the history of Manitoba hip hop. In a matter of three years, the members went from recording in their parents’ dining rooms to performing their boisterous anthems for rabid crowds across the country, taking the stage at the Vancouver Olympics and in front of 10,000 fans at Aboriginal Day Live.

“It took us 10 years to become an overnight success,” says Jon-C, who founded local hip-hop label Heatbag Records in 2005.

“Part of the magic was the fact that we approached this trying to make some dope-ass music for the streets, and we made sure we were talking from a perspective we hadn’t heard before,” says Fettah, who mentions Indigenous rap groups War Party and Team Rezofficial as sources of inspiration.

“Making our music focused on the Prairies and in Winnipeg was why it really caught on. We had an underserved market. Nobody was saying what we were saying, and if they were, they were saying it PG. We said f— it. We’ll just say the real.”

Before uniting as a trio, the artists made music on their own, in their own neighbourhoods, Fettah and Jon-C in the North End and Brooklyn in the Brooklands area, starting when he was 15.

Fettah first heard of Jon-C by way of what seemed to be a diss, hearing his own name mentioned in an early Heatbag single.

“The rapper in me was like, “Who are these guys, and what’s their problem with me?”

So he headed over to Pierson’s mother’s house. “The second I pulled up, I saw the guys sitting on the stoop,” Fettah recalls.

He changed course, struck up a friendly conversation, and by the end of the night, he, Jon-C and a few others were recording. Brooklyn arrived later on after earning a reputation for prodigious wordplay, intricate production and a knack for melodic hooks.

“He would make music all day and night if he could,” says his mother, Lori Prefontaine, 57.

“We recognized his talent immediately,” says Fettah. “We said, ‘We should make music with that gentleman right there.”

Aside from their joint love for hip-hop, each of the three men were also making strides to turn their lives around.

“We were one foot in, one foot out of a lifestyle we were desperately trying to leave,” says Fettah, who was on parole during Winnipeg’s Most’s first two tours.

“I was on a nine o’clock curfew, out well after nine o’clock, before I finally proved that we were (working on our music), doing exactly what I was telling them we were doing,” says Jon-C.

They were figuring out their music careers as they went along, a process accelerated by meeting Rezofficial’s Jay Mak and Big Stomp, who set up an impromptu studio in Fettah’s dining room on Matheson Avenue.

Over two weeks, the trio — yet to give itself a name — recorded 14 songs, 10 of which found a place on its self-titled debut album.

“When Stomp came back to Winnipeg (three months later), he had the name Winnipeg’s Most,” recalls Fettah, who now runs Nightshift Entertainment, a Winnipeg booking company, and continues to make his own music.

“We said ‘Winnipeg’s most what?’ And he said, ‘Exactly.’”

With the professional polish of Stomp and Jay Mak, Winnipeg’s Most took off, especially after releasing the video for the lead single All That I Know, which has racked up 5.6 million views since it was posted to YouTube in 2011.

Before the widespread acclaim, Winnipeg’s Most’s members performed to listeners who directly connected to their lyrical content. At an early show at Salsa Bar, a former Portage Avenue venue across from the University of Winnipeg, Fettah was shocked by the crowd assembled in front of him.

“There’s a picture (at that show) with opposing gang members — guys with legitimate street beef — side by side. Not there on some rah-rah, not there on some drama, literally just there because they supported the music we were making,” he says.

Success came fast. They hired an agent, bought a tour van and began playing shows across the country, including at remote First Nations in Manitoba.

“That’s where we realized we’re representing something bigger than ourselves,” says Jon-C, who co-founded the Indigenous Hip Hop Awards.

The rest of the country caught on, too. In 2010, the group was nominated for four Indigenous Music Awards, following it up the next year by winning in all six categories they were nominated in. However, Fettah wasn’t there. While shooting a video, he was stopped for hanging out with “known criminals.” Three days later, while being fitted for a suit at Aldo on Notre Dame, he got a call from his parole officer.

“I watched my boys go six for six from a prison cell on a 13-inch TV,” he says.

By 2012, the group had broken up. In September 2015, Fettah and Jon-C were heartbroken to hear that Brooklyn had died at the age of 30.

In the nine years since, Fettah and Jon-C have floated the idea of reuniting as a tribute to Prefontaine, but say they would never do it unless it got approval from Brooklyn’s mother, Lori.

They will realize that goal tonight when they play the Burton Cummings Theatre.

“When they asked, I never hesitated to say yes,” says Prefontaine. “I’m ready to celebrate this part of my son’s legacy and the great music that Winnipeg’s Most produced.

“Bands break up, and you can’t change that, but the brotherhood is still there.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com