Rayhan Jabbar sold drugs to pay for acting classes. It’s a detail so cinematic it seems made up, but he makes it sound mundane—just another transaction in the survival economy, where talent requires money and money appears wherever you can get it. EP 5 operates by the same logic: rap about Toronto winter gives way to indie rock about Berlin relationships, then comes electronic instrumental with a Bollywood sample, and all of this happens in fifteen minutes. The switches are abrupt, transitions are absent, the concept is blurred. Rayhan records what he’s lived through in whatever form suits each story.

Toronto rap has existed in a strange position for years now: the city gave the world The Weeknd, gave Drake, gave dozens of talented artists, but the question “what else is there?” persists stubbornly. Rayhan seemingly couldn’t care less about this question. Scarborough is in his blood, but he’s building a career on the specifics of his own experience, and the neighborhood remains a geographical point where this experience accumulated. Three tracks, three different genres, one voice—calm, confident, devoid of theatricality.

His acting and comedy background gives Rayhan a serious advantage. Fakeness in his professions kills the bit instantly—an audience reads insincerity in a second. In rap you can mask emptiness with flow and production, but on stage, heh, on stage there’s no such possibility. That’s exactly how his new work EP 5 sounds, because he’s used to working with real material and used to audiences seeing right through him. When he talks about funerals every other week or about the looks from office workers on Bay Street—these are genuinely personal diary entries set to music.

Rayhan bypasses the whole topic of conceptual unity. He could’ve written a statement about genre freedom, about Scarborough’s cultural diversity, about the new wave of Toronto music—the themes are right there on the surface. Instead, he just puts three tracks next to each other and goes about his business. This kind of confidence is refreshing, especially when every other artist writes essays about their creative decisions on social media.

“Windchill Minus Twenty” begins the EP with geography and temperature: minus twenty wind chill, winter in Toronto, Scarborough. Rayhan raps monotonously, voice almost devoid of emotion, but the text is dense. “Selling drugs a rite of passage”—a literal description of reality where drug dealing becomes the first step in the neighborhood’s economy. Then comes the chain: money goes to acting classes, skating in a torn jacket, conversations with his mother about a “smarter route,” looks from colleagues in offices on Bay Street because he speaks differently.

The second verse is darker and more personal. Funerals every other week stop being a tragedy and become a schedule. Family trauma, police violence, relationships where love turns into a luxury because survival demands all your attention.

The production is minimalist: beat, bass, atmosphere. The track holds one temperature from start to finish—cold, harsh, movement continues because standing still is more dangerous.

“Basic” completely switches registers. The genre changes to indie rock, geography shifts from winter Toronto to nighttime Berlin, the theme moves from street survival to toxic relationships. Rayhan sings, his voice sounds more vulnerable than in rap. The lyrics move quickly, images replace each other: stolen cigarettes, finishing sentences, a look of disappointment after a phrase that’s too revealing.

The song holds on contradiction: attraction and self-destruction run parallel, the boundary between them is blurred. “Little things” become the only anchor in a relationship where everything else seems fake. Rayhan transitions from rap to indie rock abruptly, there are no transitional moments. He recorded a song in another genre because the story demanded a different form.

“Shotta” closes the EP with an instrumental. Bollywood sample, electronic beat, no words—pure energy remains. The track is short, dynamic, made for movement. After confessional rap and painful indie rock, “Shotta” provides release.

The sample is recognizable, the beat is pulsating, the energy is high. Rayhan proves he exists comfortably in electronic music as organically as in rap and rock. Three tracks, three genres, and everywhere he sounds natural, there’s no sense of pretense.

“Shotta” finishes the EP on an upswing. This is a dancefloor track in its purest form, and Rayhan makes club music immediately after two serious, heavy songs. This kind of confidence in switching between registers is rare among young artists.

Verdict

So on this mini-album, specificity defeats abstraction. Details work stronger than concepts for him, and that’s his main advantage. The more precisely he describes his own experience, the wider the circle of people who recognize themselves in it.

You could nitpick about the absence of connecting elements between tracks. The transitions are abrupt, the concept is blurred, the listener has to connect the dots themselves. But it’s precisely this abruptness that makes the EP convincing. Rayhan doesn’t explain creative decisions, doesn’t write essays about genre freedom, doesn’t construct a narrative about Scarborough. Three songs capture three states: survival in a cold city, searching for intimacy in relationship chaos, pure dancefloor energy. He switches between them organically because all three are parts of real experience.

Crash Bando Coup is coming out in spring, Almost There XO in August. If Rayhan continues this line—honesty instead of posturing, details instead of generalizations, courage to change form to fit content—he’ll take his place among the important voices of new Toronto. EP 5 remains a statement of intent, but a convincing one. The music here respects the listener enough to tell the truth. Rayhan remains himself, and that’s his strength.

*This review was made possible by SubmitHub