How Kresnt is using hip hop to validate his existence as an Afghan-Canadian

Beyond the 6 is a CBC Music series that highlights hip-hop artists and scenes across Canada, beyond Toronto. This month, we talked to Vancouver artist Kresnt.

As an Afghan refugee who came to Canada with his family in 1999 to escape the Taliban, Vancouver-based MC Kresnt brings a rarely heard perspective to hip hop. Heartfelt lyrics like, "This is apartment 308/ four brothers in one room, wish we'd relocate," from "Apartment 308" off his latest album, Hustle Sold Separately, describe the struggles Kresnt and his family endured in the early days of them settling in Canada. In addition to the compelling autobiographical content that he often infuses into his music, Kresnt asserts himself on the album as a lyricist with wit, a sharp pen and relentless flow.

Kresnt's rap moniker is directly linked to his name Hilal, which in Farsi means "crescent." Consequently, the hip hop Kresnt makes is inextricably linked to, yet not wholly defined by, this pivotal life experience of being an Afghan Canadian.

"I was like, where do I fit because I'm the only Afghan in my school?" says Kresnt, reflecting on his youth. "So I can see like, oh, all the Caucasian people. They like this type of music or they like this type of stuff. Maybe I can attach to that? But then it just never felt genuine to me … but hip hop has always been like this binding glue that allows me to express my current situation."

It's notable that Kresnt's immersion into hip hop was a complete accident, and unwittingly initiated by his mother. In the early 2000s, Kresnt was a Nickelback and Usher fan, trying to adapt to living in Canada, when his mom handed him a disc she had picked up at a garage sale that she'd deduced from the cover art was a video game where you played as a firefighter. The disc actually turned out to be Confessions of Fire, the 1998 debut rap album by influential Harlem MC Cam'ron. 

Playing the Cam'ron album on his bedroom CD player while shooting at his mini basketball hoop as a kid, Kresnt picked out a line on the album that referenced Persians and, despite the limited command of the English language he had at the time, it immediately stopped him in his tracks.

"I'm like, 'How did he know about Persians?'" says Kresnt. "Because I'm so in this world of thinking that everyone around me doesn't know Afghans. And nobody really in my environment [in B.C.] where I was living was Afghan, so when I heard that, that's where it started."

Instead of using my fists to fight them, I'm going to use my words because I'm going to combat what [the racist bully] came with. That is what led to me falling in love with doing it myself.- Kresnt

This serendipitous entry into hip hop was further underlined when Kresnt realized how the culture and art form could be used to assert his own identity as an Afghan, especially in the face of racism and discrimination. Kresnt remembers an especially disturbing incident at school one day when he was in Grade 6, where a fellow student was showing a video on his phone of someone performing a racist rap song toward brown people to raucous laughter. Isolated because he was one of two people in the school the video could have been aimed at, Kresnt was incensed. He began to freestyle incessantly on his way home as a response and refute to the video, and became committed to using hip-hop culture to validate his own existence.

"I'm like, all right, well, you know what, I'm going to use these words," says Kresnt. "And instead of using my fists to fight them, I'm going to use my words because I'm going to combat what [the racist bully] came with. That is what led to me falling in love with doing it myself. Because I've always been a fan of hip hop, but I never thought I could contribute to it. It was the feeling as if this was the defence mechanism."

Kresnt has continued to use hip hop's power to magnify marginalized voices as a vehicle to assert his Afghan heritage. Last year, within days of the Taliban's recapture of Afghanistan, Kresnt recorded and uploaded a song called "Free Afghanistan" that generated a response from around the world, with Kresnt hearing directly from educators trying to explain the situation to their students.

"They were like, 'I'm a teacher in Chicago.' 'I'm a teacher in Switzerland, and I'm playing this song in my class for them to understand about the political stuff that's going on in Afghanistan,'" says Kresnt. "Because if you were to explain to someone, 'Hey, sit down and let me explain to you 40 years of war in Afghanistan,' they might just be like, 'I don't have the time for that.' But that song was able to just summarize all of it within two-and-a-half minutes."

While his 2022 album, Hustle Sold Separately, is densely lyrical and evokes the throwback, sped-up, soulful productions that proliferated in hip hop in the wake of Jay-Z's 2001 album, Blueprint, Kresnt's catalogue has many layers. Showcasing his versatility, he's released a significant amount of hip hop in his catalogue through his own Lunar Cycle imprint, exploring melodic delivery and trap-infused sonics as well as tracks like the popular "In Your Place," which straddles elements of both styles.

Among the many albums Kresnt has released in the last few years was 2020's Ahmed, which not only references his real name, but is also a nod to legendary Afghan musical icon Ahmad Zahir, who Kresnt refers to as the "Afghan Elvis."

"Every single Afghan is embedded to know as soon as you're born — Ahmad Zahir — from weddings to your parents playing the music; he made such timeless music," says Kresnt. "And his themes have always been about the struggles of life and the struggles he has with women."

Kresnt affirms that singers have always been hugely important to Afghan culture, even in an age where hip hop is a dominant musical genre, and he has found inspiration in Zahir as his music helps him explore his musical creativity.

"If I rap, that's one side of me. I have another side, which is my Usher side," says Kresnt. "Ahmed was [about] my personal problems that more people could also resonate with when you're trying to find love, but you're scared of getting hurt, but you're also looking, trying to find a common soul."

Kresnt further explores the topic of relationships on forthcoming tracks like "Uptown," but for now, with still more music clearly to come, he believes his latest album is the best representation of his creativity. "I feel like that's the album I've been writing my whole life," says Kresnt. "For me, Hustle Sold Separately is my favourite piece of work I've done because it feels like it's the most complete story of me so far."