How these Filipino Canadian hip-hop artists are creating a unique sound

There's a mysterious voice that appears on Manila Grey's sensual track "Owe You": "Ilang gabi nako hindi makatulog," whispers a woman at the 2:51 mark on the R&B/hip-hop duo's song. She's talking about sleepless nights in Tagalog, one of the official languages of the Philippines, and the enigmatic sample is from a Filipino movie. 

"It's basically a woman calling her lover," says Neal Carlo (Neeko) Zabalathe, the group's MC. "We love retro movies, old-school '70s movies [and] action movies, especially coming out of the Philippines. When I mixed that song, that clip had just been in there as an Easter egg for the band."

The Vancouver-based pair is one of several emerging Filipino Canadian hip-hop acts forging a distinct sonic path by showcasing their heritage with samples, blending traditional Filipino music with rap. The result is music that's personal and connects the artists to their roots, while also introducing new sounds to the wider diaspora.

"Music really is just the medium, you know, the goal is to instill pride in Filipinos that their culture is enough," says Han Han, a Toronto-based rapper whose music explores how she navigates the world as a Filipina immigrant. 

From Manila Grey's inception, Neeko and singer Justin (Soliven) Villarosa have embraced their heritage with the group's name: "Manila" is a tribute to the capital of the country from which the two musicians emigrated, and "Grey" is a nod to the gloomy skies of Vancouver, where they settled. 

The group's songs are filled with cultural references: there's the aforementioned sample from "Owe You," and there is also direct lyricism, especially on the group's newest album, Sound Drift. The heartfelt track "Motherland" features impassioned lyrics about the pair's journey to finding success in Canada after leaving home. "Had to leave my cousins and my aunts and my grandmama/ two dеcades later I come back doing concerts," Soliven sings.

"I think that song really touches base on immigrating to Canada as first-generation immigrants and showing love to our roots, and always carrying with us that love for where we came from," Soliven says.

Music really is just the medium, you know, the goal is to instill pride in Filipinos that their culture is enough.- Han Han

Similar to Manila Grey, Junior has also created a distinct musical catalogue that showcases his Filipino identity. He regularly infuses his songs with kulintang instrumentation (a type of Filipino gongs from the Mindanao and Sulu islands). He was introduced to Indigenous Filipino music during a trip to Mindanao, and started experimenting with his own music when he returned to Canada. "I started incorporating the samples, just having fun with it," he explains.

"I have always wanted to explore [this] side [of myself] with my roots and bring that to the bigger landscape," Junior adds.

Now, Junior creates intricate beats using the gongs — which he plays — and people can witness him crafting new music in short jamming videos he posts on Instagram. He recently released a gong mixtape, Return to Gongland, that enmeshes the sounds with samples from hip-hop artists including Timbaland, Busta Rhymes, Fugees and more. The mixtape's release coincided with his performance at Gongster's Paradise, a kulintang festival in San Francisco.

"I just kind of want to make a mixtape that everyone can enjoy," Junior says. "When people think about the Philippines, they still don't really hear this [type of music]."

Although Junior releases his own music, he also works with other Filipino Canadian hip-hop artists, including rapper Kimmortal, who has a history of injecting their music with the sounds of kulintang gongs. Their hard-hitting feminist rap song "Jungle" was the result of a kulintang experiment: "I sampled the kulintang instrument off a YouTube film, sped it up, chopped up beat samples and made a drum kit out of cellphone recordings of these caged birds that were in my mom's kitchen," they told Wear Your Voice magazine.

Junior is part of the duo A La Una (formerly known as Datu), and the group teamed up with Kimmortal for "On My Way," a fierce track that features echoing kulintang instrumentation and sharp beats. "I think that one was really fun because it was a mixture of all our gongs, and having Kimmortal be part of it, Kimmortal is a very fiery rapper," he says. "It helps to have people like that who are part of your community."

Junior has also produced for Han Han, who has used kulintang instrumentation in her songs. The two have collaborated on high-energy tracks such as "LDR" and "World Gong Crazy," which showcase Han Han's fervent rapping in Tagalog and Cebuano, another Filipino language. 

"The main reason why I rap in Filipino is because if you want to be an artist, you have to be honest, and you can only be honest in a language that you can express yourself fully in, right?" she says.

"I'm really passionate about culture and advocating for Filipinos to be seen in Canada in the music scene," she adds, explaining that creating the music helped her rediscover her identity.

"Especially with [my] first album, because we were working with gongs," she says. "Most of the sales of that album [were] donated to an Indigenous school in the Philippines, because we used a lot of Indigenous traditions there, like the gongs."

We're playing this Nick Fury role in the Filipino zeitgeist, where we're kind of putting all the Avengers together.- Manila Grey

For Han Han, Junior and Manila Grey, the incorporation of Filipino culture in their music is a conscious choice, and the use of samples is one small piece of the overall identity puzzle. Soliven says that overall, being independent has helped Manila Grey to make "authentic" music, which has also allowed them to collaborate with other musicians from the diaspora such as OPM singer Arthur Nery and rapper Guapdad4000 — artists who both feature on Sound Drift.

"We're playing this Nick Fury role in the Filipino zeitgeist, where we're kind of putting all the Avengers together," he says, of uniting the artists. "We thought that it would be really cool to just come out and have everyone [on the album] share the blessings and make amazing music together."

Junior says through his songs and production, he's able to marry contemporary and traditional music, which makes it "digestible to other Filipinos who might not realize that type of music exists."

Seeking to contemporize the music "allows us to kind of engage people in such a different way," Junior says. "I have two kids, and the fact that they know about gongs is an amazing thing to me because, you know, I never knew. I had to do a whole bunch of digging first."