Tobique First Nation rap artist writes about life on a reserve

ForKwabidNicholas, the love for his family can be found in his music.

"Rolling commotionmy soul in the ocean the waves I can feel cold as the snow is." These are some of thelyrics in his song, 1998.

"I have this lyric in there ... 'my soul in the ocean' and it shows my girlfriend and my daughter by the ocean and it just refers to this trip wetook."Nicholas said in an interview.

The 23-year-old artist from Tobique First Nation started publishing his rap singles online in the last year, but his passion began a decade ago with poetry when he was a teenager.

"It kind of stuck with me and I had a couple of cousins ... They like to rap and they got me into that."

The artist lives in Perth-Andover now, ninekilometres south of Tobiquealong the St.John River. But hissongs are based on observations of life on the First Nation, and weaves in his own thoughts on topics like identity, family and substance use.

For him, it is important to dispel stereotypesnon-Indigenous people may have about lifeon a reserve, but to also be true to his own experiences growing up there.

"It's not really easy growing up on a reservation, butI find a lot of people ... they just think we're doing good and they refuseto see the bad." He said.

"But that's not all I want to talk about."

In the music video for his song,1998,Nicholas has imagesof his girlfriend Brianna Bear, who is from Paq'tnkek First Nation, east ofAntigonish, Nova Scotia and their two year-old daughter Brielle Nicholas Bear.

While she's still too young to understandhis songs,Nicholas said he wants to teach her the power of being outspoken.

"I want to teach her that she shouldn't be a follower ...she should always be herself and in regards to my music I think I'll just tell her to find her own message."

Creative process

ForNicholas, he wants to keep his music as open to interpretation as possible, "I feel like if I just come out there with my own little message ... that will just be it, so I just try to sprinkle it in here and there."

For his newest song, Nicholas said it was based on how he viewed the cyclical nature of life on a reserve.

"It's all almost the same verse. It's supposed to be like that because it's supposed to be like a metaphor of how the things are on the reserve ...People do the same thing over and over and they think it's going to be different, but it's never different. "

In the past six months, Nicholas has also been on a journey of sobrietythat was triggered through a series of repeated visions.

"I was having this vision of this guy and it was down this hallway andI couldn't see the end of the hallway ... but it was like a turn of a corner where he kept saying you shouldn't be looking down that way, you shouldn't be looking down there."

Nicholas said, "I kept saying, what's down there? I don't want to see that ... it was scaring me."

It was this fear that made him realize that drinking was something he had tobreak away from.

"I feel like I have worth now and I feel like part of growing up on the reserve ... I just got caught in a cycle ... I feel like I finally broke out and I feel better for it."

The future

Right nowNicholas is not able to pursue music full-time buthopes to do so in the future.

"It's hard to even do music sometimes [because]I have to balance my family, work andIt's kind of hard to do it all."

He said, "But what gives me hopeis really my girlfriend and my daughter."