Ask fast-rising Tuff Gong/Universal Music Canada-signed artist King Cruff to describe himself in one word and he’ll say ‘punky.’ But what does that mean exactly? To Cruff it means the ear-bending amalgam of Black musical styles he brings to the table. One listen to his singles “Samurai Chop” and “Soufflé” reveals a playful, experimental, and engaging patois-laced lyrical style over fuzzed out low-end beats evoking shades of Kaytranada and Goldlink. “There’s strong melodies rooted in hip-hop but it’s also dancehall and reggae and funk,” says Cruff. “We call that punky.”

King Cruff resists being put in a box and creates music with a fusion of genres across the diaspora. Reared on undisputed legends like reggae singer Beres Hammond, the Kingston, Jamaica-raised Solomon Marley-Spence aka Cruff has reggae in his DNA, but his initial teenage sonic forays were underscored by cribbed Audacity-fuelled lo-fi YouTube beats inspired by unapologetically eccentric hip-hop artists like Tyler The Creator and MF Doom. Having relocated to London, ON for university studies and now residing in Toronto, it’s no surprise that Cruff’s contemporary favourites Kendrick Lamar and Chronixx straddle the breadth of the Black sonic diaspora and hint at the complexity at the heart of his on-stage moniker.

“The word cruff means someone who has no ambition or no style,” he says, nodding to the meaning of the word in Jamaican parlance. Yet the word King conveys a directly opposite meaning and the difference is intentional on Cruff’s part. “I like to think of it as a balance between someone’s potential to be the best at what they can do and the worst of what they can do. It’s the juxtaposition of what we have in us as humans,” says Cruff.

It’s the exploration of nuanced self-reflection that excites Cruff. “I’m talking about really personal, introspective things,” he says. “Insecurities can really weigh you down, but I like to write about those heavier feelings so I can lift them up and free myself of them. I see my songs as think pieces and I want people to be able to relate to the lyrics behind the beats. It’s easy to feel lonely in this world and I want to help people feel less alone.”

King Cruff is currently bringing these themes to life with the music of producers like noted Toronto beat merchants Rich Kidd and Dom Dias as well as Jamaican-born producer Tesselated. Drawing on his own audio engineering background, the versatile King Cruff is thriving on experimenting with Afrobeats, dancehall and hip-hop and creating music that energizes and inspires. Constantly opening new avenues to his sound and blurring genre lines, King Cruff is poised to deliver (as his tentatively titled forthcoming EP promises) Something Punky for You.