Before Zhali became an artist with delectable deliveries, he was just a kid from Toronto with an equal love for Eminem bars and Drake songs. His favourite artists (The Weeknd, PARTYNEXTDOOR) taught him melody. Today, that melody is the 25 year-old’s gift as well as a catalyst for his embryonic hip-hop success. To hear the rhyme rookie’s early succession of rap songs is to experience aqua flows and stark hooks as addictive as Tik Tok’s for you page. A closer listen offers the biography of a kid who survived toxicity and the consequences that followed.