Photo courtesy of McKenzie Power
In the summer of 2025 two Canadian artists teamed up to release an album called “Splash.” Emcee LxVNDR and producer/DJ Uncle Fester’s “Splash” provide listeners a body of work that crosses various subgenres, including boom bap, lo-fi, melodic, and introspective Hip-Hop.
Splash is a 10-track album produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered entirely by Uncle Fester. The project was also released on Fester’s Beats Don’t Lie label, and features appearances by Brainorchestra, Stephen Hero, Hatfield, Aquakultre, and Tachichi.
The Real Hip-Hop spoke to LxVNDR about Hip-Hop in Halifax, overcoming self-hatred, working with Uncle Fester, and their new album, Splash.
TRHH: Explain the title of the new album, Splash.
LxVNDR: So, you know, the way that my mind works I usually will find titles like off the rip. Things will just pop into my head and I’m just like, “It’s that, it’s perfect.” Originally, with this I had heard of the elemental biomolecular structure of different ices and stuff and like space and everything, and that really fascinated me. There’s like a bunch of different kinds of ice and their molecular structures and so it kind of started there and I was going to go in that direction, but then all of a sudden I just thought “Splash.” It was actually quite random and I just thought like a wave of emotion. The album was pretty emotional for me talking about some deeper topics and water represents the subconscious mind. It just seemed softer I guess than the kind of ice direction I was going to go in and I just chose that.
TRHH: How did you hook up with Uncle Fester to do this project?
LxVNDR: I’ve known Fester for a while. I think honestly, I’ve known Fester probably since like 2019, maybe a little bit even before then. I met him through Ghettosocks actually, because I was on socks’ album and we roll in the same circles. So, I had met him ages ago and I always really enjoyed every project he did — loved his style — he’s so talented. It just kind of seemed like a natural thing that we would. He liked my music too and it took a while to do that. We just kind of were both doing our thing and then I’m not sure which one of us mentioned it first, but then it was just like, “Yeah, heck yeah.
TRHH: What was the process like creating Splash?
LxVNDR: It was so lax, it was so lax. Basically, he just sent me beat packs over time. The album probably took like a couple years. We just casually exchanged back and forth. He would send me beats, I would pick the ones that I like, then I would take some time to kind of sit on them, write them. Then we would plan something. A few times our plans fell through and so it just kind of carried on until eventually we had like a good decent amount of tracks, which was about a two year process.
TRHH: Who inspired you to want to be an emcee?
LxVNDR: That’s a good question. I feel like I thought about this the other day and there’s so many of them that it’s kind of hard to pick. However, I guess the first rap music that I’ve ever heard would have been probably 2Pac, would have been Notorious B.I.G. There’s something about gangsta rap that really does it for me too. Like even from a young age there was just so much power in it that I just really loved that attitude that you could throw down on the mic. So, I don’t know, geez. I also really like Immortal Technique. I was super inspired by Immortal. Obviously, that’s a hard question, but I would probably have to say 2Pac.
TRHH: What is the Halifax Hip-Hop scene like?
LxVNDR: It’s actually pretty awesome. It’s growing right now too, which is interesting. I feel like I know a lot of people on the scene, but there’s still a lot of people that I don’t know I would say within the younger crowd. It seems like there’s different styles of Hip-Hop coming out of Halifax now, which is really refreshing. I feel like a lot of what dominated previously was kind of like boom bap and pretty much what I do and stuff, but there’s a lot of younger artists that have more nuanced subgenres of Hip-Hop coming out too, and I think it’s great. There’s a lot of talent here.
I’m very impressed when I go out and I meet new people. I did like an ANSMA City Hall I think it’s called, kind of like a meeting of the minds with artists. I went out and hosted one of those and newer artists in the city come out, share their music, and you just kind of network and mix it up with them. I was just so impressed, I was just so freaking impressed. And I just feel like that’s crazy because I don’t know, does everywhere have all these talented people? You know what I mean? It just blows my mind.
TRHH: On the song “Roll the Dice” you say, “I’m ready for the major leagues, fuck all that little league shit.” What’s your ultimate goal in the music business?
LxVNDR: Well, pretty much with anything I do because of my Aries fighting spirit I feel I want to kind of just go right to the top, or as big as I can. I really enjoy just seeing how far I can go and just taking those risks and those chances to do it. At the time, I was just feeling like I’m going to go all the way. I still feel like I’m going to make it to a good space with music. I have been having some kind of issues with my health behind the scenes, so it’s been slowing me down a bit, which sucks. But to be honest, I haven’t been able to go full tilt 100% yet. So, once that happens that’ll be nice. But pretty much I was just saying that I’m ready to roll with the big dogs, stay on the porch!
TRHH: On the song “Mirror Mirror” you say, “I’m stricken with the self-hatred disease, I’m sickened by the thought of what was me/I just want to love myself, want to be free.” Why do you believe that you hate yourself and why is it important to you to share that in your music?
LxVNDR: Well, a lot of what I write is just the manifestation of my psychological state. It’s basically used as a tool to free myself of the weight of emotions that I deal with. There’s a lot of catharsis for writing with me. It’s definitely like my main mode of healing. There are things that I’ve been through in my life that have caused me to lean on drugs and alcohol and make questionable decisions in my life for many, many years just kind of numbing the pain of what was. And so that kind of just goes hand in hand. Nobody really abuses their body and soul without being in a state of self-hatred pretty much, right? So, that was just kind of a reflection of previous states that I had been in and how hard you have to work to learn to love yourself when you’ve kind of gone against that for such a long time.
TRHH: How did you overcome drugs and alcohol?
LxVNDR: Well, luckily for me a lot of what I was doing was circumstantial due to traumas. It’s never been something that I’ve just leaned on for the sake of leaning on it. I did it because I was hurting. I wanted to numb that out and I guess I just ended up kind of healing from the traumas over time and I didn’t need it. In that sense, that’s lucky for me because a lot of people I guess don’t get that. I was lucky enough to just kind of let go of a lot of my pain, which also, everything else left too — my vices, basically.
TRHH: That’s the hard part, letting go.
LxVNDR: Yeah, definitely. I mean, it took years. It took like a decade.
TRHH: On the song “Kintsugi” you speak about a relationship that didn’t work out and you say “My trauma skewing my perception causing problems for us.” How did you discover that past issues were causing issues in your relationship and what did you do to fix those issues? Was that part of the same healing?
LxVNDR: Well, it definitely was. How do I put this? I don’t wanna slander anyone because that might happen. But I don’t want to do that. As far as the relationship goes, it wouldn’t be slandering my ex or whatever who I was talking about. I was engaged to him actually, so, it was a very serious relationship. But I struggled with a lot of jealousy, actually. I think that a lot of the time there was a lot of relationships that were mirrored to me kind of from a narcissistic lens. Things that I had seen growing up — men kind of abusing women emotionally, and women kind of desiring to be loved because of childhood traumas from their life, and so kind of just letting themselves be hurt like that. I think that seeing that allowed me to kind of internalize that and when I grew up I didn’t realize that I was behaving the same. I was doing the same patterns that I had seen.
So, I actually am not really as much of a jealous person as I used to be. I think that that also stemmed from just a feeling like you’re not good enough. However, in that relationship I will say sometimes I’m a little dramatic when I write, and that’s fine because you know I’m allowed to be dramatic, I’m an Aries after all, but he was doing stuff that was also not okay. So, I don’t know if all of it was necessarily jealousy, some of it was, but some of it was pretty warranted. That’s kind of what I was talking about and also just my perception of self didn’t allow me to open up as much as I wanted to. I don’t really think that was the safest space for me to open up, so, in that sense I see my faults as well. But it wasn’t the best environment for something beautiful to grow given the circumstances.
TRHH: Who is the Splash album made for?
LxVNDR: I honestly made it for me. I made it for me to just get those emotions out, but at the same time it’s also for anyone who is struggling through traumas and feels like maybe they can’t make it another day and feels like they’re a bug on God’s windshield sometimes.
Purchase: LxVNDR & Uncle Fester – Splash