Kaytranada Owns His Influence

Once modern dance music's best-kept secret, the Canadian DJ-producer is ready to go bigger.

- CONNOR GAREL

KAYTRANADA IS SEATED inside a dimly lit bistro in Montreal's Mile End, wearing large sunglasses and a Frank Zappa T-shirt, regretting the hedonism that led to his present ruined condition. He lives in Los Angeles, but he grew up here, in a quiet borough some ten miles away, and a trip home for his mother's birthday has also meant debaucherous reunions with childhood friends.

"I don't want to drink anymore," he says half-heartedly in a soft French Canadian accent, pushing away the wine menu before ordering a bottle of sparkling water. Famous last words from the in-demand DJ-producer for whom partying is both his métier and escape. Kaytra recently attempted to forgo weed, too-his Grammy-winning sophomore album, 2019's Bubba, was named for the strain he smoked while developing its effervescent sound-but he could only manage the abstinence for about three weeks this summer, during which he had unsettling dreams.

In one, the snaggletooth on the right side of his smile somehow cracked in half, birthing a procession of other, smaller teeth that he couldn't stop spitting up. Google theorized that some tectonic change or loss is imminent, perhaps the death of an old self. "Whatever," he grumbles in his characteristically blasé fashion, leaning back into his chair.

"I guess I'll be on the lookout." Kaytra got his start as a teenager reverse engineering Dilla beats on his computer and remixing old hip-hop and R&B songs in a basement bedroom-reworks that totally transformed songs by Common or Janet Jackson or Amerie and still stand the test of time. He is now seen as one of the most significant musicians from Canada in the past few decades.