To mark the start of National Poetry Month, we look back at our interview with Humble the Poet from Mission’s BIPOC issue.
Kanwer Singh, known professionally as Humble the Poet, is, in as few words as possible, a wise rapper. His Instagram profile consists of screenshots of his tweets, which are proclamations like “Trying to make everyone else happy is a waste of life” and “Some call it defeat. Some call it learning. Choose wisely.”
For someone who’s careful about his social media intake (Humble characterizes social media as “fast food for anxiety”), his following is impressive. The rapper has garnered more than 533,000 followers on Instagram and more than 114,000 on Twitter. But Humble does more than dole out shareable Instagram quotes (although he does have a penchant for virality). The rapper’s YouTube channel—the primary platform through which he shares his music—boasts more than 15 million views.
Humble’s lyrics differ dramatically from the glorification of drugs and violence often found in rap songs. His songs espouse wisdom regarding self-reflection and self-love, and feature collaborations with various singers on the catchy melodic choruses. “I’m just an older dude / Lived a lot and risked few / I took a shot and missed a few / But I’m still here so this will do / My skin so thick I’m bulletproof / And Cupid’s arrows can’t get through / No really, no one can get through / I’m stuck inside myself,” he raps on his 2020 single “Y.O.U.”
The “Humble” in Singh’s stage name stems from Sikh philosophy, which deems the ego as a barrier to peace, and “the Poet” from rap battles where Singh beat out other rappers and MCs, dubbing himself one better—a poet. “I’m well aware that it’s not very humble to call yourself humble, but humble is also a verb,” he explains.
Here, Humble opens up about modern-day overstimulation, his unique lyrical approach to sexuality, and overcoming life’s low points.
Juno Kelly: Why do you think people are increasingly anxious in this day and age?
Humble the Poet: People are addicted to dopamine. Anxiety is dopamine withdrawal. People get dopamine off their phones, from watching TV, from all the distractions that life currently presents them. And when they don’t have those distractions in front of them, they get anxious. That’s only going to increase until we take our mental health into our own hands and start to understand the environmental impacts that affect how we feel. How much sleep are we getting? How much water are we drinking? Are we taking stimulants, like caffeine, and smoking cigarettes? What we eat, what time we eat, how much time we spend on our phones. All this contributes to our anxiety, and there are businesses out there that profit from us doing these things. So, until we can snap out of it or make better choices to slow things down, that anxiety is going to increase.
JK: What caused your mental health difficulties, if you’re comfortable talking about it?
HTP: Just like everybody else, I have anxieties about my future, I get overstimulated, I have real-life challenges, circumstances that make my life more difficult than it needs to be. I also have mentally perceived challenges. I grew up in a household where mental health wasn’t prioritized, so I wouldn’t know if something was hereditary, whether it’s depression or any other type of mental health challenge. The neighborhood I grew up in, the type of family dynamic I grew up in, can definitely cause complex PTSD. And these aren’t words we understood growing up, so we didn’t do much to deal with them. Being vulnerable, sharing your feelings, writing in a journal, talking to a therapist—these aren’t things I grew up thinking were important. That stuff adds up, and to medicate that, you chase distractions. I’m no different than anybody else from that standpoint, and now I’m working to deal with that.
JK: What clicked and helped you to recover?
HTP: I don’t think I have recovered. I don’t think many people recover. I think I’ve improved my situation by making healthier choices. I took social media off my phone. Social media is fast food for anxiety. I’ve been just trying to reduce all this junk in my life. Understanding that life, by default, is going to be more difficult, so this is the best option.
JK: What’s the story behind your “H.A.I.R” music video?
HTP: I originally wanted to make a music video just showing different types of hair. Being from the most diverse city on the planet [Toronto], I realized I had so much more to celebrate than just hair. We have some of the most beautiful women in this city. With it being so multicultural, I decided to make the video for women of different sizes, abilities, ages, hairstyles, ethnicities, etc. Just celebrating diversity, and viewing diversity as a gift and not an obstacle.
JK: You remix a lot of Drake songs. What’s your attraction to his music?
HTP: [Fellow Toronto native Drake is] an individual putting up points on the board for our city, and I think it’s been a dope thing. And he was part of a wave of honest music, especially in his early years. Drake helps you get in your feelings. So, you hear a Drake song, and he leaves enough of the beat at the end of the song, and naturally, your mind starts vomiting out your emotions on that beat. So that’s where it came from. Those remixes ended up being some of the most successful remixes I’ve done, but I’ve also done a bunch of Kanye. When I started doing these remixes, the goal was to be on proficient rappers’ beats and show that I could coexist with them. And I think over the years it’s changed to, well, “What’s the feeling with the emotion?” and Drake is really good at capturing emotion.
JK: What was the intent behind your video for “SARCO (Sex Tape for the Visually Impaired)”?
HTP: I was exploring the idea that I could create a sex tape through lyricism. You don’t need to see anything; the pictures exist in your mind. The “SARCO” video is part two of a three-part short film. The first part is called “Different Tokes.” “SARCO” is part two, and “Beauty with a Black Eye” is part three. If you watch them in order, I had the same female playing three different roles, representing the archetypes of male fantasy. The first one is the dangerous, sexy head turner. The second, in the “SARCO” video, is the bright, loving, wifey, girlfriend-type vibe. The third is the super-sexy, submissive, sexual-fantasy object. It was an exploration of sexuality. Coming from a certain heritage where people view sex as a taboo, these conversations are important. It was really about creating these conversations around sex. The song “SARCO” was my take on a love song, a flirty song. I also have a song called “Booty Pics,” where the challenge was “Can you write a very sexual song toward somebody you love?” We have love songs and sex songs, but how often do we have songs about sex toward people we love, our person? That was the motivation behind “Booty Pics,” and “SARCO” was an earlier attempt at that. The songs at the time inspired part of it—Drake and J. Cole’s “In the Morning” inspired it.
JK: What advice would you give to someone who’s going through a particularly low point?
HTP: Nothing is permanent. Your highs are impermanent, and if you’re at a low point, you’ve experienced highs. Keep on keeping on. You have to keep moving to weather the storm. Take some responsibility to put yourself in a better situation. Not because it’s your fault that you’re in a bad situation, but because you have the power to take yourself out of it. Even with small baby steps, doing things like sleeping more, eating better, being around people you care about, reducing your social media. All of these things will improve the way you feel about yourself. Even marginally, it’s a step in the right direction.
Images courtesy of Banga Studios and Thirmizi
