Henry Canyons is an emcee based in Los Angeles that has been putting out music for a few years now, working with Backwoodz Studioz. His last full-length album, Canyonland, which came out in 2015, was produced entirely by the French producer Keor Meteor. A little over a year later, Canyons flew to Biarritz, France, to participate in a two-month long artist residency with BoiSakre productions. Now we finally get the results of this project, an EP called La Cote West.

Artist residencies always have different guidelines, but this one with BoiSakre seemed to be pretty open-ended in terms of what the end result could be. Canyon chose to work with a different producer on each track, bringing Keor Meteor back into the mix alongside Rhys Langston, $ample, CHAPTER3, beatmachinearon, and Simon Degli Innocenti. He let the beat from each producer dictate the tone of each song, and then wrote about his experiences for each song. This means that the beautiful jazz guitar grooves and laid-back beat that $ample put together for “The Line Up,” inspired Canyons to write about the deep history of surf culture on the Southwestern coast of France that he lived amongst for two months. Conversely, the vintage electronic sounds, warped tape effects, and ‘80s R&B that Keor Meteor brought together on “It Takes Time” inspired Canyons to reflect on his career and to think about his artistic philosophy when it came to songwriting. There’s a lot to this EP, but Canyons finds a way to tie it all together and keep all the different beats and subject matter in conversation with each other.

La Cote West is an interesting EP from a talented emcee, who had a unique experience putting this together. It’s a great way to get acquainted with Canyons, who is able to take this opportunity and deliver some moving and personal hip hop.