The Lytics

11. The Lytics


Names like The Pharcyde and Souls of Mischief get thrown around when describing the five-man collective of The Lytics. Releasing two solid efforts in the past five years, a self-titled EP in 2009 and sophomore "They Told Me" in 2012, the young and hungry crew have been holding their own on the Canadian hip hop scene; building a rep for their high-energy live shows, positive lyricism and laid-back beats. Their video for lead single "Stay Calm" shows the guys getting summertime loose from the Legislative Building to the cobblestone streets of the Exchange District, representing Peg City through and through.

The Lytics will perform with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and others on Friday, March 28, Saturday, March 29 and Sunday, March 30 at the Centennial Concert Hall as part of JUNOfest. - Huffington Post

Judging by this year’s NXNE roster featuring MCs from Vancouver to Halifax, Toronto isn’t Canada’s only hip-hop incubator. Still, it’s pleasantly surprising to see a group representing that frosty capital city to the west, Winnipeg.
“There are a lot of cool dudes here rapping and constantly putting out material,” says the Lytics’ youngest member, Anthony Sannie. “We don’t live in a big city, so there aren’t a lot of shows all the time. But everybody is friends, so it’s kinda tight.”
Sannie, along with his brothers Andrew and Alex, cousin Mungala Londe and de facto family member Lonnie Ce collab on the group’s sound, which at times has a throwback Tribe-ian quality and at others pop-rock influences. Andrew, Anthony and Mungala are responsible for the rhymes, Alex makes the beats, and Lonnie DJs.
They’re a close crew, and years of performing have made them pros at winning over non-local crowds.
“Our shows in Toronto go well in terms of crowd response,” says Sannie. “We definitely remember the screw-faces the first couple of times. That’s just how it goes, though. A new band is going to get checked no matter where you are.”
The Lytics’ Saturday-night show might even have a guest appearance – that is, if Sannie has insider info that we don’t:
“Word on the street is that the Tupac hologram will be out during our set, so that’ll be cool!”
If you like the Lytics, also check out MaG at Crawford, Friday (June 14), midnight; or Def3 at Nocturne, tonight (Thursday, June 13), 1 am, both NXNE wristband or $12. - Now Toronto

20. The Lytics at Adelaide Hall - One of the many highlights of Saturday night at Adelaide Hall, Winnipeg hip hop supergroup The Lytics brought so much more energy than any of us could have been prepared for. These guys were absolutely dope out of this world, sounded perfect, and had one of the livest hip hop shows we've seen in quite a while. They also have a new album on the way, so make sure you don't sleep on that. - Fingers on Blast

34. Best New Local Band
1) The Lytics
Hearkening back to hip hop’s golden era, The Lytics’ smart, positive lyrics and smooth sound brings to mind A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and Souls of Mischief. Not exactly a new group, The Lytics have been making music since 2003 but didn’t get around to releasing any until 2008, in the form of a self-titled EP. Last year, the foursome (Munga, Ashy, A-Nice and DJ Action Rick) released a full-length album, Big City Soundgirl, which has received both airplay and great reviews. Recently the band’s been on the road, playing Canadian Music Week in Toronto and shows in Whistler and Vancouver during the Olympics.
2) Kids on Fire
3) Filthy Animals - UPTOWN MAGAZINE

CMW – The Lytics
Toronto, ON March 11
By Ian Gormely

A four-man Winnipeg hip-hop crew with a Vancouver-based DJ, the Lytics threw down old-school style rhymes for one of Canadian Music Week's few hip-hop gigs. They deftly replicated the excellent tracks from their self-titled debut, throwing in choice remixes to boot. The quartet's ability to harmonize onstage was an added bonus, avoiding the tone-deaf shouting matches of many hip-hop gigs. The venue's cramped confines created the perfect conditions for the crew's infectious energy to spread through the crowd, which needed little poking or prodding to get into the groove. This is a group not to be missed live. - Exclaim!

Blessed with infectious energy, refreshing honesty and prodigious youthful talent, Winnipeg's the Lytics are rightfully pricking up some ears ahead of a September 15 re-release of a previous CD that largely made the rounds in their local environs. Ahead of the CD's release the group will be uploading one new song to their Myspace account every week, alerting followers on their Twitter feed.

The group, consisting of MCs Ashy and A-Nice, both 18, along with 22-year-old Munga and 20-year old DJ Dex have already been featured on influential blogs such as 2dopeboyz.com and those who were lucky to see them perform at this year's NXNE at the Revival in Toronto were convinced they were witnessing something special.

"Big City Soundgirl" has been circulating for a little while and is an endearing slice of the group's appeal. Ashy and A-Nice and Munga humbly write love notes and love songs to a beguiling b-girl and lament her when she backspins out of their lives, without sounding corny or insincere.

It helps that producer B-Flat's wistful melancholy track recalls Souls of Mischief's "'93 Til Infinity" matching their infectious exuberance, infatuation and idealism.
- Exclaim.ca

In the two days I’ve had The Lytics EP, I’ve listened to it over a dozen times, and with each additional listen, it seems to keep getting better and better.

A good album should listen like a good wine should taste – each sip revealing new details and layers that were seemingly invisible the previous sip. Initial impressions and feelings should be built on and increased in complexity. On the first spin, The Lytics EP was an easy listen. Fun and toe-tapping, the focus was on seeing how consistent the rest of the EP was with “Big City Soundgirl” (which I had heard a while ago on The Lytics' MySpace page). “Big City Soundgirl” is a great introduction to The Lytics' material because it brings you in gently and creates curiosity with a hook that is catchy but light -- instead of a heavy bassline -- to turn your ears and move your body.

Imagine my continued intrigue when “Checkin’ On My Pumas” started, and the pop-synthesizer dominated, reminding me of bubble gum, hopscotch and the skipping club I was once a part of and taking me back to my childhood which spanned the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Hidden in the middle of this track is a bridge that contains a guitar with a slight spanish accent, bringing me back to a dreamy present until the synthesizer dissolves the dream into the happy memories it had originally provoked.

The third track, “Try Hard”, has the same feel as “Big City Soundgirl”, both of which bring a certain cinema-like tension, as if the main characters have to go their separate ways to resolve their conflict before their story together can continue.

The last song on the EP to keep the happy, lighthearted feel is “Stay Humble”. Hopefully, “Stay Humble” will be an anthem that sticks with The Lytics as they grow in popularity, as well as with others who hear this song. After all, sometimes it's easy to forget where we've come from. With this reminder of humility, The Lytics use the song perfectly as a stepping stone into the second half of the album.

Shifting to heavier overtones, “I’m Here” is reminiscent of “Big City Soundgirl” and “Try Hard” because it keeps a similar tension. Now that The Lytics have introduced themselves with their stylistic musical fusion of The Jackson 5 and The Fugees, this song shows increased intensity drifting more towards the fashion of K-OS or Talib Kweli and spearheads the tone of the final two tracks.

The tension dissolves when “Smoke!” begins. Also gone is the lack of bass that appeared in “Checkin’ On My Pumas”. Get ready to dance with this tune -- the vocals are playful and the bass makes you want to dance until your “hips are going dumb dumb!” The energy is infectious, whether you are a “pretty young ting” or not.

As all good cliffhangers go, “On Point” keeps you craving for a sequel with a pace that sets the stage for another song. That song can be fast or slow, it doesn’t matter (although I would prefer another great dance tune, naturally), The Lytics know how to maintain the thirst.

It often happens to me that my memories of a fine wine get all mixed together, and that certain subtleties that I discovered with each sip become one overall experience. This is what happened with The Lytics EP. Each listen brought out certain flavors that shaped my appreciation for their compilation and sculpted my curiosity for how their full-length will be arranged, and what the new songs will sound like. The Lytics keep the vocals well-balanced -- never overly dramatic, which happens a bit too much with aspiring hip hop artists (perhaps for the same reasons that other, more seasoned artists wear a truckload of bling?) -- nor is there a feeling of one band member overshadowing any other. I loved the drift from an airy, entertaining tone to a more dramatic one as the EP went along – it tells me that The Lytics can have fun and play around with their sound without forgetting the root of their message, all the while maintaining your respect.

The past five years of making the songs that compile The Lytics EP and reflecting on previous efforts has definitely given The Lytics valuable insight to their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their capability as musicians overall. The question now is: what else are they capable of? If I were a betting girl, I'd say “a hell of a lot more.” I can't wait to see the results. - pop-zap.com

The Lytics
The Lytics
By Kevin Jones

While older fans carry on wallowing in discussions about whether or not hip-hop is truly dead, a whole new crop of artists are out there simply doing what they do, generating music based on an increasingly widening set of influences that may not always square with self-professed purists. With their self-titled debut EP, Peg City's the Lytics offer up a cross-pollinational affair that speaks directly to an iPod generation of music enthusiasts that care less about classification and more about snatching the best of what comes their way. The group manage to create something for everyone, reflecting on around-the-way girls over the bristling melodic groove of "Big City Sound Girls," breaking down the importance of fly kicks, backed by the appropriately '80s synth pop styling of "Checkin' Out My Pumas," and serving up some Wyclef-style life lessons on "Stay Humble." Solid, straight-ahead beats-and-rhymes hip-hop receives equal face time via cuts like "I'm Here" and "On Point," but it's hard to compete with the club-ready drum & bass bombast of "Smoke (Pretty Young Tings)." It all comes together quite nicely, and in a way that should feel natural to many that have grown up in and around the country's major urban centres.

Stylistically, have the group always been about melding really varied musical influences into hip-hop?
A-Nice: To be completely honest, we've been making music for a long time and we draw from a lot of different kinds of musical acts. So, where as we started off doing music on Dilla beats and stuff like that, at the same time we listen to all different kinds of music. When you have different influences from all over the map it's kind of hard for that not to get inside the music in some way. It's not that we don't look at ourselves as just a hip-hop group, but it's like we even came up with this idea that we don't even want to use the term "hip-hop" anymore. We just wanna go by "good music"; we were even thinking of coining the term "boom box music."

The group have been building since 2003. Is this really the first release?
Ya, this is the first release. [Before this] we kinda just took old instrumentals, like old Dilla instrumentals, or Premier and Pete Rock instrumentals, and did our songs overtop of them. It was never anything like, "let's get it all over the internet and put it on YouTube." It started off as something that was fun, and eventually people encouraged us to take it seriously. Plus, we all live together, and [producer] B-flat was in the basement the entire time just making beats, and he's been working with other dudes around the city. When you grow up around that, especially when it's someone you look up to, you start thinking, "I wanna be able to do that one day." (Independent)
- Exclaim - "Beats & Rhymes"

You catch more buzz with honey...
Local hip hop crew The Lytics are snagging airplay with their positive rhymes
Jared Story

You catch more buzz with honey...Hip hop got a bad rap. Somewhere along the rhyme a few phony rappers and some 'Me vs. You' nonsense produced a negative perception of a music genre that began as nothing but positive. Winnipeg's The Lytics aim to get back to basics by keeping their beats upbeat.

"We try and keep it positive," Andrew (A-nice) Sannie says, who's joined in The Lytics by his brother Anthony (Ashy) Sannie, Mungala (Mung) Londe and DJ Action Rick. "I think in general positive music is a lot easier to listen to. It's just a lot easier to digest. I'm not saying that it's any better than negative stuff, but take, for instance, that song Don't Worry, Be Happy. A track like that, everyone loves it. It's just a good song that's easy to listen to and you don't have to be a hip hop fan or a rock fan or a punk fan. You just enjoy it for what it is."

Inspired by hopeful hip hop such as A Tribe Called Quest, Souls of Mischief and De La Soul, The Lytics' positive approach to busting rhymes has gained the group a lot of buzz. In December, the group released its debut recording - a self-titled, seven-song EP and has since received airplay on Hot 103 and Curve 94.3.

"It's been moving a lot quicker than I would have ever expected," A-nice says. "DJ Dow Jones, one of the bigger DJs in the city, said to me he's never seen this big a buzz around a group from Winnipeg since when he was in Mood Ruff. Just hearing that from someone who's been around for a while puts a smile on my face."

Pretty cool for a group whose members are only in their late teens and early 20s. The Lytics (derived from 'analytic') started back in 2003 when A-nice met Munga in a high-school health class. The two quickly became friends, and, along with Ashy, started making beats and recording music.

"We never really took it seriously," A-Nice says. "It was just a garage-band type thing, just doing it for fun. But people told us we were actually pretty good and should concentrate on it."

The Lytics are in the process of recording a full-length record with plans for a summer release. In the meantime, you can hear and learn more about The Lytics at www.thelytics.com.

Are you One to Watch? If you're an aspiring performer, actor, juggler, artist, poet, etc., tell us more about yourself. Send us an e-mail to e-mail source@uptownmag.com. - Uptown Magazine

By Ryan B. Patrick
9/10
If Winnipeg rap crew the Lytics were a bit bummed that the venue was at less than maximum capacity, it wasn't evident on this night. What was clear, based on the night's presentation, was that perhaps the hip-hop quintet deserved a Polaris Prize nod for their highly underrated 2012 album They Told Me. In today's rap landscape, the group are defined as alternative hip-hop; the crew's devotion to hip-hop acts like Jurassic 5, the Roots and the Pharcyde were reflected in their old school swagger and crowd-hype abilities. It's an obvious family affair: MCs A-Nice, Munga, Ashy and B-Flat are related by blood and their fluently coordinated manoeuvres and slick interaction with each other — there was a seamless exchange due to a faulty mic at one point and no one missed a beat during the handoff — along with the performance of cuts like "They Said," "Toot Your Own Horn" and "Stay Humble" from their The Lytics and They Told Me albums were on point. "Pretend there's 10,000 people in the room," B-Flat asks the crowd during the hook to "Voices" — they responded in kind. As professional crowd pleasers, the Lytics did their jobs well. - Exclaim!

7. The Lytics at Cavern on Friday May 22
With a Drake-shaped flag; Toronto has staked its claim as Canada’s hip-hop capital, but it’s not the only city in the Great White North to have embraced its culture. A thriving Winnipeg scene has produced a credible alternative in the form of The Lytics, a five man crew dedicated to making music “real people” can relate to. If you’re of the hip hop persuasion, seeing The Lytics should be your number one priority at Sound City this year.
Taking influence from the esoteric motivation of A Tribe Called Quest and the street smart wisdom of The Pharcyde, the group blend Afrobeat and R&B samples with an authentic boom bap formula. More than a crew, The Lytics are a brotherhood. Quite literally in fact; brothers Andrew, Anthony and Alex Sarnie have been making basement beats since way back when. Long lost brother DJ Lonnie Coe and legit cousin Mungala Londe complete a formidable family line up. - http://www.getintothis.co.uk/

We think it’s fair to say, The Lytics tore the house down. Playing to a packed Cavern stage the 5 man family crew represented Winnipeg in no uncertain terms. Mac Book powered boom-bap with authentically sapient bars; it was difficult to fault the esoteric and emerging diamonds of Canadian Hip Hop. One of the brothers (literally, they’re brothers) even brought the ruckus with a broken leg. Maybe it was the refreshing vista of hip-hop against a backdrop of guitar bands, but The Lytics’ outstanding performance really stood out on the opening day of the festival. - http://www.getintothis.co.uk/

The Lytics, Green Door Store, Saturday

Buoying up Saturday's early afternoon run through the Canadian contingent at the festival are The Lytics, a five-piece hip-hop crew from Winnipeg. Pivoting on Tribe-esque boom bap and founded on the group's cast of distinctive voices, for this set anchored around producer Alex "B-Flat" Sannie, they deal out the kind of torrent of positive energy that feels a little in short supply at the moment, and it's entirely refreshing. The feeling goes both ways, too: "Maybe if we feel like it, we'll do an instructional video for the people back home," says Sannie to the crowd, fairly losing their shit despite it being 2.30 in the afternoon, and emerging from the blackout darkness of the Green Door Store into the blazing sunshine outside, it's hard not to feel a lot of gratitude for The Lytics' presence on the bill. Laurie Tuffrey - http://thequietus.com/