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Music

Meet Maurice, the Ottawa R&B Teen Who Hopes to Branch Beyond YouTube Covers

We premiered three songs from the 18-year old Ottawa teenager who's banking on becoming the new face of Canadian R&B.

Maurice can’t wait to spend his evening in his basement studio, but right now he can’t. Right now, he’s Julien Moore, a teenager whose quadriceps burn and fingers ache, still jammed from stiff-arming defenders in attempts to score touchdowns during football practice. Ignoring the Jason Derulo song blaring from the radio as his mother drives him home, Julien is submerged in a trance-like state where he goes over the list of tasks he has to complete before he can craft melodies. First, he would lay sprawled out in his bed with ice packs soothing his muscles. Then, he would finish the set of algebra homework that was assigned today in class. Then, if time permits, he’ll work on his music.

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Maurice isn’t your average teenager. You won’t find him getting belligerent at a house jam on a Friday night, or partaking in the endless drama that accompanies the life of a high school student. He made the choice to sacrifice the typical tedious events associated with being a teen in order to pursue a career in the music industry, where he hopes to become the next R&B sensation, joining the ranks with those who have made it onto the world stage from Canada. Much like the current state of the NBA, where there have been back-to-back Canadian number one draft picks, an influx of young Canadians are gracing the heights of the R&B scene.

For Maurice, his musical journey started when he was 14 with dreams of being a rapper under the alias J-Fizzo. After his 8th grade graduation, he applied for the Summer Company Grant through Ottawa’s City Hall and transformed the idea of setting up his own studio into a real business venture. When the money came through, he and his grandfather renovated the basement of Maurice’s home into a full-fledged professional studio. The studio would become a lair for himself, his friends, and other hopeful rappers to record their music. “My studio was so key to my growth as an artist. It gave me a place to develop and experiment with finding my voice. It allowed me to learn how to produce and engineer.”

The transition from rapper to singer is credited to Maurice’s sister Kelsey Vaz, who is a dynamic singer herself. After being bullied into attempting to sing a hook on a track, Maurice immediately fell in love with the emotion he could portray through singing. After the change came about, he and his sister established a successful R&B duo called Retrofuture. The two siblings started to slowly establish a name for themselves in Ottawa. Together they obtained radio-play on the popular Hot 89.9. Unfortunately, the two were forced to go their separate ways when his sister Kelsey moved to Toronto in order to study at Ryerson University. The separation was bittersweet for Maurice: Retrofuture was no more, but now he was given the opportunity to thrive as a solo artist. “My sister moving away was shitty, but at the same time it forced me to rebrand into the artists I am now.”

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After his sister’s departure and the launch of his solo career, the young crooner began to gain attention through his YouTube cover videos. Maurice continuously supplied new content for four months straight as he dropped a new cover on the 13th of the month, and an original at the end of the month. He built up a cult-like following on social media platforms, which led to acquiring radio play on Hot 89.9 and G987FM, interviews by both CTV and CBC, and performances in Ottawa, Toronto, Chicago, and New York.

At 18, Maurice isn’t a young pop-star crafted by Nickelodeon or Disney who knows a litany of choreographed dance moves. His demeanor is cool, calm, and mature. After switching to a vegan lifestyle his spirituality was depicted more in his music as he expressed his belief of deeper consciousness. Maurice’s first EP Paramount has a deep personal meaning to him. “The Paramount is the highest version of ourselves. It is a place where we as humans reach the utmost level of consciousness. As we reach the paramount, we start to see the beauty in everything and we as humans reach our peak confidence.” The young singer’s lyrical content depicts the story of his spiritual journey and sheds light on his mature viewpoint and experiences of love and relationships. His sound is structured by clean, crisp vocals over smooth melodic beats that are often accompanied by many synths and hard-hitting bass drums. In terms of inspiration and influences Maurice deviates from the norm. Instead of mainly being inspired by other artists, he draws his motivation from prominent songwriters. “Dudes like Luke James, James Fauntleroy, and Eric Bellinger inspire me so much. They’re on another level. They might not be the biggest R&B singers yet, but their songwriting ability is crazy, their minds are on different. That’s how I want to be.”

When asked to describe his sound, Maurice explained, “There's always one simple principle that remains true with my sound-and that's one word: feel. My music literally could be described as my thoughts converted into an mp3 format. I try to create theme songs for these images in my head with my Retrofuture production team. As the R&B landscape broadens its horizons and the lines between hip-hop and R&B are becoming even more blurred, many artists today have succumbed to the new sound where “rap-singing” has sprouted as trend or formula for success. Despite his young age, Maurice brings the old essence of traditional R&B that we saw dominate the late 90’s and early 2000’s. While bringing back the familiar crooning sound which primarily focused on love and the opposite sex, Maurice still maintains to add a new vibrant touch to the music.

Ini Udoeyop's best R&B songs are recorded in the shower - @KingUddy