Saving Up That "Social Currency"

Buffalo and sugar cane. North and South. Tina Fontaine and Tony Montana. Osani in his black and white motorcycle jacket. Toshiro Mifune in his hakama.

At the core of Winnipeg rapper Osani’s debut album “Social Currency” is contrast: between his Indigenous Cree heritage on his mom’s side and his father’s Guyanese heritage; between hard charging trap style beats and soft falsetto singing; between the typical rap braggadocio and heartfelt paeans to a tough childhood growing up in the West End. At his recent album release show at the West End Cultural Centre, all of those elements of contrast were on display; in the background visuals, in the music, and in Osani’s carefully selected stage outfit.

For those of us who have been kicking around the Winnipeg rap scene for a while, it’s easy to forget that Osani is still only in his mid-twenties because he’s been around for over a decade at this point. Coming out of the Studio 393 programs, Osani has been gracing Winnipeg stages ever since he was a young teenager. Despite his longevity, “Social Currency” is his first album, a moment he’s been working towards for years. At least five years in the making, the album really coalesced over the past year as Osani started setting some more concrete goals. “I accomplished everything I wanted to this year,” Osani tells me a few days before the album release show. “I really wanted to do a show at the West End Cultural Centre [WECC] because I did a show there through Studio 393 when I was sixteen that was one of the best nights of my life.”

The road to get here hasn’t always been an easy one. Raised almost entirely by his mom, Osani grew up in a rough neighbourhood, struggling to see a purpose. Initially using drugs to cope, Osani worked hard to beat his addiction while still a teenager, avoiding the long, dark path that has consumed so many others. The salve for his soul was music, discovered initially through a Freestyle workshop at the University of Winnipeg and then more fully at Graffiti Art Programming’s Studio 393, located in Portage Place. The drop-in music program, at the time boasting Winnipeg hip-hop legends like Pip Skid and Nestor Wynrush as instructors, gave Osani and other youth somewhere to find their place in life and connect with like-minded peers.

Osani has built up a strong network to help him out, but “Social Currency” is almost entirely his doing. Other than features on three of the nine songs and an assist with mixing and engineering, Osani did everything on the album, from writing and recording to producing and rapping. “I really took the time to learn how to do everything myself,” Osani tells me, “But then I recorded the whole album pretty much in a couple days.”

Back in 2019, when Osani was rapping under the name The OB, he released a single called “Not A Terrorist.” For the new album, Osani reworked the track and made it the lead single, releasing a video for the song (and the album’s intro meshed together) way back in April of this year. The video, shot in stark black and white by Skye Spence, helped launch the visual theme for the record: high contrast black and white imagery, a theme carried through to all the videos released thus far and also in the stage visuals at the release show. Those background visuals, compiled by Osani and his friend and collaborator Robbie, run the gamut from basketball and NASCAR highlights to clips from old Samurai movies and “Scarface” to marches in support of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls during the set’s penultimate song “Sirens.”

The most memorable song on “Social Currency” is “Americas” featuring CJ the Grey. Joined on stage by CJ for the song at the release show, “Americas” showcases the contrasts in Osani’s work. In front of interchanging visuals of romping buffalo and sugarcane being harvested, the two distinct sides of his cultural heritage, Osani alternates rapping a line about the struggles of both his personal past and that of his ancestors and exclaiming the word, “Vacay.” At the live show, Osani pauses before his second verse to tell the crowd that, “Growing up we knew we’d never really get a vacation, because in the back of your head you know you can never stop pushing.” Two songs later, the show ends with a montage of photos of Osani and his friends and family, a visual shout out to all those who helped him never stop pushing, especially his mom, who sat front row the whole time, vibing out and enjoying the show.

Osani has big plans in the music game, as he headed off not long after the show to Calgary for a month-long writing workshop. “I’ve learned a lot from this process, and I know I can put that to use for the next project,” he tells me, hopeful that 2026 will bring a second album. Regardless, he can be proud of “Social Currency,” an album that explores the darkness in his past while showcasing the bright future ahead.

“Social Currency” is available exclusively online, alongside the few videos released thus far, but Osani says that cassette tapes are forthcoming. And in case you missed the album release show, or you just want to relive it again, the entire thing was filmed and is available on YouTube.