The Birth of the Lytics

The interviews for this piece were done in the winter and spring of 2022 during the interview process for my book Gritty City: An Oral History of Winnipeg Hip-Hop Music 1980-2005. Initially I had planned to take the history all the way up to 2015, so I conducted interviews with a number of Winnipeg hip-hop figures who didn’t really get started until after 2005, including most of the members of the Lytics. While I may eventually produce a Gritty City Part 2, I’ve decided to start by getting some of those stories out there a chapter at a time through this newsletter. I always wanted to tell the Lytics origin story because they’re such a notable group both in and outside of Winnipeg but they’ve never really had any kind of retrospective done. Now, over 15 years after the release of their 2009 debut self-titled EP, it’s time to look back on the early days of how the Lytics got started.

The history of Winnipeg hip-hop is littered with groups containing brothers as members: Odario and Ofield in Mood Ruff; Mikal and Lahcing in Brakada; the Pinder brothers way back in State of Mind and later Bonafide. Similarly, the Lytics were born out of one household in the South Side of Winnipeg, an area that also produced classic local hip-hop acts like Frek Sho and Nestor Wynrush. While the brothers Sannie would eventually become bandmates, but it was eldest brother Alex who began to lay the path that the Lytics would follow. 

Andrew Sannie: My older brother, Alex, was producing, so he was kinda doing it for fun on the side with his buddies. I kinda grew up just watching and being around it. At the time, the big acts in the city were Peanuts & Corn, Mood Ruff, Shadez, [they] were most active at the time. I was just watching him around those guys, and some of them would come through and try and buy beats. Odario [from Mood Ruff] bought a few beats off of Alex, there were a few other people that just came through; I know the guys from Shadez had bought some beats*. It was a little bit of second-hand immersion, you know, watching it all kinda happen. Alex is a little bit younger than Odario and Eli [DJ Dow Jones] and Ness [Nestor Wynrush] and all those guys, so as they were coming around, he was kind of like the kid fresh out of high school and they were coming around buying beats. I was sort of watching that all take place, and developing my own interests in music at the same time. *[Author’s note: Alex Sannie, under his artist name B-Flat, has one beat each on Mood Ruff’s albums “Antarctica: Cold, Cold World” and “I Do My Own Stunts”, released in 2002 and 2005, respectively.]

Anthony Sannie: My oldest brother Alex was making beats, so his friends would always come through our house when we were younger and they would always just be either listening to his beats or playing music. That was like my initial introduction to hip-hop. They would just link up downstairs and they would be playing or listening to something and I would be there, so I would kind of see what was going on, and that was probably the first time I really heard the type of hip-hop that I enjoy now.

Now relegated to museum status, the living room tower PC was a common sight in the early to mid 2000s, and it was on the Sannie family’s PC that Alex would make his beats, even as the household was about to gain a member.

Andrew Sannie: We had this computer, it was basically a family computer that [Alex] was making beats on. I would essentially just, if he left, I’d basically figure out what the password is and when he’d leave I would go and listen to beats and rap over top of them. It had always been an interest of mine to eventually figure out how to turn that all into songs, right, because I was kinda quietly writing my own songs over old mixtapes that he had and old beats. When I was in Grade 10, I basically met Mungala, because Mungala we’ll call our cousin but we really kind of connected [in high school]. I knew him a little bit, but we weren’t super tight.

Mungala: I think it was my Grade 11 year, or end of Grade 10 year, there was this girl, I was walking through the hallway one day and I saw her. I knew she wasn't from my school; she was beautiful. I was just like, spur of the moment, I was like, yo, what's your name? I found out she went to Vincent Massey; I decided one day I would skip school and go hang out at Vincent Massey. I was in the cafeteria hanging out and Andrew walks over. I really don't remember [what happened] but he went, what's up man, and we started talking.

Andrew Sannie: Mungala basically came to Massey, where I went to school, and I had an ex-girlfriend; he basically came to try and pick her up. And all my friends were, like, hey, there’s this guy here trying to talk to your girl, you know. So, when I heard that, I was, like, nah. So, I went to go see what was up and it was Mungala.

Mungala: We talked, it was definitely about music. I remember leaving the school so excited because he gave me a list of rappers to check out. It was like Jeru tha Damaja, J. Dilla, Slum Village, Pharcyde. He told me that his brother made beats and that he was going to send me some on Messenger.

Andrew Sannie: We started talking, the two of us, and it turned from something where I was like, I’m going to go put a stop to this, to, oh, I know Mungala, he’s a rapper, I like rap. Because Mungala had been working with this other guy from FRC [Fort Richmond Collegiate]. The two of them had put out a few tracks, just in the neighbourhood. I heard a few of them, I had a couple on my home computer or whatever. I didn’t think they were very good, but he was good. I always thought, I would like to work with that guy.

  Youngest Sannie brother Anthony, two years younger than Andrew, nine years younger than Alex, and four years younger than new cousin Mungala, was always there in the background, observing, learning, waiting for his turn.

Anthony Sannie: My older brother Andrew and cousin Mungala, they were dabbling and making some music, too, and I kinda saw what they were doing. Shortly after that, I got interested in actually rapping, because until they actually came with a mic and plugged it in and started using it, I didn’t think recording was really an option. Once I realized it was an option, I started writing and recording.

 Widely known in the Lytics lore as a cousin, Mungala has no blood relation to the Sannies, but still built a bond stronger than many familial relationships, all starting with an act of generous kindness.

Andrew Sannie: [Mungala] ended up getting kicked out of his house, so I was basically, like, “Hey, my parents are pretty cool and they don’t mind people living with us every once in a while to get back on their feet, you could probably stay with us.” I asked my parents if they were cool, and he moved in and just kinda never left. We kinda connected that way and then he was living at my house so were like, let’s put out a record. We started recording over torrented beats, there’s a few tracks we ended up putting out; we didn’t even have a name (laughs). None of us had rap names or whatever, we just liked recording tracks and sending them to our friends. Our friends were just trading them back and forth and whatever else. That was kind of really the beginning of it for us. It was really super, super DIY, no real plans of where anything was going, just kinda figuring it out.

Mungala: The first song we ever made, we did it all wrong because we had the speakers on blast while we were recording, so everything came all high and it was just all wrong. But it was a J. Dilla beat, I can't remember the name of the beat, but the song name was "Vibe Out." We put the beat on and I was, like, oh yeah, this song makes me wanna just vibe out, I think it was, like, "To the V, to the I, to the B, to the E." I remember that was the first song we ever did.

Andrew Sannie: Anthony’s two years younger than me [and] four years younger than Mungala, so I was 15 at the time, Anthony must have been 12 or 13. The very first song Mungala and I ever did was a song called “Vibe Out” and Anthony was on it, actually. He was just in the room and we needed this outro thing so we asked Anthony to get on it.

 Newly ensconced in the warm and friendly confines of the Sannie family home, Mungala had the opportunity to observe a master at work.

Mungala: I'd watch Alex work on his craft, spend ten hours chopping, creating the drum kit. And then just looking, finding the right piano keys from, like, ten thousand songs and start to craft the beat that was in his head. I started trying to make some beats then eventually Andrew, I remember, was like, yo, we should try to do this for real. He said, let's do nothing but write hooks for six months and let's just get really good at it. You know, Alex won't let us use his beats unless it's good. So yeah, we did nothing but write, and then Andrew had the idea for "Big City Soundgirl."

In the early stages of the group, older brother Alex was still unconvinced that the youthful experimenting going on under the same roof as his beatmaking would bear any fruit, meaning just like any other group at the time, the younger brothers had to purchase beats from their older brother.

Andrew Sannie: I ended up getting a part in this movie called “Amreeka” that was shot here. I made a little bit of money because of it, so I had enough money to get the record mixed and mastered without grants or anything like that. At the time, I didn’t know anything about grants, so it was just, like, we could save up money to get this mixed and mastered and then I got this thing and I made a lot of money. It wasn’t a lot of money but it was money very quickly, it was about five thousand or six thousand dollars for being in this little indie movie. I was like, okay, I’ll pay for it. From there, we bought some beats off of Alex and just started recording.

  Despite what any search engine auto correct tries to suggest to you, the Lytics is not a misspelling of ‘lyrics’; in fact the group’s unique name actually had a longer original version.

Anthony Sannie: When I was like 18, we were gearing up to put out our first EP. We went by the Analytics and then we just shortened it up closer to that first release. We were trying to preserve the name, we liked that Lytic part and that was kinda the closest thing that still sounded good to us. So, we just shortened it up and started going by the Lytics.

  With the group still just consisting of Andrew, who started going by A-Nice; Anthony, who started rapping as Ashy; and Mungala, who went by Munga, the Lytics began playing out live, finally securing brother Alex (aka B-Flat) as an official member.

Andrew Sannie: It was just the three of us, we actually played our first show and asked [Alex], because we have a song called “Stay Humble” and he sang the chorus on the song. We were like, okay, well, nobody can sing the chorus except for Alex so let’s see if we can get him to sing it with us at the show. I asked him to do it and he said yeah, and he came and did it. And then afterwards, he was like, 'Hey, I want to be in the group.' I think he really enjoyed himself and he was like, 'Man, if this is what it’s going to be like, I’m down.' After the first show, he was basically part of [the group].

Anthony Sannie: We used [Alex’s] beats for the first EP and shortly after a few shows, he joined in on the group, he became a full member of the group. He was more of a producer earlier on, [but] by the second project, he [had] started rapping.

  Of all the songs the Lytics produced in their initial wave, one really captured the imagination of Winnipeg, leading to their first local hit.

Mungala: We recorded a bunch of stuff and we dropped "Big City Soundgirl," I remember sometime in November. We just posted it up on Facebook or something, me and Anthony uploaded it. And then we were going to bed or something and we started getting a couple phone calls, like, 'Yo, this song's crazy.'

Andrew Sannie: I think that period of time was kinda crazy just in general. We got a song on Hot 103 and Ace Burpee was playing it, it wasn’t quite in high rotation but it was getting a lot of play. This was really before they were playing much local content at all, [but] they were playing “Big City” all the time. I remember specifically walking through campus at U of W and hearing “Big City” played on a loop during the O-Week. It was like whoever was running the boombox was just, 'This is my favourite song,' and they just had it playing for like twenty minutes. I remember just being, like, oh shit, this is kinda crazy. Oftentimes I’d get in the car and the song was playing, it was kind of like a surreal feeling. I was like, oh shoot, the city really likes this song.

  In the beginning, the Lytics brought on a high school friend to DJ for them live, making DJ Action Rick the group’s first DJ. But they wouldn’t really reach their peak until joined by a member of another hip-hop family, Lonnie Ce, one of four brothers who were all involved in hip-hop at some point, including Peanuts & Corn rapper John Smith.

Lonnie Ce: Me, my brother Murray, and Ness [Nestor Wynrush] went to the Lytics first release party at the Pyramid, which I think was their first or second time playing out ever; it was on like a Wednesday night. It was their EP release party and we went and checked it out and it was fucking slammed. There was probably 400 kids in there for this local rap show, which was just unheard of to me; it was fucking bumping. And it was a Wednesday night and there people were going crazy for these dudes! That's when I first saw them. At the time I wasn't even a DJ, I was just making beats. And I remember telling Ness, leaning over to Ness and being like, oh, I want to make beats for these guys, I want to work with these guys. That was the first I'd seen or heard of them.

  As the Lytics’ star began to rise locally, they gained another team member, a veteran of Winnipeg and Vancouver’s hip-hop communities, the promoter Cass Elliott, who helped the group land a major stepping stone in the career of a young rap group.

Andrew Sannie: We started working with a guy named Cass Elliott, he became our manager. He basically called me one day and was like, “I got this email from some guys in Greece, I don’t know if it’s real, though. Hold tight, I’ll figure it out.” He got back to me not long after that, and was like, “I think this is real, they want to bring you out to Greece for a festival.” We were like, oh crazy, I can’t even begin to think about what that would be like. I think their offer was like six K, which was enough for all of our flights, so it was, like, okay, I guess we’re going to Greece. I remember thinking, oh shit, this is actually real. It’s not just having fun and playing pretend, we have a show in front of these people from Greece and they paid a lot of money for us to come and do it, so we gotta come correct. In a lot of ways, it was the first real show. The first out of town show was in Greece, yeah. We hadn’t even toured yet. [Author’s note: the group goes to Greece in December 2010, but an article from the Uniter in September 2009 references the group performing a fifteen minute set at an unnamed festival in Toronto a few months earlier.]

Anthony Sannie: Cass was our manager during that period, during the Athens, Greece period. He moved here, he was friends with the Peanuts & Corn guys, so I think that was a link. Soon after, he just became our manager. He was throwing shows in B.C. and he lived in a few places, so he had that experience and he managed a couple artists, too. So, for us, it was like, this guy knows what he’s doing, let’s hire him.

  In need of a DJ for this sudden and unexpected show out in Greece, the group approached DJ Lonnie Ce, at the time one of the DJs of the highly successful and eventually very long running DJ night, Grippin’ Grain.

Lonnie Ce: I remember 2010 was when I started working the Urban Bakery; Grippin' Grain started to really pop off and we did a bunch in 2010. And then the Lytics dudes were in search of a DJ and one night at one of the parties they were, like, 'Yo, we need a DJ, we got booked in Greece. We're going to spend ten days in Greece and we want you to come.' I was like, fuck yeah, hell yeah. I remember that's kinda how we linked up and we did our first show together before that show in Greece at the Red Cactus.

  The Lytics went to Athens, Greece to play the inaugural Plissken Festival on December 4, 2010, just over a year after releasing their debut EP.

Mungala: When we got that Plissken Fest offer, it kind of felt like, I dunno, is this somebody trying to scam us? Why are they trying to give us so much money, whatever, whatever. But yeah, it was really awesome to go. Going to Greece was culture shock; some of it was cool, some of it was not. I remember travelling with not a lot of money, I remember I budgeted everything out for every meal. It was on that trip that we made a rule that one of the white guys had to ride with us, so Lonnie and Cass couldn't be in the same cab, they always had to be with one of us, so we had to split up like that.

  Amidst a lineup of UK indie rock bands, Icelandic pop acts, and Greek industrial techno artists, the Lytics stood out as one of the only hip-hop groups at the new music festival.

Lonnie Ce: We played a pretty big festival out there, it was four thousand, five thousand people there; it was in a giant hangar. We did our set early in the day and then someone closer to the headlining spot couldn't make it, they pulled out, so the festival asked us to perform. So we got to perform later in the night for [a lot] more people, so that was pretty tight as well.

Mungala: I think we did three shows in twenty-four hours. We were asked to play at a club the night before our festival gig, and we thought, you know, we'll be playing around midnight, around eleven, like most clubs do. I don't think we played until two or three in the morning because that's when people started going there, that's when clubs get busy out there. I remember being stressed, waiting forever to play, but it was a fun show. I remember it was pretty smoky. That was my first interaction with European nightlife and there were smokers everywhere.

Lonnie Ce: I picked up a DJ gig at a bar called Huge, which was a tiny, tiny bar, like the smallest bar I've ever seen. I remember DJing there for four or five hours while the guys hung out, and people actually came out. It was after the festival and we spread the word a bit about it, so it was a nice little turn out. We played a warehouse party, a festival, twice, and then a little DJ night as well. I had never been overseas; I grew up in Churchill and then I lived in Winnipeg, I might have driven down to Minnesota or some shit but that was my first time overseas, doing anything like that. It was fun. We were young dudes, we spent ten days out there, got to play shows and DJ and stuff. It was definitely a memorable time.

Mungala: Experiencing the festival, seeing some really cool acts and seeing how our music was received, you know, even though there's such a language barrier, I felt like that spoke a lot more to our vibe and just our ability to just put on a good show. I thought that was fortifying, reassuring.

Author’s note: You can see some brief clips of the Lytics performing at Plissken Festival in 2010 here (between 2:07 and 2:23) and here (between 1:33 and 1:45).

Buoyed by their unique overseas experience, the Lytics really started to light a fire under the rest of Winnipeg’s scene, following a transitional period where some figures moved on and a lot of the powerhouse groups from the ‘90s and early 2000s broke up or faded away. Leading the charge alongside acts like Winnipeg’s Most and Magnum KI, the Lytics brought a new energy to Winnipeg that would only continue to build as their career surged forward in the 2010s.

Andrew Sannie: At the time [we were starting out], I think the scene in Winnipeg had quieted down a little bit. A lot of the P&C guys, they weren’t doing as much, putting out as much as they were earlier. I think Grand Analog was probably around, but there just wasn’t a ton of action for maybe a year and a half, two year period. In that time, us and I want to say Winnipeg’s Most started bubbling a bit. It was really interesting, it’s not that not a lot was happening, because that’s not entirely true, it just wasn’t as busy. The city always goes through lulls where there’s not a lot of action, and all of a sudden two or three or four acts show up and that was it. It was us, we started coming out, Winnipeg’s Most started doing some stuff.

The Lytics have released two subsequent albums: 2012’s “They Told Me,” and 2018’s “Float On.” The group continues to perform occasionally still to this day, having just played a couple shows locally this past summer. Anthony, now rapping under the name Anthony OKS; Andrew, rapping under the name Andrew O; and Mungala, rapping as Gully, have all put out solo projects; while Alex is now working as the manager of industry development at Manitoba Music; and Lonnie Ce, who left the Lytics in 2016, occasionally still DJs but is mostly living the dad life.

If you enjoyed this look back at a small part of Winnipeg hip-hop history, be sure to head over to my website and grab a copy of my book “Gritty City: An Oral History of Winnipeg Hip-Hop Music 1980-2005”. Also check out some of the previous pieces released on this newsletter, including my two part feature on the history of Winnipeg after-hours bars, and my oral history of P&C Cribs, which also features DJ Lonnie Ce.

Respect,
-NW
“My journalistic range is a catalyst for change” - Black Thought