Living Backwards and Moving Forwards with Lynx Cane: a close up chat with London’s religiously heady wordsmith
Songwriter Spotlight: Lynx Cane
South London born and based rapper, poet and producer Lynx Cane has been blessing London’s underground rap scene with introspective, lyrically dense, and religiously laden poetic explorations since 2021. Following the recent release of SNIS, Cameron Evans (aka Zenrei) sat down with him over a Camberwell classic Falafel & Shawarma to chop it up for Soundsight Magazine.
I asked Lynx what the practice of his art means to him:
“It’s hard for me to express how I feel in conversation. I can’t really speak it. But if I write it down in a form of poetry or lyrics, it’s the easiest thing. I can’t explain it. Art is therapy for me. That’s why I love music so much. Even in secondary school, I was that kid that always had headphones in – even in class and conversations. I love music so much. I think I’ll always be doing it in some way, shape or form.”
We delved into some of Lynx’s broad range of inspirations:
“I didn’t start out making introspective music. Eminem is my favourite rapper, though my influences are pretty broad, I can’t lie. Jay Electronica, Earl Sweatshirt, Action Bronson, Mick Jenkins. Outside of rap, Sade, Lana del Ray, Three Days Grace…and I listen to everything from hip-hop to German prog rock and metal…”
I asked Lynx about his church background and how he came to find the faith that he so eloquently explores in his art:
“I grew up going to church, but I’ve never been a fan of traditional gospel music. The sonics of it just doesn’t move me like that. But even though I grew up going to church, I didn’t find Christianity for myself until 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. At that time, I didn’t know what I was doing with my life. I didn’t know what to do after school. I was depressed, self-loathing and anxious. I didn’t do well in my A-Levels. I was furloughed from work. I was asking myself what life means.”
“I started reading the Bible. And something within me cognitively and spiritually changed reading the Word. I had hope. It made me think that I was going through a rough patch, but it won’t last. I started reading more, taking care of myself more, being more positive and being more sociable, and I saw the blessings come my way.”
This led to the question of how his faith and his music intertwine:
“Everyone’s going through stuff – people on the street, in this park and everywhere. But not everyone can be transparent with themselves. That’s why we avoid it, acknowledging that you’re messing up. The Bible says you have to die to yourself every day. I interpret that as you have to convict yourself every day. We’re not going to be perfect.”
“Whether you’re religious or not, hope is something you can take from my music. And hope is what makes us wake up every day. Hope is the innate thing that makes us live, there’s no point otherwise.”
I asked him a question that has weighed on my own mind heavily – would his faith be the same without his art?
“When I rap or do my poetry, though it speaks to my past, it’s my present and an ideal of where I want to be. I can feel convicted and feel I went off track when I listen back to things. So I wouldn’t have been writing things down and tracing my thoughts otherwise, and I wouldn’t be able to look back on things.”
Lynx then talks to me about his October release SNIS and some of its themes:
“SNIS is SINS backwards. I have a bar in it that goes “committed sins, living backwards” so I called it SNIS. It’s a time capsule of where I was in my life at the time. My granddad passed away last year. A few of the songs were made last year, and some of them were made this year. I co-produced quite a lot of it.
Testimony, I was scared to put out because it was so personal. In METANOIA, I was delving into that depressed and suicidal 17-year old Lynx mindset. It’s super dark. Even the beat is super dark – I sampled an ambient black metal band I found through [horror film] Sinister‘s soundtrack. It meshed with the atmosphere I was going for.”
As the writing process can be a strange and sacred space, I asked Lynx what that looks like for him:
“Typically I make my beats and I have an idea for structure, then I just write to the beat. Otherwise, I get a beat off someone, think of a flow, record it, go back if I think it’s fire and write to the flow. Real Change was written like that, for example. Flow first and then writing to that. I was going for a Playboi Carti kind of thing when I made that beat. And I’m a sucker for rhyme schemes – multi syllable rhyme schemes, internal rhyme schemes, from Eminem, MF Doom and Earl Sweatshirt. I used to study the lyrics of people on [lyrics website] Genius. I love those internal rhyme schemes, and I put so much time and effort into doing them myself. Piecing that stuff together is an art in itself.”
Check out SNIS on all streaming platforms as well as Bandcamp, and make sure to follow Lynx on Instagram @lynxcane.
