REENY — NOVA SCOTIA
Singer songwriter, and producer REENY trades in a sophisticated blend of groove-heavy R&B and heart-wrenching soul, deeply influenced by both her Baptist church choir roots and the ‘90s girl groups she grew up listening to on the radio. But when you strip everything else away, the very heart of her singular brand of pop music is the relationship between her and the piano, a connection Smith has nurtured since she was just five years old, spurred on by a profoundly musical family.
Her earliest, most significant musical inspirations came from her family—REENY’S mother, Maureen, is also an astounding singer; “Mr. Performance” is what she calls her funk-loving father, Jonathan, who helped shape her charismatic stage presence; and her grandfather, former pastor Rev. Wallace Smith Sr., was a member of two of Canada’s premiere gospel groups, The Gospel Heirs and The Sanctified Brothers. It was in her home community of North Preston, Nova Scotia—the largest Indigenous Black community in Canada—and at St. Thomas United Baptist Church, learning to harmonize in the choir and watching her grandfather preach, that Smith’s artistry began to take shape.
“Family is definitely the biggest influence for me musically, and my community supports me and shows me a lot of love,” Smith says. “And I just want to go out and represent and make them proud, because most of what I learned from music I learned from back home.”
Recently, her music has been heard in TV shows like CBC’s Diggstown (“Goodbye,” “#4”), Amazon’s The Lake (“The Warmup”), and Hudson & Rex (“Lovers Like You,” “You Got It”). She’s travelled to Japan to write and cut songs with artists like J. Sheon, FEMM (Avex), and XPXP. She has also toured nationally with Classified, graced the stages of major music festivals including Manifesto (Toronto), A3C (Atlanta), Montreal Jazz Fest, Halifax Jazz Fest, and JUNOfest (Halifax and Edmonton), shared the stage with Grammy Award-winning artists like Anderson Paak and Lisa Fischer and has opened for Former First Lady Michelle Obama.
Early on, REENY won the prestigious Portia White Award for Excellence in Vocal Performance and the Nova Scotia Talent Trust Scholarship. Since then, she’s received three African Nova Scotia Music Awards (Up and Coming Artist, Rising Star, and Artist of the Year), has twice been named Music Nova Scotia’s African Canadian Artist of the Year, and been nominated for numerous East Coast Music Awards.
While recent songs like the string-swept “Amber Lights” meld REENY’S love of classic R&B with modern sounds, the songs she’s working on currently promise to push the envelope further, concocting new sounds in studio, and exploring sonic territory she hasn’t ventured into yet. REENY’S distinctive production style—building songs from the vocals up and utilizing heavy experimentation—has already made an impact through her sister Haliey’s single “Fall In Love,” and will continue to shape REENY’S own work on her new album projectRED.
