The Ace Burpee Show presents Andrew O. as our Local Artist of the Month for August!
The cosmic gospel hip-hop of Andrew Sannie’s debut solo effort May Baby illuminates the offerings of a rare heart. And that’s partly because it was inspired, heavily, by a rare heart condition that could’ve put an end to it before the Winnipeg-based artist even really got started. On the mixtape's title track and deep-grooving centrepiece, Sannie drops a staggering reveal: “I was told I got this heart issue, something messed up with the tissue: best to tell your friends and fam, you don’t got much time and that’s official.’”
In late 2021, after months of clocking extra heartbeats that seemed to be either causing or caused by stress, Sannie saw a cardiologist who told him it was very likely that he was experiencing symptoms of left ventricle cardiomyopathy, a diagnosis that gives patients around six months to live. In the anxious weeks spent waiting for confirmation that his days were numbered, Sannie penned “May Baby,” which isn’t resigned or melancholy, but instead arrives like a bomb: “I flex the muscle, purse and pucker at the thought of death/I sit up steady, on the ready, watch with bated breath/pressing play, I got a lot sitting on my chest/they say this could over soon, but I’d like to live the rest.” When it turned out the cardiologist was wrong—and maddeningly nonchalant about it—Sannie was faced with a different kind of problem. He was going to live.
“These last few years have been an insane exercise in positivity and self-awareness,” Sannie says. “There's so much mental work that we don't even realize we need to do because we spend so much time just living, right? I searched by turning over every rock—I did brain training, actually training the waves in the brain to help with anxiety. I went on SSRIs, I did hypnosis, I exercised, I did cold therapy, I did breathwork. I saw every therapist under the sun. I tried natural medicine. Every single thing. And I think the most helpful things ended up being cultivating an attitude of gratefulness, and psilocybin.”
In a sense, having an expiration date makes things simple; after a certain day, there’s nothing left for you to do. All sorts of difficulties arise when suddenly the rest of your time on Earth is less determined. Sannie still had to figure out his extra heartbeats, had to learn to de-stress, had to figure out how to live. May Baby explores that trip, one that sets its sights on spiritual freedom.
Sometimes, it’s literally a trip. The galactic “Golden Teacher” swoops in first with spacey synths, as Sannie conjures the spell of a mushroom trip, preaching the good word for the one treatment he’s found that actually makes him feel good. He kicks off the jazzy “Fading Light,” by delivering a sermon on the benefits and power of ego dissolution: “As we imbibe in blind sight and refine vision with squints, rubbed lids to improve eyesight/we might find we find light/and in light we might find we find might.” He’s defiant on the aforementioned “May Baby,” telling the story of his life—from premature birth to confronting the spectre of death—in the blink of an eye. Over the jubilant soul of “We Win,” he puts down the devil and gives thanks for the grace he’s received; while “Yourself to Love” keeps the victory lap going with a booming brightness. On the mellow and brooding “Hey Drew,” he comes crashing back down to reality, getting real about the deep blues and his many failed efforts to fight them off. And finally, the melancholy piano outro—a subtle nod to the Oscar Peterson Trio’s “Hymn to Freedom”—gives way to a comeback, as Sannie cultivates an attitude of gratitude, celebrating his blessings and vowing to use them to raise up others.
May Baby’s hope-fuelled, motivational acid-rap derives its power not from the anxiety of mortality but the acceptance of it—an insistence on celebrating all of life’s textures and messiness. It’s a never-ending, never-easy battle, but as Sannie himself puts it on “Yourself to Love”: “We bend, but we don’t break none; take it on the chin with grace, son.”
Learn more about Andrew O. here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrewoandalphabet/
linktree: https://linktr.ee/andrewoandalphabet
Music from Andrew O. will be featured on the Ace Burpee Show on each Friday in August, tune in!