High Klassified doubles down on his Quebec music career with his latest album Ravaru

High Klassified isn’t afraid to take calculated risks.

The veteran local producer has given us his newest project, Ravaru, an album where all vocals are performed in French, highlighting talent from Quebec (Hubert Lenoir, St-Prince), France (Ateyaba, Tuerie, Dau, Tsew the Kid, Karmen) and Switzerland (Arma Jackson, as well as the Swiss-born French-Malagasy rappeuse Chilla).

Released via Montreal’s own Courage Holdings, Ravaru was “four years of hard labour,” as he describes it, following his last release, 2021’s Law of Automata: Valid.

Not only is this album his first in a hot minute, but his last one was released during peak COVID times — in other words, it’s been a long time coming. While he always has his next project in the back of his mind, he never feels married to a specific type of beat-making.

“I keep changing my sound and discovering new stuff musically so I never make peace with a certain sound,” says High Klassified. “It took me four years to make peace with what I have, because I always want to do something new. I always want to try new styles. 

“Sometimes you just have to humble up, back off and give yourself a break, too. A lot of songs had been scrapped or changed, and a lot of features had been cancelled.”

Born Kevin Vincent, High Klassified grew up in Laval and still lives there, repping his hometown at every opportunity. In fact, the title Ravaru is the romanized Japanese spelling of Laval. 

Upon its release, he wrote on Instagram that the album is “a fictional interpretation of my city,” paying tribute to Japanese culture as well as sci-fi and video games, being driven by nostalgia. He added that it was not High Klassified, but rather Kevin Vincent, “the child within me,” who was the album’s creative director. 

“Laval really turned me into a homebody,” he says when asked how he thinks his hometown shaped him. “I couldn’t easily get to downtown Montreal, so I feel like I had to learn how to enjoy staying home and working. I think this is where my producer side came from, always staying home on the computer and wanting to try new stuff.”

Having first gained recognition locally in the early 2010s as one of the faces of Montreal’s beat scene, High Klassified later scored a deal with Fools Gold Records — the Brooklyn-based label run by Montreal production legend A-Trak. Eventually, he built up a portfolio that now includes Future and the Weeknd, whom he collaborated with on their 2017 track “Comin Out Strong.”

Major brands took notice of his production skills, too, as he’s worked alongside companies like Apple, Red Bull, Adidas and Puma, and even Quebec’s provincial government. His biggest non-musical influence isn’t advertising or fashion, but video games. 

He’s a big fan of survival games, RPGs, and “anything Japanese,” and his favourite video game scores are from the Final Fantasy franchise (games seven through 10), particularly the work of composer Nobuo Uematsu. As far as consoles, he says he’s “more of a PlayStation guy,” but also has an Xbox and a Nintendo Switch.

Having gone around the world and back for years now as a producer, it’s curious that High Klassified would make an album featuring exclusively francophone artists. But this is basically by design, given he’d mostly worked with English-language artists previously, and pivoting fully to the francophone market — at least for this go-round — is admittedly a left turn for him.

“It’s a whole other crowd,” he continues. “I kind of feel sorry for my usual fans, but I feel like it’s still accessible to everyone, even though there’s mostly French lyrics.” 

Making a project specifically for the francophone market was an endeavour born from feeling like he needed to “do something more” for his fans in Quebec and the Francophonie in general. He also feels as though the francophone side of Montreal’s scene has been growing more and more since the days where he came up alongside Kaytranada and Tommy Kruise (all three played sets during THAT 2013 Boiler Room).

“Throughout my whole career, I was mostly working with American and English-speaking artists,” he adds. “I really wanted to combine my American flavour with my French connections.”

High Klassified believes France’s musical ecosystem is increasingly turning its attention to the French-Canadian market. “I feel like French artists see Montreal as a Las Vegas-type city,” he says. “I kind of turned it to my advantage, knowing that every time a French artist would come perform in Montreal, I’d make sure to get a studio session with them.”

Based on Ravaru‘s roster of features alone, you can tell High Klassified is hot property among artists in and around the Hexagone. Unsurprisingly, he went back and forth between Laval and France while making the album (most of the songs were made in the latter), and he tries visiting the country roughly three or four times a year.

“Most of the songs were made in a writing camp with SOCAN, for Canadian artists to work with French artists,” he adds. “They flew us out to Paris for a full week of studio time. That was back in 2023. We worked hard on the songs  and added some instruments to them throughout the years, but the album’s core was probably produced two years ago.” 

Although his style has traditionally had trap and hip hop as its musical bedrock, Ravaru leans into R&B, funk and even hints of gospel. “I love listening to R&B music, I love the soulful gospel chord progressions,” he says. 

“You kind of feel it in some songs. Like ‘Lifestyle’, you can hear those chord progressions. I always try to add some musicality to everything. Even ‘LomeLaval’ is pretty much the darkest song on the album, but in the intro, there’s a more cinematic chord progression to it.”

The track featuring Hubert Lenoir, “Rouge blanc,” with drums evoking High Klassified’s trap stylings and a guitar-driven sound adapted for the indie crowd — complete with an ambulance siren (Hubert’s idea, mind you). 

It’s a more rock-oriented tune than High Klassified’s other material, but he and Hubert have been frequent collaborators — most recently on the Quebec City artist’s last album, 2021’s PICTURA DE IPSE: musique directe. 

“We have a good musical chemistry,” says High Klassified. “I really wanted a song with Hubert on this project. I had a vision of an Afro-punk type beat. We mixed up both of our worlds in a song, and we made ‘Rouge blanc’. It has a soul touch, but also a rock touch. This is exactly what I wanted — the best of both worlds.”

High Klassified admits he spent a good chunk of time running after people to help finish the album, one of the more challenging aspects of completing it. “This album was produced and made off of relationships,” he says. “Sometimes, it takes more than a good relationship to get a feature — it takes business. 

“That’s what I liked the most with (being on) Fools Gold. A-Trak had a lot of connections for good features, so he was kind of taking care of that side. But now, having artists from France who I consider as friends, it’s a bit harder to run after everybody to do a verse.”

Perhaps the trickiest feature to secure was French rapper Ateyaba, who features on “LomeLaval,” the album’s opener. “I’ve been wanting him (as a feature) on my past two projects,” says High Klassified. “I finally got him.”

Another track, “Besoin d’amour” (featuring Tsew the Kid and Dau), is the album’s most upbeat and danceable tune, one conceived during a writing camp with Pierre-Luc Rioux, guitarist for the Montreal band Chiiild, and Charlotte Cardin collaborator Marc-André Gilbert, aka MAG. High Klassified fleshed out the track during a studio session with Tsew the Kid.

“(He’s) mostly known to do more sad music with guitar and stuff,” he says. “We wanted to do something different and more bouncy. I just came up with this fun melody, then the guys started playing guitar and drums around it. It came to life in Montreal.” 

Touring is the biggest item on High Klassified’s agenda for the remainder of 2025, while also working on Ravaru’s deluxe edition and a more R&B-focused project with Zach Zoya. He’ll be off to Europe for a run of dates from late April to early June before returning to Quebec for several festivals.

But even if his music career has taken him around the world and back again over the years, it doesn’t take long for him to start missing Montreal (and Laval) whenever he’s away.

“I get homesick a lot,” he says. “I wouldn’t move away for anything in the world. I could be the biggest producer and make millions, and I would still live in Montreal. 

“I love this city. I have my friends here, I’m comfortable, I know everything about this city. I would picture myself living somewhere else for a couple months and shit. But having a whole house and staying there forever? I wouldn’t leave Laval or the Montreal area.” ■

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 𝙃𝙞𝙜𝙝 𝙆𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙛𝙞𝙚𝙙 𝙉𝙤 𝙊𝙣𝙜𝙖𝙠𝙪 (@highklassified)

For more on High Klassified, please visit his Instagram. This article was originally published in the April issue of Cult MTL.

---

For more Montreal music coverage, please visit the Music section.