Toronto MC Portion started making music as a way of processing grief: In December 2017, he debuted with “Fif’s World”, a haunting, plainspoken elegy for his childhood friend Anthony “Fif” Soares, who was killed earlier that year. And even as his flow took on more melodic contours on subsequent singles, he retained an unfiltered storytelling style that teemed with street-level tensions. But on his first full-length project, Portion lets a little light into his nocturnal netherworld. While I Am Nothing Without doesn’t shy away from the darker chapters of his time growing up surrounded by crime and poverty in the east-end region of Scarborough, he’s now analysing those experiences in the rearview mirror as he enters a promising new phase of his life. After signing a major-label deal with Warner Music Canada, Portion is eager to court a wider audience, whether he’s wrapping up his rawest lyrical ruminations in elegant, piano-laden trap productions or crafting R&B-inspired jams for the ladies. “I feel like I’m at a different point in my career now,” he tells Apple Music. “Everything that I’ve done up to this point had a certain darker tone. At times, it was hard for even me or my friends to listen to. But as the years progressed, I started to tap into other sounds—I wanted to make celebration music. I reached the point where I’m turning my pain into champagne.” Here, Portion pops the cork on I Am Nothing Without, track by track.
“DREAMS MONEYY CAN BUY” “At the end of the day, I feel like money’s not everything, but at the same time, it does help certain situations, and it can help buy you your dreams. That’s what the title stands for. But in terms of sound, I just wanted it to feel like a movie. I’ve had people waiting a while for this project, so I just feel like I had to make it as big as possible and make it as celebratory as possible. There’s just so much thought put into the production. I try to keep my music now a little bit more surface level so that everyone can relate, and I feel like this song is my step towards greatness.”
“WAVE” “There are still things that I’m battling that make me who I am—the positive and the negative. So, the line ‘Ran up that cheque and now look what it did to me’ is about how I find myself sometimes being a little bit more ignorant and cocky towards people, and I have to catch myself and be like, ‘OK, this person was my friend for all these years, but now that I’m in this position, I might see them move a little bit weird and that just throws me all the way off.’ So, [success] can have negative effects in the way that it makes you braggadocious, and that’s what I wanted to portray with this song.”
“HELLA CLEAN” “I actually signed my deal right before I made this song, but I didn’t feel signed yet. I was in Atlanta for a few months when I signed my deal, and it was kind of hard for me to make music on the road, but this was one of the very few tracks that I made down there. I was still battling certain problems in terms of just figuring out what the next step of my life was. The line ‘Riding hella clean’ just means that all the dirty and crazy things I’ve had to do in order to get to this point is all in the past now.”
“TIES” “I touch on topics that are real to me and real to the society that I’m in. The big thing nowadays is drill music, and if you really take in the tones of the music that is popular nowadays—especially in our underground realm—it’s very aggressive. They’re talking about very dark things. So, I definitely wanted to touch on that on this album. ‘TIES’ is a record that shows my ability to have fun but still have that pain in it. If you were to take one record to describe my music, I think it would be ‘TIES’.”
“NO PURSES” “My theme on this project is that the music is so beautiful, but what I’m talking about is so street. I wanted to make it a balance between Roddy Ricch’s album [Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial] and Lil Baby’s [My Turn]. You can hear it in songs like ‘NO PURSES’—the transition at the beginning of that is very much inspired by ‘High Fashion’ and ‘Ballin’’ by Roddy Ricch. I wanted to make a trap album that could still be considered beautiful, like Travis Scott, and ‘NO PURSES’ is definitely one of the most fun songs on the project. Like on ‘WAVE’, you can still hear the street tone, but ‘NO PURSES’ is more of a girl record. It has an R&B intro and it’s just totally leftfield. But I wanted to make a celebration song for the independent ladies that aren’t depending on a man for their vices—for the boss ones that go get it.”
“LOST ALL FAITH” “This track goes from dark to darker. It was also very much inspired by Travis Scott and Roddy Ricch. I feel like there’s a negative tone that comes with signing [to a major label], and we need to shake that stigma, because we’re doing a lot of negative things to stay on the independent route. The music is real, so a lot of the stuff that you’re doing to maintain this independent route is not wholesome. I speak about the fentanyl use and heavy drug use that’s within our culture, and murder—just dark tones that are in the reality of things, but a lot of people don’t touch on them in this way.”
“MUDDY” “I started this one in Atlanta—it was on a different beat—and then I switched it up when I came to Toronto. The tones of the music kind of reflect where I’m at, and when I’m in Toronto, it’s kind of like, ‘You’ve got to watch over your shoulder, you gotta make sure that you’re moving around in the right spots and doing all the right things to make sure that your family is protected.’ This is another song that represents where I’m from. It represents the bottom—the mud.”
“99 PRBLMS” “This was one of the first songs I recorded by myself—I went to [music-equipment store] Long & McQuade, grabbed a mic, and was like, ‘I’m gonna go on YouTube and figure out how to use these plug-ins.’ And ‘99 PRBLMS’ was really made in one sitting. I was just hyped, and I was going through problems with my girlfriend at the time, and I was just in this mode where no one could tear me down. This was before I signed my deal too. But at the time of making this, I was thinking about quitting music.”
“DIOR ME” “This is a song about taking the people that have been around me to the next level. I feel like I’m at a stage now where I’m starting to see a lot of people’s true colours, and a lot of people are coming around me for self-gain. I’m kind of weeding them out—who’s there for the right purpose and who’s not. So, the part where I say, ‘If you’re gonna Dior me/Then you gotta adore me’—that’s about how we try to mask problems with designer things. Like, ‘I’ll buy you this and I’ll buy you that,’ just so that you don’t have to deal with the reality of how you’re actually treating the human being. You can’t mask the pain with designer things or money.”