Regent Park, Berete explains, was the first public housing project built in Canada. For years, it has been riven by gang-related gun violence, a manifestation of issues cited in a 2008 province-wide report. The fuel comes in many different forms: poverty, dire economic prospects, and generational neighborhood rivalries. “You know in Africa they just sacrifice the chickens?” Berete asks with a grim, distant expression. “Niggas be doing that here. Killing each other. Cutting each other's necks off.” He hopes Southside to Northside will help ease the city’s violent year, which this year claimed the life of his friend Smoke Dawg, a 21-year-old Regent Park rapper who toured with Drake. “We used to go in laundromats, getting high and freestyling, like two-and-a-half years ago,” he says, and fidgets with the embroidered StN logo on his pants. “It was just running in and out of buildings with security chasing us.” Berete is understandably reluctant to get into specifics on how he’s run afoul of the law, but says his lyrics aren’t based on speculation. “A guy can't just go talkin' how we talk in our songs,” he insists. “They didn't really live it. You can't make this shit up, and if you do make it up, niggas will know.” So it’s about authenticity, I say. “Yeah,” Berete says, then looks out the car window for a moment.

Berete knows he doesn’t have to be in Regent Park to be loyal to it. He hopes his career will allow him to one day move to Amsterdam, where his stepfather’s family lives. Now, though, he’s simply too hot: in his rap career, to attend school, and for the police. One evening this summer, Berete and a group of friends were stopped by police officers and issued tickets for jaywalking. Both the young men and the civil rights attorney who shared the incident on YouTube claimed the boys had been victims of racial profiling. Near the video’s beginning, the attorney hands his phone to Berete, who introduces himself to the camera, cheeky and defiant. Even in such tense situations, his charisma is apparent. On record, it blooms. He tells me he uses his last name as his rapping alias in tribute to his father, who died in a car accident when Berete was a boy. It’s why he’s prepared, for anything. “I keep telling myself, his last name told me to be ready. Be ready, Berete.” Suddenly, he gets bashful. “Does that make sense?”