Who’s Next is our quick monthly check in: six artists we’re actively watching right now, picked from real listening, not internet temperature checks. It is less about declaring who is next up and more about keeping a record of who keeps earning our attention in real time.

It’s also our running shortlist: a place to document the names we keep coming back to before the story gets explained for us. Not a forecast. Not a co sign. Not a trend report. Just six artists who’ve been holding weight in our rotation and feel like they’re building toward something real.

Different sounds, different scenes, same throughline: identity, discipline, and worlds that feel authored instead of assembled. The kind of work that reads like a catalog in progress, not a moment, and gives us enough to keep watching without pretending the whole story has already been written.

ihateyouALX

ihateyouALX makes music like somebody who’s already in control of the room. The bounce is immediate, but it’s not careless the records are engineered. Rap instincts, dance posture, house swing, alt textures, all moving under one name stamp that keeps getting cleaner with each release. The biggest tell is intent. A lot of artists can make “fun” records; fewer can make them feel built. ALX’s best songs carry structure: a hook that does real work, a tempo that stays disciplined, and production choices that feel like decisions instead of presets. The music reads like someone who understands that energy isn’t just volume, it’s pacing.

The other signal is how hands on the world is. The looschnge. ecosystem doesn’t read like branding layered on after the fact; it reads like a small world around the music, a place where visuals, streams, project links, and short-form philosophy all sit under the same identity. ALX has said the video is “the final word” the thing that locks the feeling into your memory so you can’t hear the song again without seeing the scene. That kind of thinking is rare at this level, and it shows: the releases feel authored, not posted.

And looschnge. isn’t positioned like a merch tag. It reads like a studio in progress: a broader universe (run with family) where music, film, and design are meant to sit next to each other. ALX’s version of “world building” is literal: a colorful space where creativity is treated like a rule breaking exercise, and the philosophy is simple don’t take yourself too serious, even when the work is.

That philosophy is sitting inside the music too. The last checkpoint before the “KTPL.” EP is the new single, “keep the party lit.” a record built on contrast: a beat that moves like celebration, with lyrics that are basically instruction. The hook isn’t about the party; it’s about momentum. Keep going. Keep the dream alive. The record started the unglamorous way a lot of real songs start: ALX and Nick Reed digging through a beat pack from their Spain based producer, then ALX getting pulled in even when they weren’t planning to record.

Even the details reinforce the point. ALX’s favorite moment is the intro: the open mic, the laughter, the real time figuring it out because it sets the tone: light on the surface, serious underneath, and human all the way through.

What we’re watching for next is the “KTPL.” EP era to land publicly with full clarity release date, visual cadence, and the moment the wider conversation catches up to what the catalog’s already been telegraphing.

Burgundy

Burgundy’s best records live in the in between: soft edged, melodic, and constantly shifting without losing the emotional center. The writing stays restrained on purpose. Atmosphere does the heavy lifting, and the details are what keep you coming back. Their own definition is blunt: music “in between genres,” free to expand in any direction and the only thing they don’t want people to assume is that the sound will stay the same.

Part of what’s made the run feel credible is the real world motion around it. Burgundy has been framed by No Diploma Records as a warm summer single artist Jordan Ward / Dijon / Roy Blair adjacency but the catalog holds up beyond a reference list. There’s press side validation too (SOCAN “Five Rising Stars of Quebec R&B & Soul to Watch in 2025”), plus the kind of offline traction that matters: rooms, festivals, and a community that shows up.

The core is Montreal, but the real influence is pace. Burgundy talks about writing with the seasons: winter pulls the songs inward, summer pushes the energy up. And the arc has been steady: early guitar “skeletons” turned into real releases once the feedback hit, then a sequence of “this is real” moments (a first single popping off, a management deal in LA, the first real video) that eventually became something more stable a team with a long term plan.

If you want the thesis in one record, it’s “Marathon.” Written in the middle of a long distance relationship, 70 hour work weeks, and a rollout happening at the same time, the song’s motion comes from a real life sprint. The melody landed mid shift at a Thai restaurant, got saved as a bathroom voice note, then got refined across cities (Montreal → Melbourne → back home) with Oclair and Mathias Clerc. They describe the goal as “textures and dynamics” acoustic warmth married to electronic space and it plays like that: hopeful, slightly frantic, and built for the moment where life starts looking up.

What we’re watching for next is the single to EP runway specifically the softer, more accessible side they’ve hinted at on the next release, and how that opens the door into the Asterisk EP without sanding down what makes Burgundy feel precise.

Chris Chand

Chris Chand’s “FOREVER’S A PLACE” is the kind of record that tells you a lot without trying to. Classic touch, modern frame an 80s alt R&B sensibility in the DNA, but not as nostalgia, more like craft. The hook lands clean, the emotion is direct, and the whole thing feels like the start of a catalog, not a one off.

On Spotify, it reads like an artist in a quiet streak: “FOREVER’S A PLACE” sits as the current artist pick and latest release, following a run of singles that keep the tone consistent while widening the color palette “INSIDE THE MOMENT” (2026), “SLOW BLOOM” (2026), and “LOWTIDE” (2026), with earlier signals like “TRUMAN SHOW” (2025) and “dancing like no one’s watching” (2025) showing the same patience in the writing.

The foundation is songwriting first. “If forever is a place, I’ll meet you there” is a simple line, but it lands like someone who understands restraint how to say the whole thing without over explaining. And it fits the larger Chand pattern we’ve seen on the platform: an artist who’s never moved like a trend chaser. The throughline has been feeling, then craft letting the sound widen over time without losing the emotional center.

Chris is also not new to Nefarious Supply. We first tapped in back in 2021, when he talked about growing up in a musical household in Pickering, cutting his teeth in Toronto’s independent scene, and learning to produce and record from his bedroom. Since then, we’ve watched the work stretch across different eras and identities including him stepping into our world as a host (NS Radio Episode 008, 2023). That history matters: it’s proof of intent and patience, not a random spike.

That continuity is part of why “FOREVER’S A PLACE” lands. It doesn’t sound like a pivot; it sounds like an artist tightening the same instinct. Even when Chris moves across genres and textures, the decision making is consistent: he follows a feeling first, then builds the song around it no rush to box it in.

What we’re watching for next is consistency and identity: more releases that deepen the palette beyond this single, and a clearer visual + narrative language around the voice and the world the songs are meant to live in.

Pat Williams

Pat Williams is operating at album scale even when the release is one track at a time. The production is meticulous “math to create the magic” but the bigger tell is intention: everything is built to document specific, intimate moments, and he keeps the frame wide enough to hold the chaos and the line that cuts through it. He referenced Everything Everywhere All at Once as a blueprint: a story that uses “everything” to set up one small sentence that people carry with them. That’s the Pat approach lush environments and detailed construction, in service of a human moment that lands clean.

When he says the work is “unbound by classification,” it’s not branding it’s a boundary. He’s clear that the games aren’t for him, and that anything that waters down expression gets cut off quickly. The process is fluid on purpose: sometimes the music sparks the feeling, sometimes the feeling dictates the music but either way the goal is to challenge both himself and the listener, not just deliver another verse. The heavy lifting happens in the rebuild: strip it down, piece it back together, and keep reshaping until the record equates to the right message.

That obsession with duality is the engine. Pat wants to show ego and sensitivity in the same song; braggadocio can sit beside gentleness without canceling it out. He even writes from angles he doesn’t fully agree with when it tells a fuller truth he pointed to “PRIDE” (from IN CASE I DON’T SEE YOU) as a moment of absorbing someone else’s perspective to widen the story. On “Tongue Tied,” the tension is two people entering something new, both guarded; the song’s turning point came when LOR’s vocals added the missing softness, not just an accessory, but the second side of the narrative. From there, he spent a day arranging dozens of takes while the production team added keys and detail.

The next chapter is the debut album, THE KIDS WILL BE FINE, a relationship with the inner child, the world, and shedding old skin. He describes it as a “melting pot” of influences: live instrumentation and jazz, but with a 2026 spin; jarring confidence with real sensibility; and the deliberate act of breaking things apart and rebuilding until the purest feeling remains. What we’re watching for next is that full arrival: a rollout that treats the record like the world it is inviting (track one is literally “Let’s be friends”), gradually deepening, and closing the loop with something conversational that brings the title’s comfort back into focus.

Rosabell

Rosabell’s music starts from a place that feels almost private before it opens up. The first spark is usually the chords, a progression that hits with enough feeling to pull the rest of the song into focus. From there, the voice does the real translating: melody first, emotion underneath, and harmonies stacked with pop precision without losing the warmth of R&B. That’s the Rosabell twist. You can hear the pop in the R&B and the R&B in the pop; neither side works without the other.

The world around the music matters too. Rosabell describes herself as a Nigerian-Canadian Pop/R&B artist with a love for pop music, a dream of dancing and singing on big stages, and a band beneath pink lights. That image is specific for a reason. The pink, the flowers, the softness, the performance vision, it all ties back to a childlike, whimsical part of her that she once tried to grow out of, then realized was central to why she creates at all. The result is music that doesn’t treat softness like decoration. It treats it like identity.

There’s also real growth in the release arc. Early songs like “Gifted” came from a more DIY, vault-clearing place: an artist wanting the music out and learning by doing. But the shift after joining Remix in 2025 gave the work more community, collaboration, and confidence. “Patience” became the most personal checkpoint because it forced Rosabell to confront insecurity around her identity as an artist and trust her instincts again. “Breeze,” meanwhile, feels like the best entry point into the world: warm guitars, tropical summer energy, and a calm, grounded, drama-free feeling that still carries intention.

What makes Rosabell worth watching is the way the emotional thesis keeps sharpening. Her core listener is someone learning to choose themselves and bloom into who they’re meant to become. The broader era is built around flowers, growth, and self-love, not as slogans, but as a framework for the songs, visuals, and story to eventually work together. What we’re watching for next is that fuller world to lock in: more records that deepen the bloom, stronger visual language around the pink-lights stage vision, and the moment Rosabell starts reading less like a promising voice and more like an artist with a clearer universe forming around her.

SincerelyChico

SincerelyChico moves with the instincts of someone who has spent time studying eras, not just sounds. The New Jersey artist and producer frames his origin through timing: born at the edge of the 90s, raised inside the 2000s, and shaped by everything from C.L. Smooth and Pete Rock to Kanye, Jay, Pharrell, Drake, Kendrick, Cole, Travis, the SoundCloud wave, and the smoother pockets of Larry June and Cardo. That range matters because it shows up less like a reference list and more like a working vocabulary. Chico’s music carries an old-school respect for feel, but it is not stuck in revival mode. It is trying to build forward from memory.

The artist-producer balance is part of the signal. Chico says he wanted to be an artist first, but early on, production felt safer. He could let other people take the spotlight as long as the beats still spoke for him. Now the work is about building the same confidence in his voice that he once had to build behind the boards. That tension gives MAIN INGREDIENTS its center: an artist learning how to step further into the frame without losing the producer’s ear for structure, texture, and feel.

The EP itself is framed like two creatives bringing their respective recipes together. Chico and Saint Nxva first connected through Big Jozy in 2021, bonded over samples and hard drums, and eventually found the chemistry that shaped the project. Letting another producer handle the sound was a real risk for Chico because it meant trusting someone else with a world that still had to feel like his. The risk paid off because the EP does not read like a compromise. It reads like a shared pocket, built from confidence, instinct, and a clear sense of what each person brings to the table.

There is a clear regional pulse in the work too. Chico points to Jersey’s creative communities, from Darkside to Jamm Gallery, as part of the environment shaping him. That matters because the music does not feel like it is chasing a detached internet identity. It feels connected to scenes, rooms, and people. “STEALIN’ SWAG” is the immediate checkpoint: a record sparked by Chico’s frustration with copy-paste creativity and his belief that even when nothing is fully new, artists still have to put their own DNA into the work. “2 WEEK NOTICE” shows the other side of that mission, turning work frustration into an anthem about control, release, and knowing when you are ready to walk away.

What makes Chico worth watching is the integrity behind the build. He talks about wanting more care in music, not because every song has to be overly serious, but because anything can matter for 40 days or 40 years if it is made with enough intention. What we’re watching for next is how the world of SincerelyChico keeps expanding after MAIN INGREDIENTS: more singles, more EPs, more visual context, and a clearer bridge between the producer brain and the artist identity.

Thanks for spending time with this month’s Who’s Next. This series is meant to be a living record of what we’re hearing, who we’re returning to, and where our attention is going before the wider conversation catches up.

We’ll keep using this space to document artists with identity, discipline, and motion, not as predictions, but as notes from inside the listening. If one of these names stays with you, follow the thread. Listen closer. That’s where the real discovery starts.

If you are an artist building something with care, send it through. Submit your music here: Make Your Mark.