Northern Dial Artist Profile

Remy Shand

Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Winnipeg singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Remy Shand arrived with one of the most striking Canadian R&B debuts of the early 2000s. He developed The Way I Feel largely in his own home-studio environment, writing, arranging and producing the material himself while playing the instruments across the record. Motown and Universal released the album internationally in 2002, placing a young Canadian musician directly inside the neo-soul conversation then being shaped by artists such as D'Angelo, Maxwell and Jill Scott. Songs including "Take a Message," "Rocksteady" and the title track paired vintage soul vocabulary with unusually self-contained musicianship.

The Way I Feel reached No. 1 in Canada, was certified platinum domestically and gave Shand a rare U.S. crossover for a Canadian R&B artist of that period. At the 2003 Grammy Awards, the album and its songs earned four nominations: Best R&B Album, Best Male R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song for "Take a Message," and Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance for "Rocksteady." The record also won the 2003 JUNO Award for R&B/Soul Recording of the Year. That level of recognition made Shand's breakthrough notable not simply as a strong debut but as evidence that a self-produced Winnipeg soul record could compete inside the North American R&B industry.

Shand largely withdrew from the conventional major-label spotlight after that first album, making his catalogue unusually compact for an artist whose debut generated so much attention. He resurfaced independently during the 2010s with new and archival material, while Universal and Motown marked The Way I Feel's 20th anniversary with expanded reissues. The album's durability has become part of his legacy: one concentrated body of work established Shand as a distinctive Canadian neo-soul figure and remains a useful snapshot of the country's R&B ambitions immediately before Toronto became an internationally recognized centre for the genre.