Northern Dial Artist Profile

Snotty Nose Rez Kids

Kitamaat Village, British Columbia, Canada

Snotty Nose Rez Kids, the Haisla hip-hop duo of Yung Trybez and Young D, emerged from Kitamaat Village in British Columbia and built a catalogue that uses rap as a vehicle for humour, anger, cultural pride and Indigenous political perspective. Their early releases quickly established a high-energy style rooted in contemporary hip-hop rather than treating Indigenous identity as an add-on. The 2017 album The Average Savage brought national attention, and Trapline pushed them further, earning a place on the 2019 Polaris Music Prize shortlist alongside some of the country's most acclaimed independent records.

Life After followed in 2021, continuing the duo's mix of personal storytelling and structural critique. Their 2024 major-label debut Red Future expanded the production scale and centred Indigenous futurism, imagining resilience and community as forward-looking forces rather than reducing Indigenous experience to historical trauma. In 2025, Red Future won the JUNO for Rap Album/EP of the Year, making Snotty Nose Rez Kids the first Indigenous act to win the category.

The duo's importance to Canadian music comes from how naturally they place Haisla identity inside contemporary rap language. They can move from jokes and flexes to colonial violence, missing and murdered Indigenous women and community survival without changing into an educational mode for outsiders. That balance has made Snotty Nose Rez Kids an accessible entry point into a much larger Indigenous hip-hop movement while allowing them to remain, first and foremost, a competitive rap group with a distinct West Coast voice.