One of Canada’s most distinctive voices in Hip-Hop, award-winning blind artist and producer, Mattmac, is returning this September with his third studio album, Smoke Signals, a 14-track project that connects his roots in Garden Hill First Nation with the sounds of Atlanta Hip-Hop that first inspired him as a kid. With more than 30 million streams and accolades including the CBC Searchlight Grand Prize, Canada’s Walk of Fame RBC Emerging Musician Award, and International Indigenous Hip-Hop Awards Album of the Year, Mattmac has built a remarkable career from making beats in his home community in Northern Manitoba.
Award-Winning Blind Indigenous Hip-Hop Artist and Producer, Mattmac, Collaborates With QuestionATL From Blind and Famous on Third Studio Album
The two Hip-Hop artists turn nearly a decade of friendship and collaboration into a 14-track exchange of stories, sounds, and experiences spanning Northern Manitoba and the birthplace of Southern Hip-Hop
“His music is sonically innovative, and his authentic lyrics... make him a musician who should be on everyone's radar.” - CanCulture
Watch: I Remember When https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IifrfX-D4NY&t=5s
Release Date: Friday, September 11 2026
Winnipeg, MB – August 24, 2026 – Canadian Hip-Hop artist and producer, Mattmac, has has announced his third studio album, Smoke Signals, set for release on Friday, September 11, 2026.
Rooted in the ways stories, memories, and experiences are carried between people, places, and generations, award-winning blind Indigenous Hip-Hop artist and producer Mattmac shares his third studio album, Smoke Signals, a project that explores the connections between the sounds, communities, and lived experiences that shaped his journey from Garden Hill First Nation to Winnipeg and beyond. Inspired by smoke signals once used by many Indigenous Nations to send messages across distances, the album explores the concept of smoke, and how its signals carry information, spark memories, share warnings, force displacement, and inspire connection. After devastating wildfires forced the evacuation of his home community and brought his family to Winnipeg, smoke evolved from a negative symbol to one of communication that connected his community experiences, memories of the music that shaped him growing up, his journey from Garden Hill to the city, and his resulting career success. Created in collaboration with QuestionATL, an Atlanta-based rapper from Blind and Famous, a collective of nine blind music producers across the globe, Smoke Signals brings together Mattmac's earliest musical memories of listening to mixtapes and his appreciation for the Atlanta Trap-Hop sound to create a project inspired by the signals that made him who he is today.
One of Canada's most distinctive voices in Indigenous Hip-Hop, Mattmac has transformed making beats from his home community of Anisininew Nation (Garden Hill First Nation), Manitoba, into an internationally reaching career as an award-winning producer, songwriter, recording artist, and performer. With more than 30 million streams across platforms, Mattmac's melodic Hip-Hop and Trap-Pop production, honest storytelling, and collaborative approach have earned major national support from CBC, CTV, APTN, Virgin Radio, SiriusXM, and major Spotify editorial playlists. His numerous accolades include winning the 2023 CBC Searchlight Grand Prize, Album of the Year at the International Indigenous Hip-Hop Awards, Canada's Walk of Fame RBC Emerging Musician Award, Rap/Electronic Album of the Year at the Summer Solstice Indigenous Music Awards, and more. His songs “Paradise” and “Rez” both reached #1 on the Indigenous Music Countdown, with “Paradise” also breaking into the Top 50 at Canadian Mediabase radio. Most recently, his second studio album, All Eyes On Us, generated more than 1.5 million streams and 3 million views across its videos.
On Smoke Signals, Mattmac shares a sound that inspired him most, while also introducing listeners to a creative partnership that has been developing behind the scenes for nearly a decade. Created with Atlanta-based rapper and producer QuestionATL via Blind and Famous, an international collective of blind producers and musicians started by QuestionATL and his brother, the artists' creative connection and shared appreciation for Trap music and Southern Hip-Hop led to their discovery of mutual experiences, creative influences, and approaches to making music. Sparked by conversations that evolved into beats, hooks, verses, and later songs, Smoke Signals 14 tracks capture the highs and lows of career progression, sharing stories of struggle and success, displacement and transition, ambition, resilience, friendship, and pride in their roots. Moving between Mattmac's experiences growing up in Garden Hill and building a life and career in Winnipeg and QuestionATL's experiences in Atlanta, the album finds common ground between two vastly different communities through the determination to move beyond circumstance without losing connection to what shaped them. Balancing the confidence and celebration inherent to Hip-Hop with an honest look at the struggle behind success, Smoke Signals reflects what it means to move forward while continuing to carry a connection to home.
Credit: Eric Peters
Lead single “I Remember When,” looks back at Mattmac and QuestionATL’s lives before their music careers and the early influences that eventually became part of their work together. The song began with a conversation about childhood and the music each artist grew up listening to, including Mattmac’s memories of burned CDs his sister gave him in Garden Hill that introduced him to Atlanta Hip-Hop and inspired his love for mixtapes. Produced by QuestionATL, the track draws from the “futuristic swag” era of Atlanta Rap, incorporating the melodic bounce and production style associated with the sound while referencing artists including the Atlanta group Rich Kidz. QuestionATL developed the beat and much of the initial writing before Mattmac added details from his own childhood, turning their shared memories into a song about the period before their career milestones and public recognition. The accompanying video continues that theme through references to CDs and iPods from the era, framing the song around the distance between the music they listened to growing up and the music they are now creating.
Representing the contrasting perspectives explored throughout Smoke Signals are “Can You Hear Me” and “Real Boss Type,” songs that move between the challenges accompanying growth and the celebration of success. “Can You Hear Me” explores the pain that can exist alongside personal and professional growth by addressing the reality that changing circumstances do not necessarily leave past struggles behind. On the other end, “Real Boss Type” leans into the pride and braggadocious nature of Hip-Hop, creating space to acknowledge and celebrate achievement. Placed within an album that traces Mattmac's experiences from Garden Hill to Winnipeg and from making music at home to building a career as an artist and producer, the two songs present different points along that journey, reflecting that struggle and success often exist within the same story.
With Smoke Signals, Mattmac unites the people, places, sounds, and experiences that have shaped his journey. From the wildfire smoke that displaced his family to the Atlanta Hip-Hop that reached him through mixtapes as a child, the project traces the different signals Mattmac has received throughout his life and the ways they have informed his music, relationships, and career. Created alongside QuestionATL after nearly a decade of collaboration, the album brings their individual experiences together to create a signal of their own, carrying stories from Garden Hill and Atlanta through a shared musical language. Combining the sounds that first connected them with the experiences they discovered they had in common, Smoke Signals turns years of conversations, collaboration, and friendship into a message about struggle, progression, community, and the importance of remembering where success began. Having spent his life receiving signals that helped shape the artist he became, with Smoke Signals, Mattmac now sends one of his own.
Smoke Signals will be available everywhere on September 11, 2026
Connect with Mattmac
https://www.facebook.com/mattmaconline
https://soundcloud.com/mattmaconline
https://www.instagram.com/mattmaconline
https://www.tiktok.com/@mattmaconline
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLYfVahzfub01XsVnLUNGrg?view_as=subscriber
Connect with QuestionATL
https://www.facebook.com/questionatl
https://www.instagram.com/questionatl
https://www.tiktok.com/@questionatl
