Young Corduroy brings hip hop to the Prairies

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Brett Rybinski and his book of bars

What do you do in a small prairie town on a Friday night? Drive around with friends and blast some rap music? That’s what rap artist Brett Rybinski would do in his hometown of Kinistino, Sask.

Rybinski, whose artist’s name is “Young Corduroy,” started his rap career in his truck, freestyling for fun with his buddies. He is the youngest of eight siblings and was raised in a very musical family. All the kids took part in middle and high school band, one year of Prince Albert Concert Band and piano lessons. The family would often make music together at various functions and at church on Sundays.

Rybinski credits his older brothers for instilling his love of rap and hip-hop. “I don’t remember if I had an MP3 player, or like one of the earliest iPods. I would download the music that my brothers had downloaded, from LimeWire or FrostWire, onto my device and listen to the stuff. I just remember thinking hip-hop was super cool. Probably just the beat was what got me back then,” he shared.

“My friends and I all got really into rap music around grade nine or so. I remember 2012 being a big year for us. We were into Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, in m.A.A.d city, A$AP Rocky, ScHoolboy Q, 2 Chainz, guys like that. Anytime we drove around, it was hip hop. Anytime we hung out, there was hip hop playing in the background. Even at school, playing music during gym class, it always had to be rap.”

Rybinski started to freestyle with his friends, who pointed out that he had a knack for rhyming. “I would show them some stuff I had written as well. Eventually, they encouraged me to take it to the studio and record it professionally.”

So, that’s what he did. Rybinski created his first single with a friend, under the name “The Miracle Kids,” and recorded at Rainy Day Recording Co. in Saskatoon. “Matthew Stinn is the producer there, good fella,” Rybinski said. “We came across Rainy Day on Kijiji. [Stinn] was so accommodating and did a good job, so I’ve just stuck with him since.”

The song, “Heckin’ Party,” became a local legend around the Northeast area, where Rybinski’s from. “We shared it on Spotify, Apple Music, all the platforms and it just kind of became iconic around Kinistino, which I always thought was funny because it’s actually a very poor song. It’s kind of trash, but I remember people playing it for volleyball warmups and basketball warmups.”

The Miracle Kids had a short-lived musical life because Rybinski then turned to his solo career as Young Corduroy. “I just joked around with a friend of mine, saying I was gonna call myself Young Corduroy. I wore a lot of corduroy at the time. I just thought it was kind of an absurd name, and she said, ‘Yeah, do it,’ so I did it.”

Under the new name, Rybinski released his first EP, entitled I Don’t Have Time to Write an Album, in 2022. The EP has four tracks: “Nice,” “Pull up in a Chevy,” “Special Fried Rice” and “Guardian Angel.” The songs are inspired by the underground hip-hop style that Rybinski enjoys the most.

“I’m not so much into the mainstream stuff, especially when it’s really pop. It’s like, underground, boom-bap, ‘90s.” He later released another single in December 2024, called “Itchy Eye Gang.”

“Itchy Eye Gang” got its name from Rybinski’s and his friends’ struggles with allergies; he jokes that it’s become the name of his fanbase. , “The actual name just comes from my friend Cooey and I. We are both allergic to cats, dogs, mold and pollen, and we often have itchy eyes. Back in the day we started calling ourselves the itchy-eye gang. I guess fans of Young Corduroy can consider themselves as part of the gang.” All of Rybinski’s lyrics are written by him, but the beats to back them are not.

Finding beats for him to use requires paying a leasing fee to producers who release the music. Unfortunately for Rybinski, a lot of producers use a time restriction, meaning he can only own the beat for a certain amount of time. But Rybinski’s found a workaround.
“I found this guy,” he said. “He’s from France. I think he’s in Paris, selling underground beats for an underground price and I found one that I liked, and purchased it. I was happy enough with this one.”

Rybinski’s writing process is a lengthy one. He never really sits down to write out a song; the words just seem to come to him while doing his daily routines, so he writes them down to return to later.

“I got a note called the Book of Bars, and I just add stuff in there, and then hope to go back to it and try to build on it. I don’t like writing hooks. I struggle with that part.

I enjoy writing bars, so the more difficult they are, the more challenging or, like, the more complex the words are, the more fun it is for me.”

Rybinski continued, “I just wrote every single line down, and then went back and thought about how I can integrate that and have it make actual sense, like, that the lines follow in a logical order, that I’m actually saying something, not just random words. It took a long time, but it was lots of fun.”

The Young Corduroy fanbase is small but mighty, with Rybinski’s friends and family always spreading the word about his music.

“Just being from a small town, everyone knows you and I do have a big family who shares my stuff,” he said. “. Being from Kinistino, you put something out there and they recognize you as a new name, and they’re interested.”