Tona Merges The Sounds Of Toronto And London On “Grime Date”

Like a good portion of the global hip-hop community, Toronto rapper Tona is enamored with the sounds of grime. But he's taken this one step further and paid tribute to the music with "Grime Date," a new song with MC Skripture, taken from his forthcoming album The Ivy League. Tona, one-third of the Juno Award-winning group Naturally Born Strangers, isn't the first Toronto rapper to take a shining to grime — Tre Mission splits his time between his native T.O. and adopted LDN, working with scene heavyweights like JME and Wiley, and "Grime Date" sounds like the beefier, war-ready cousin of Mission's 2014 single "Stigmata."

"While I was [in London] every day just seem to get more live," Tona told The FADER over e-mail. "Whether it was me inside any and every studio building music or just rolling around everywhere from Brixton to Camden. I got so intrigued by the scene that the original 6 day stay ended up turning into 3 and a half weeks in which I had to change my flight twice." Check out the results of his excursion below.