Snny Days
In the wake of great change, singer-songwriter Snny was a stranger in a strange land — but in reforming himself in a foreign scene, he found new community, belonging, and insight, crafting his long-awaited debut record.
Cast your mind back, if you will, to a time before COVID.
I don’t mean years or decades before the plague hit. I’m talking the very last moments of ignorance, those slithers of serenity we didn’t even see. A familiar face in New York’s bustling creative community, singer-songwriter Snny — real name Aziz Bouraima — was caught up in a whirlwind moment.
“My wife and I got married literally a week before COVID happened, and we had just had a baby that October,” Snny tells me on a late night ZOOM call, a little startled by the recollection. A husband, a father, and still an indefatigable artist, his sophomore EP was just months away, to be released on an independent label of his own making. Shouldering new responsibility and taking the reins, Snny was embracing change like never before — but change like never before was just around the corner. The pandemic hit. “My wife is Icelandic, so we were just like, 'let's just go there for now,'” he explains. “It just made more sense for the baby and everything.”
Snny’s life-changing move to Iceland marked the beginning of a long-gestating project — his debut record. Inspired by an imagined relationship with his grandfather, Water Is Styled Honey is reflexive counsel, a learning experience where the teacher and the student are the very same. Snny reaches into the future and pulls wisdom from a perspective yet seen, imparting big-picture lessons even as he trips through the contours of love, lust and modern life. None seem so important as “be here now,” a plea for the present that pushes past fears and recollections.
Even so, Water Is Styled Honey is a tableau of people trying to make it, banding together and drifting apart, beholden to that outside of their control. His grounded advice is sound, but on the high-wire of the present and the tightrope of love, Snny teeters, hanging in the balance, always at risk of falling astray.
In the moments before his move, Snny had been mulling over an angle for his long-awaited debut album. “Essentially what I wanted to do was create something that felt like I was talking to myself from like a future state, and reflecting on the past,” says Snny, pulling the vision of a generational conversations from his own distant family. “I never got to meet my grandfather on my dad's side, or on my mom's side, so I was like, ‘I wonder what conversations with my grandparents would be like? What sort of advice they would give me, and what sort of experiences they would share with me?”
In emulating that generational dialogue, Water Is Styled Honey is Snny extending beyond himself, reaching into what might be and producing lessons for the here-and-now. It plays in the blurred distinctions between past, present and future, complicated by unclear relationships, latent feelings, and pyrrhic pursuits. “I was really inspired by the Richard Linklater film 'Boyhood,' and just like his process of filming that whole film throughout the course of however many years he did,” he says, praising the vision at the heart of Linklater’s coming-of-age story. “I don't want to spend like 20 years making it,” he adds with a laugh, “but I want to embody that patience in a way that is reflective of my current state of being.”
Snny’s Water Is Styled Honey, much like Linklater’s patient Boyhood, is a debut more than a decade in the making. A young Snny first came to prominence as one-third of The Deans List, a blog-era outfit that made waves on nationwide college tours, performing alongside names like Wiz Khalifa, Kid Cudi and Childish Gambino. That group, comprising emcee Sonny Shotz, DJ Mendoza, and producer Mike Beats, released a few records, including The Drive In and Generation X.
In 2012, The Deans List became Kings Dead, featuring just Sonny and Mendoza. “We were doing these big shows, and it was great,” said Mendoza at the time, “but that had to die for us to be able to really flourish into a whole new situation and create the music we wanted to create.” In 2014, after a handful of records, Kings Dead fizzled out, and Sonny Shotz stepped to the world on his own two. A string of well-recieved singles followed and, sometime around 2016, somebody at Glassnote Records took notice. In 2017, he was reborn yet again, this time as eclectic singer-songwriter Snny.
A string of minor hits, including “Young Boy,” “Arizona,” and “A Better World / The Times They Are a ’Changin’,” spoke to a tender soul of expansive tastes, fusing an undying love for Bob Dylan with electronic, hip hop and R&B modes. In 2020, in the wake of his deal, independent EP Otito and standalone singles like “Postmodern Black” and “Cold Sugar” showed Snny artistically unencumbered.
In suddenly upending his life, Snny quickly became familiar with a new kind of patience. As friends back home struggled through inner-city lockdowns and newfangled restrictions, Snny’s family adjusted to midnight suns and polar nights in Reykjavik. “My wife hadn't lived in Iceland for like a decade too, so she was also like a fish out of water coming here. So for both of us, it was just kind of like this new experience, and with a new baby and everything, and just newly married, it was like a lot of change happening at once.”
“I had to sort of reestablish my creative base when I moved to Iceland,” he explains. “That was a little bit of a process, figuring out how I'm going to make this album in a completely new environment with a whole new creative team of people.” The unsteady situation threw emphasis on Snny’s usual approach, which flourished in his old routine. “I'm usually someone who, before I go to the studio, I have like an idea of what I want to make, and my process tends to be pretty seamless,” he tells me, “but being removed from my comfort zone, I had to change that, and it was very uncomfortable.”
“That really helped form the foundation for the album, just getting to know other creatives around the city,” he reflects. “I started this art collective called Artists in Iceland, where I would just post different cool things that I would see happening in Iceland,” he explains, his roaming spotlight endearing him to all sorts of local artists. “It started growing, and I started meeting people through that, and that sort of helped me make connections in the music world. It just snowballed into this thing where I looked up one day and I basically knew everyone in the scene and like had a great foundation to make the album!”
Snny’s outgoing nature had introduced him to many peers, but it took a friend’s keen ear to connect him with his most indispensable collaborator. Arnar Ingason, who goes by Young Nazareth, spins hip hop and R&B in Reykjavik nightspots, producing for acts like Sturla Atlas and 101 Boys. “I just met him through another musician friend, who recommended that we work together based off of listening to my music,” he says excitedly. “Arnar is just a great producer, and we just linked immediately… it was like we had worked together for years when we first met.” He pauses a moment, mulling over their rapport. “I don't know, it's like, we were meant to work together, you know?”
It’s a creative bond that’s clear from the first breaths of “Be Here Now,” the propulsive “thesis statement for the album.” Snny’s free association a powerful snapshot of a relentless mission — hoping the process “turns into progress,” hitting “lightspeed, tryna’ be happy” — delivered over both crisp percussion and murky atmospherics. Young Nazareth’s lush layers underline Snny’s lyrical flashes, the beat switch like a flip between present panic and rear-view recollection.
Snny sounds at home amongst Young Nazareth’s vast arrangements, the wordless atmospherics and rich synths, denser than before, spotlighting Snny’s vocal in a revelatory way. In spite of his long history, Water Is Styled Honey is a whole reintroduction to the artist — one achieved on his own terms, by his own drive, and with a pair of creative collectives that reach across the Atlantic Ocean.
“I just had a bad taste in my mouth from the music industry in general,” says Snny of his major label years, which produced a few singles and one solitary EP. In the wake of his independence, Snny grappled with a powerful idea: “I want to create a safe space for independent artists to just put out what they want and have the platform to do it, where there's no hierarchy, and everyone can just do their thing.” In a matter of months, Radio Silence Records was born.
“I started Radio Silence when I first got to Iceland,” he says, originally envisioning the project as a boutique label representing a small selection of likeminded creatives. “I got to link up with amazing artists and my friends and help them out, but I realized immediately that I do not want to run a record label,” he admits with a laugh, “it's a lot of work.” The mission persisted, but Radio Silence took on the model of a loose collective, providing members with a means to float ideas, solicit feedback, and collaborate freely.
“Flying In The Dark” finds Snny with a foot in each world, sharing vocals with friend and Radio Silence member Ybañez and featuring Icelandic musician Reynir Snær on guitar. A slick R&B jam about “someone you could care for, someone to hold,” Snny and Ybañez look to embrace romantic possibilities and break from being “stuck in the past,” pining for the effortless passion of a love in full flight. There’s a disbelief at the core — “who would’ve thought that we’d make it this far?” — and as the record plays, doubts give way to dilemmas.
On “Model Home,” a single featuring New Jersey’s own Topaz Jones, Snny waxes on heritage and family as he entertains a life-affirming getaway. Snny met Topaz at a party in Brooklyn, and sparks flew. “I was like, 'Yo, we have to work on something, we have to work on something,'” remembers Snny, those plans undone by COVID and his own cavalcade of change. “As soon as I got the album to a place where I was like, 'Alright, I'm ready to like, hit up some of the homies for features and figure out who makes sense on where,' Topaz was at the top of my list,” he waxes. “He's someone that I've been wanting to work with.”
The beating heart of the record, “Weightless,” shows Snny running with his cinematic inspirations. “For that song in particular, I wanted to just capture the course of a relationship,” he says, capturing “what it feels like in the moments when you first start off” as the feeling fades in the rearview. “It's hectic, it's fast, everything is just so fresh and so new and so fun,” but as passions temper and space comes between, it’s easy to “lose [oneself] in that balance” of wounded independence. “Somewhere in the middle, it gets lost,” explains Snny, crashing images of “texts read,” chainsmoking, and “tryna get the mood right” colliding with what was.
“I pictured it as a film,” he says of the musical centrepiece. “I just pictured like the girlfriend in a car smoking, letting stress out, and she's getting a phone call from her ex from years ago.” The propulsive percussion channels the city streets, bustling and sleepless, a classic soundtrack of romantic restlessness. It comes to a head on the bridge, where the couple reunite at one of their weddings. “He's happy for her, but he still has this internal conflict,” explains Snny, that serene ballroom moment a sudden reminder that “life is moving in a way where I can either move up or move down, or just stay the same.”
That horizon line comes courtesy of Puerto Rican singer Yaya, whose “Yaya’s Interlude” contends with shifting sands and wilful ignorance. “My eyes see blue skies, but feeling just ain’t right,” she sings on her brief verse, invoking “the delicate balance” in the wake of love. “Hunt Run Kill,” restrained and confessional, offers a sharp moment of self-reflection. Snny’s lost in the chase, shouldering the blame for mistakes and the “mindless games” we play, with desire rendered an animalistic want.
“Mindracer 2070” puts the spectre of addiction to a mellow bounce, grappling with a tortured present as Snny pins his hopes on a better tomorrow. A “symphony” of regret, refuge and prayer, it finds a man torn between destruction and salvation, trapped in a cycle that perpetuates a trying past. Similarly, “Good Time Spells” pits Snny against Icelandic singer-songwriter RAKEL, two sides of a frail relationship that can’t seem to recede into memory. “It’s been a while since me and you,” sings Snny on the verse, but RAKEL’s tender admission — “no one else knows my spells” — speaks to a latent intimacy that’s hard to shake. Memories turn rose-coloured, glances recall happier moments, and the players “fall right back to open arms.” There’s comfort in the past, but as the duo are pulled back in, RAKEL pushes back: “is it me or are we wrong for staying in love?”
Album closer “Lightspeed” might open with the most out-and-out diss of the record — “you’re somewhere in the past, which is right where you belong” — but there’s a soft melancholy to the titular refrain, “I’ll see you when the light speeds through.” It’s those brief glimpses, those lights that flare through the window as you speed along, that bring back memories and stir up old emotions. The drums kick in, the song shifts, and it’s as though Snny is caught by one himself: he’s year back, moving to America with his family in search of something better. “I saw the struggle was apparent in my relative’s eyes,” recalls Snny, the flashback a potent reminder of his beginnings. That past, pressing up against his present, closes out the record with a sharp reminder of the power of change: “If you see me when you hear me, it’s a phoenix out the ashes.”
In some ways, Water Is Styled Honey is a rebirth. It’s a late-term reintroduction, a testament to independence, a decade-long quest to put a foot forward in an industry that stresses steps. It tracks through bands, record deals, relationships, a handful of cities, and one global pandemic, with Snny’s whirlwind trip folded into a sharp nine tracks. “It's like having another baby or something,” he says with a laugh. “It's growing legs and becoming its own thing now!”
“I really want to tour this album,” says Snny, excited. “I hope that within the next few months, we can figure out a tour. I would love to do like a European tour, North American tour, maybe come to Australia.” After years of studio-bound recording, it’s clear that Snny misses the live experience. “I love performing as much as I love being in the studio,” he tells me, “and it was really hard to not be able to perform for so long.” It was just recently, on RÚV’s The Week with Gísla Marteini, that Snny managed to pull off a live performance — albeit on a soundstage, without much of a crowd.“That was the first time I've performed in like four years,” he says, “since the beginning of the pandemic.”
Luckily, Snny is no stranger to starting again. He’s gone through reinventions and relocations, signed label deals and charted his own course, each time rising from the ashes, creativity burnished and perspective strong. Four years off the stage is no brief hiatus, but over the course of a decade, Snny’s patience has seen him through the twists and turns of a musical career. In every creation sits a contour, leading towards his definitive arrival. His steadfast belief in the present makes it look easy: we only ever have this very moment. It’s the message and the MO. Water Is Styled Honey is a beautiful reminder that maybe everything will be alright after all — so long as we can stop worrying and start living.