Haviah Mighty released her debut studio album 13th Floor on May 10, 2019, independently. This is a catalogue album, framed as catalogue: nothing here is new, and the record still matters because four months after it landed, the Toronto-born, Brampton-raised rapper stood at The Carlu in Toronto and accepted the Polaris Music Prize, the first hip hop artist and the first Black woman ever to win it.
The official animated video for “Thirteen,” the album’s title-defining track, is embedded below. Released on Canada Day 2020 and built by Toronto artist Theo Kapodistrias, it later won the Grand Prize at the 2021 Prism Prize, which means the album that made Polaris history also produced the Canadian music video of its year.
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Thirteen Tracks On The Floor Buildings Skip
The album runs 13 tracks, as its Bandcamp listing shows: “In Women Colour,” “Waves” featuring Sean Leon, “Wishy Washy” featuring her sister Omega Mighty, “Blame,” “Thirteen,” “Smoke” featuring Clairmont the Second, “You Don’t Love Me,” “Fugazi,” “Squad,” “Oh My,” “Ride,” “Bag Up” and “Kiss It.” The production credits span Mighty herself, 2oolman, OBUXUM, Lambo, Mighty Prince, Robotaki, Taabu and Young Dreadz, and the record moves the way the tracklist promises, from swagger rap to Caribbean bounce, with the lead single “In Women Colour” carried as an anthem for Black women from the first track onward.
The title does double work, and Mighty has explained both halves. The thirteenth floor is the one buildings omit because the number is treated as unlucky, something, in her reading, that people remove from reality because they do not understand it and therefore dismiss it. The other half is the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the one that abolished slavery with a punishment exception, and the one she noted is discussed far less than the First or Second. A debut album named for an absence, built to talk about everything the absence hides, is a thesis statement, and the songs keep proving it for 41 minutes.
Thirteen, The Song And The Video
“Thirteen” is the record’s centre of gravity. Mighty wrote it as an open letter to someone who was locked up at the time, breaking down how that path had been set in advance by society, and the song walks the history plainly: slavery, its formal abolition, and the prison system that inherited its logic. It was shortlisted for the 2020 SOCAN Songwriting Prize, and when its animated video arrived on July 1, 2020, she said: “I hope when people watch Thirteen, they feel moved to do their part in reversing white supremacy. I hope we can begin to see one another as equal, a dream I have always hoped could one day be a reality.”
The Academy’s Prism Prize citation describes the result exactly: a lyrically powerful track dealing with the historical legacy of slavery and the present-day racial dimensions of the prison industrial complex, its animated clip vividly bringing her words to life. On July 26, 2021, that clip was declared the Prism Prize Grand Prize winner. Mighty herself, asked to name the best song she has ever released, pointed back to this one and called it the most impactful of all her releases.
The Night At The Carlu, And What Followed
The Polaris gala on September 16, 2019 made the record’s place official: 13th Floor beat a nine-album shortlist that included Jessie Reyez, PUP, Shad and Snotty Nose Rez Kids, and the win came with the $50,000 prize. The firsts attached to it have not been repeated away: first hip hop artist to win the Polaris, first Black woman to win it, for a debut album released independently by an artist who had been releasing music since she was a teenager in Brampton, through the Flower City EP in 2017 and her years with the group The Sorority.
Heard now, 13th Floor holds up as the rare debut that arrived with its history already written into it, and then made more. Its follow-ups kept the standard: the Stock Exchange mixtape won a Juno in 2022, and Crying Crystals, revisited in our return to Crying Crystals, turned the same pen inward. Released on May 10, 2019, 13th Floor remains the floor Canadian hip hop was told did not exist, occupied, decorated and prize-winning.
