When Maestro Fresh Wes moved to Saint John, N.B., it was such a big deal that multiple news outlets ran stories about it.

With headlines like “Maestro Fresh Wes loving Maritime life since move to Saint John” by CBC, and “Award-winning musician Maestro Fresh Wes ‘drops the needle’ on Saint John” by Global TV, journalists echoed the city’s excitement: the Godfather of Canadian Hip-Hop was now a Johner.

Toronto born and raised
Until October 2020, Maestro Fresh Wes had spent the bulk of his life in Toronto. He was born and raised in the city as Wesley (Wes) Williams, and it’s where his career began. He fell in love with hip-hop at 11 and was making demo tapes by 15 while attending high school.

He worked part time as security at Parkway Mall in Scarborough while trying to get his career underway. While there, he says, he wrote two songs: “I’m Showin’ You” and the earworm hit that changed everything for him: “Let Your Backbone Slide.”

Those two songs ended up on his debut album, Symphony in Effect, which experts regard as one of the most influential albums in Canadian music. The first single, “Let Your Backbone Slide,” was released in 1989 and was a smash hit. It made Maestro the first Canadian hip-hop artist to have a gold single, and still plays in clubs across the country.

“He’s a legend, he’s the OG, he’s very important to anybody in hip-hop (in Canada),” says Stephen Hero, a Saint John-based hip-hop artist and frequent collaborator. “As someone that grew up listening to hip-hop, I always had immense respect for him.”

As Maestro’s career took off, he continued to write and record, and the city of Toronto was always central to his music. His fifth album, Built to Last, included the hit singles “Stick to Your Vision” and “416/905 (T.O. Party Anthem),” both of which featured hyper-local lyrics. His career also expanded to writing and acting. He wrote his first book in 2010, and had a supporting role in the HBO Canada show The Line.

Then, the world turned upside down, and he decided to leave the city that built him.

A pandemic shift
Maestro made the surprising move in October 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. His son Chance’s mother has family in Saint John, so they moved out East to coparent more smoothly. When he arrived, he quarantined for the mandatory two weeks and then got to work.

“I said to myself, ‘If I’m going to be a part of the Atlantic bubble, there’s going to be trouble,’” he jokes.

His son’s mother connected him with a few people at 97.3 The Wave, a radio station in Uptown Saint John, and before long, he was on the air every Friday evening with the show Maestro in the Maritimes, spinning East Coast music and telling stories.

“It was great because it showed that even though we are in lockdown, I felt great that I’m inspiring the city,” he says. “I’m doing something that is making people feel, and forget about the restrictions that we’re going through, you know?”

A few months in, he was interviewed for the music podcast Strange Grooves, where he met Stephen Hero, and the two musicians instantly connected.

“I know his career and I know hip-hop history and stuff, so we got along pretty much right away,” Hero says. “Then he asked me to rap for him after he recorded the interview, so I rapped for him and he liked that, so we went out and got a meal, and we’ve been friends ever since.”

Hero introduced Maestro to other artists in the local hip-hop scene, and Maestro started playing them on his show. That developed into performing with Saint John artists as a guest, which morphed into recording entire albums at Hero’s home studio.

“People do seem to think that there’s not much going on out here, which isn’t really true,” says Hero. “(Maestro’s) presence here and his interest in the scene here and enthusiasm about it is a much-needed boost to the whole scene, and you can feel it.”

The rebirth of a career
For Maestro, the change in location signalled a larger shift in opportunities.

From the radio show, he went on to tour his children’s book, Stick to Your Vision: Young Maestro Goes to School, in schools around the province, and has recorded an EP and two LPs to accompany the book.

Once it became known that Maestro was an East Coaster, opportunities started pouring in. He was the host of Race Against the Tide, a CBC reality show about sand artists battling to create the best sculptures before the tide washes them away, for seasons two and three. In 2022, he hosted the East Coast Music Awards in Fredericton, and was the voice of the Memorial Cup for the Saint John Sea Dogs, the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League team in Saint John.

In fact, he did some of the voiceover work for the Sea Dogs when he was back in Toronto visiting and the people working with him were joking about Hamilton winning the cup.

“I looked at both of them, and I said, ‘Listen, I’ve lived in Saint John long enough that I find your comments to be offensive.’” he says. “And then they both looked at me and realized, ‘Oh my goodness, Maestro Fresh Wes lives in Saint John now!’”

From there, he created his own cooking show, Maestro Chef Wes. That show is now going into production of its second season, and features East Coast food and music.

The accolades keep coming for Maestro. In March of this year, he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, the first hip-hop artist to receive this honour, and also performed at the 2024 Junos, held in Halifax.          

And he’s gearing up for an even greater award: it was recently announced that he will be receiving the Governor General’s Award for Lifetime Achievement this year, one of the biggest awards an artist can receive in Canada. Obviously, moving to Saint John hasn’t negatively impacted his career.

East Coast life
In the three years since the move, Maestro has wholeheartedly thrown himself into the community. He spent the bulk of his time volunteering at the North End community centre and coaching his son’s football teams. 

Throughout our interview, I try to guide him towards talking about his achievements, but all he wants to talk about is his son, who is now in Grade 10. The move was rough on him at first, he said, because he had to leave all his friends in Toronto, but Maestro promised him he’d be back in the city to visit his friends in the summer.

“The day we landed was the exact same day his school in Toronto was having their graduation,” Maestro says. “We made sure we had him in a suit, so as soon as we got off the plane, we got an Uber, straight to the graduation.”

“When he walked through the door, his friends and his former classmates bugged out, they were like, ‘Oh my goodness, Chance, you grew, man, you grew. You’re so big and tall.’ and that was one of my most proud dad moments.”

It doesn’t seem like he has done what would be so easy to do: work in Toronto but live in Saint John, living only half a life. During our interview, he mentions chatting with the mayor, becoming friends with the lady that owns the Uptown hat store, and repping the Saint John hockey teams.

Maestro uses niche local terms for New Brunswick places, calling Fredericton “Freddy Beach,” and complains about having to drive all the way to the city’s east side (a 10-minute drive max) for his son to watch a game.

“He’s found people here to work with, and he keeps meeting new people and building his community around him and building his work relationships,” Hero says. “So, to me it’s like, you know, Maestro, he’s a … Johner for sure.”