Who Is twentythree? Meet the Toronto Rapper Reviving Club Music From the Underground

Whether it's listeners trying to escape modern life or those few who are simply emotionally underdeveloped, nostalgia is big business in contemporary rap.

Artists have taken note, borrowing the sounds, styles, and aesthetics of earlier eras. Enter Toronto rapper twentythree.

Despite coming from the city synonymous with moody atmospherics twentythree doesn't fit into the OVO Sound mold.

Instead, the drums across his catalog have the West Coast bounce that DJ Mustard immortalized in clubs during the 2010s with Tyga’s “Rack City” and Kid Ink’s “Show Me.”

Still, he puts his own spin on it, pairing them with hazy synths and melodic vocals that melt into the production, making songs like “Bite Me” and “Trust Nobody” suited for a smoke-filled afterparty, rather than a club. In fact, the the music video for “Queen St” shows just that, as he jumps around a hotel room with OF model Annie Martin, champagne in hand.

He just released his latest album, 6ix Pop, in late June, which sounds like a drug-infused bender through Toronto’s party scene, as he effortlessly melds EDM, jerk, and West Coast club music into a 9-track tape.

Complex sat down with the rapper to find out who is twentythree, the Toronto rapper reviving club music from the underground.

Amir Mohammad Ghonoodi, known as twentythree, was born in Iran but raised in Toronto.

His breakout “Queen St” is named after a street in his adopted hometown that’s bustling with nightlife; it’s where twentythree and his friends hung out before his music started blowing up.

His father got twentythree into music when he was still a child. “My dad was into hella rock like Metallica and Pink Floyd,” he tells Complex. “I took his guitar, and that's where it all started.”

Eventually, twentythree graduated from guitar to FL Studio, teaching himself how to make beats. As a teenager, he made beats for throughout the 2020s, producing for other rappers who leaned into the rage trend. He then met DMV-born producer SJR, who has credits with Trippie Redd and Destroy Lonely.

“We created a lot of shit together,” he says. This includes the eccentric DMV rap group Too Many Strikers, which was the breeding ground for multiple other underground talents like kuru, Dragnutz, and SlimeGetEm. After SJR had founded the group in 2023, twentythree was in it from the start.

“At some point I started making my own music because it was just more interesting to me, and it was easier and it made more sense,” he says.

After learning about his own creative capabilities, around early 2024, twentythree “fell in love with the process of making the music and then presenting it through videos and cover art.”

He has continued to hone his craft and architect his entire world, as he proudly puts it: “I make the beats… I make the song and then I direct the [music] videos and I edit them.” His creative vision across the videos is consistent as he pairs his tracks with these jump-cut-heavy lo-fi videos like “Queen St” and “Movie,” where he flexes and spreads his Canadian dollars, posing with half-naked models while popping bottles.

Everything seems serendipitous, even his artist name, which he adopted by using the digits of his birthday—February 23.

Now he has formed a new group called Greezy Gang with fellow Toronto artist stopthis, and it also serves as the imprint for his album, 6ix Pop.

6ix Pop is a good sampler of twentythree's offerings, as his style borrows from and blends together the sounds of the internet. The drums knock on each track with the bouncy rhythms you could hear neo-jerk artists like xaviersobased rap over, as on "Too Greezy."

On songs like "Movie" and "COUPLE MS," the synths and instrumentals take inspiration from the colorful world of digicore, with glitchy textures reminiscent of 2hollis' star. The vocals are more in the emo-rap lane as he toes the line between singing and rapping. Like much of the underground, his songs have rough mixes where you can feel the vocals rattle with each bass hit, giving tracks like "So Sorry" and "Bimbo" a grimier feel.

The eureka moment for his sound came when he recorded "Trust Nobody" back in August 2025, which feels like the prelude to "Queen St," with its drum pattern and whacky industrial synth melody. Even though it became a club record, that was not the atmosphere it was made in.

"I was having a bad day. I was kind of hungover and kind of depressed," he says. "I did not want to make a song, [but] I was going to the studio. I always force myself to make music because I was like, you never know, this might be the one. And then I made ['Trust Nobody']. I didn't like it at all, but [then] I started loving it. And then that song just became the blueprint for my sound."

twentythree's influences mirror those of many Gen Z artists, as he rattles off 2010s pop icons like Justin Bieber, Rihanna, and Britney Spears. He even crowned "No Pressure" as his favorite Justin Bieber song—at least "right now."

Similar to his venture into solo music, his breakout track came together serendipitously. He says he cooked up the “Queen St” beat at “like 1 a.m. or some shit.” The next morning, he woke up, “was excited to get on it,” and proceeded to record the entire song.

After listening back, he said he “didn't love it” and was on the fence about releasing it. He played it for some friends, who felt the opposite. “Everyone was just telling me to drop it,” he says.

He eventually released it on November 11, 2025 and it took his career to the next level.

Drake gave him a follow on Instagram this past May. “He’s the GOAT,” twentythree says. “I fuck with Drake because he kept his composure throughout his career, made great music, and made that his priority.”

Throughout 6ix Pop, you can hear the "6ix" tag that Drake coined on If You're Reading This It's Too Late, and twentythree was “trolling,” when he first used the tag in the studio with friends, but then it stuck. “We wanted to kinda stamp our shit and show people we're from Toronto,” he says. Now the tag is scattered across the album, including a song named “6ix God”

twentythree confirms he has yet to speak with Drake, but appreciates the love.

twentythree and friend and producer SJ go back and forth about whether their unreleased collaboration with fakemink counts as a real collab. “There was some work with fakemink, but I just don't think it's ever coming out,” SJ says, referring to a remix of a track.

“Well, that doesn't count. It just wasn't working together,” twentythree replies, revealing his standard for actual collaboration. The two are cool with mink even bringing out twentythree in his home of Toronto to perform “Queen St”. If everything lines up, twentythree is open to getting in the studio with him.

The Toronto artist already has his eyes set on his next project. “I'm excited for my album at the end of the year… a real album with a lot of songs,” he says. He mentions the usual goals—performing more shows and dropping singles leading up to the release—but also emphasizes a more personal one: becoming a better artist. “I still think I'm not as good as I want to be, so I would say I'm not even there yet,” he says.

When I ask what he wants to improve, he replies, “creating art.”