BIGSONG:
Navraj Singh Goraya (born November 3, 1989), known professionally as Nav, is a Canadian rapper and record producer. Nav originally began his career as a producer, co-producing fellow Canadian rapper Drake’s single, “Back to Back”, in 2015. He then gained mainstream attention in 2016 when his song “Myself” went viral on SoundCloud. Nav is signed to Canadian singer the Weeknd’s record label XO and its parent label, Republic Records, and is managed by XO managers Amir “Cash” Esmailian and Wassim “Sal” Slaiby.
In 2017, Nav released his self-titled debut mixtape and his collaborative mixtape with Metro Boomin, Perfect Timing. He released his debut studio album, Reckless, in 2018. He then released his second studio album, Bad Habits (2019), which debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200. In 2020, Nav released his highest-charting song as a lead artist, “Turks”, with Gunna featuring Travis Scott, which debuted and peaked at number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100. It serves as the lead single to his third studio album, Good Intentions (2020), which was released later and then became his second number-one album on the US Billboard 200. Soon, he released its deluxe edition titled Brown Boy 2 (2020), which is also a sequel of his unofficial EP titled Brown Boy (2019), which Cash published on Audiomack a week before Bad Habits. He then earned his highest-charting song in total from his feature on Internet Money, Gunna, and Don Toliver’s single, “Lemonade”, which eventually reached at number six on the Hot 100. He released his commercial mixtape, Emergency Tsunami, in late 2020. Nav released his fourth studio album, Demons Protected by Angels, in fall 2022. He is set to release his third commercial mixtape, Nav2, a sequel to his self-titled project, sometime in 2023.
Early life
Navraj Singh Goraya was born on November 3, 1989, in Toronto, Ontario, into an immigrant Punjabi Jat Sikh family, from Punjab, India. He was raised in the Rexdale neighbourhood. His mother was involved in computer manufacturing and his father operated a forklift. Nav first became interested in music after his mother bought him a boombox in the third grade. His uncle was also a popular Punjabi singer in India and brought him to a studio. He began making mash-ups in high school and producing beats for local underground Toronto artists, and became popular on SoundCloud. Nav first started producing using Sony’s ACID Pro software. He attended West Humber Junior Middle School and then later attended Thistletown Collegiate Institute for his high school education and had to spend an additional year to graduate. Following high school, he attended and graduated from Metalworks Institute in Mississauga, Ontario in 2010 with a diploma in Audio Production and Engineering.
