I’ve been meaning to write about Bizzarh since last week — actually wait, since sometime last year when I came across the local sing-rap duo’s rework of Erykah Badu’s “Bag Lady.” Internet trawling takes up a sizable portion of my day (yours too, okay? STFU) but it’s rare for something so context-less — they’re young and local and uncove — to give me real pause.

There was something here in this laidback, yet surely self-assured, interpolation. It could have been Charlie’s clipped, old school flow extolling “I am the shit, plus one” or singer Dollar Paris’s wah-wah-warbling, “One day, you gon’ say Bizzarh I’m your groupie.” It could also be their style, which is a pretty much a perfect combination of throwback fly girl meets one-of-a-kind meets Toronto girl. Probably though, it was Bizzarh’s ability to pull off an incredible homage to Soulquarians-era rap and R&B without seeming to sacrifice their own obscenely on-point identities.

Given Bizzarh’s affinity for Baduisms, and despite never having seen them live, they were the obvious suggestion when Rea McNamara inquired about performers for her bi-monthly Sheroes tribute party. Especially so, since the latest installment of Sheroes, held last Thursday at the Beaver, was in praise of the b-girl earth mother herself, Badu. Despite a brief speaker-related snag, Bizzarh — still relatively unseasoned performers — were unruffled and pulled off a short but intriguing set including, of course, their rendition of “Bag Lady.”

Back in December, the girl-children (17 and 18, the youngest members of vast art collective 88 Days of Fortune) put out their very first mixtape, The Cover Up. Over beats used by Nas, Skrillex and, duh, Badu, Bizzarh borrows the esoteric vibe of mid-’90s rap and ’00s neosoul as a vocal starting point to playfully explore more contemporary cues like dubstep and future funk (“Trips To The Café”) and experimental, Flying Lotus-y futurism (“Golden Girls”). For most of the tape, Charlie — who told me she wrote “Bag Lady” when she was 14 — takes the lead on rapping in a wizened, playful staccato, while Paris drops honeyed verses and frequently adlibs in back. Universal themes like love, friendship and acceptance are trafficked with poetic irreverence and teasing sensuality, while still implying a pseudo-feminist certitude. The Cover Up isn’t perfect, but it’s the obvious imperfection, the unselfconscious willingness to experiment that makes it an easy, persuasive listen.

Somehow, even in the alarmist production of Skrillex (“PVNCVKES”), Bizzarh manage to find a groove, and this is what’s so appealing about them. Indebted to their indicators — the unconventional side of black pop from J*Davey to Kid Cudi to Janelle Monae — Bizzarh culls all of that into something that’s unpretentious and uniquely theirs. So they’re reverential and referential without being imitative, which is impressive given their relative youth, but also because it implies an ability to take their raw talent in, really, any direction they choose. Keep watch.

Anupa Mistry writes regularly about music for Toronto Standard. Follow her on Twitter at @_anupa.

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