Downtown backdrop for Deadly Cycle

Stop doing drugs is the message in local hip hop artist Stefan Zaurrini’s new single.

The 22-year-old graduate of Maple Ridge secondary has been watching the ongoing drug problem in Maple Ridge and the fatal results of the ongoing fentanyl crisis and decided to deliver his own message, online.

His new song is called Deadly Cycle and he recently shot the video for it on the streets of downtown Maple Ridge.

“I don’t have any experiences myself, but I’ve seen people around me have really bad problems with drugs,” said the rapper, who goes by the name Kontagious Thoughts.

“Friends and family have been pretty bad with [drugs],” Zaurrini continued.

He has been rapping for the last seven years and pursues his passion for the music genre in his spare time after work.

His influences include Tupac Shakur, who went by the stage name 2Pac, Christopher George Latore Wallace, who was better known by his stage names, The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie, Christopher Lee Rios, who was known as Big Pun, short for Big Punisher and Lamont ‘Big L’ Coleman.

Zaurrini’s first single, released on YouTube, is called Rising From the Underground. It is about his own coming-up as an artist.

“It’s as if I’m in the underground and nobody knows me, but this is where I rise. Get somewhere with this. Flourish. Get known,” said Zaurrini, adding that it doesn’t necessarily mean fame.

What Zaurrini likes about his new song is the “realness” of the lyrics.

“Looking for prescription tablets in the kitchen cabinet/Families get torn but they can’t restitch the fabric,” go some of the lyrics.

Zaurrini says that even the drugs in our own homes are a problem.

Zaurrini didn’t know how people would react to his song because, he says, popular music seems to glamorize drugs. But so far reaction to his song has been positive.

The chorus goes: “Escape the deadly cycle/Shake this bad habit/Before you even know it/It could turn you to an addict.”