Last week (July 22), Canon returned to wax with a powerful new single titled “Hold Me Back,” a Derek Minor-produced effort that’s full of the confident, hard-hitting bars that the Chicago-bred emcee is known for:

“Keep lookin’ at me like I only rap, you gon’ hit the ceilin’, yeah, you told me that, that’s ’cause you want me on a date and showed me that, and now I get it, I know we’ve a home, he’s cap, respect it, man, and don’t ask for it, we can fast forward, I’m pullin’ a dump wit’ you dummies, right?”

“Hold Me Back” is accompanied by a matching visual courtesy of Ghxsty. While Minor doesn’t make an appearance in the clip, Canon more than holds his own, donning a ski mask while delivering his rhymes in what looks like a junkyard. He can also be spotted letting his aggressions out by taking a sledgehammer to a television.

Back in November, Canon teamed up with PoetiCS for the seven-song EP We Made It, which contained a couple of collaborations alongside KMO Shamaal and Xay Hill. Prior to that, he joined Minor and fellow Reflection Music Group cohort Bryon Juane for the 2019 compilation Whole Team Winning, complete with additional assists from Tony Tillman and Greg James.

In an interview with Rapzilla, Canon opened up about struggles with mental health during the worst months of the COVID-19 pandemic:

“The turning point for me was my sanity. I felt like I lost it … I felt like I had to get to a point to figure out why I was feeling this way. A lot of stuff happening in the world was driving me crazy and had me feeling like I was crazy. Had to get to a point where it was okay for me not to be ok.”

Check out “Hold Me Back” below.