Toronto the New Hotbed of Hip hop Talent?
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| Drake arriving @ the 40th annual Junos |
Toronto’s own hip hop heavy weight Drake hosted the 40th annual Juno awards recently in Toronto.. Drake has become a hip hop phenomenon selling 450,000 copies of his debut album Thank Me Later in the first week. He has had one of the most successful launches in hip hop history, and he is ours. This has American producers and record labels flocking to Canada to find the next superstar and Toronto is not disappointing them Canada has recently started to take notice as well, and efforts have begun to revamp our hip hop scene. Much Music re-launched their hip hop focused show Rap City[i] in mid January, last month the CBC held a hip hop summit in Downtown Toronto to address our growing hip hop community. Toronto also has several urban focused magazines such as Sway, and Urbanology, that showcase our urban culture. Hip hop is not new to Toronto culture, in fact hip hop has flourished here since the early 90’s, with artists like Maestro, The Dream Warriors, and Kardinal Offishal. These artists along with others are responsible for giving Toronto a distinct sound, different from our American counterparts, but complimentary none the less. Toronto is the centre of hip hop culture in Canada, the streets of the city are filled with rappers and producers who want a chance to showcase their talent and rep for the city.
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| 3 60O and P, of 20 B LO |
Rap group 20 B LO are local celebrities of the Toronto hip hop scene, as well as veterans having spent the last 10 years making, promoting, and performing their music throughout the province. 3 60 0 founding member of 20 B LO is “looking forward to progress of Canadian hip hop on the global stage” and is proud of the up and coming rappers from our city. He sees hip hop in Canada over the next five years becoming “progressive and respected”. Although he has much praise for the rebirth of Rap City he does point out the disconnection between media platforms ,as well as venues. “There isn’t one spot that is known for artists to go and have a good hip hop show, right now its where ever we can book a spot” and this lack of support is detrimental to the success of our struggling artists. 3 60 notes that the city needs to show more support as well, “we wait for outside praise before we support (local hip hop).” When asked about outlets for their music he pointed out the recent reformatting at Flow 93.5, which saw all their urban and hip hop shows cancelled, “we make a step in the right direction with the new Rap City and take two steps back with the loss of radio shows like OTA Live and the Real Frequency” As an artist who has submitted music successfully to Flow 3 60 understands the importance of radio in launching an artists career. With the loss of the urbanality and push towards dance friendly music at Flow where do local rappers go to showcase their talents?
University and College campuses are now the Mecca for local hip hop. Our own (UTSC) campushas become an outlet and platform for Canadian hip hop. At the Cultural Mosaic held on March 25th local rapper, producer and dancer Justice Beats performed his original music.
Justice Beats believes that Hip hop in Toronto is “alive and thriving, a lot of people may not know it, but there are a lot of good artists out here.” Hedescribes hip hop in Toronto as a "seed that was planted 5years ago and is just starting to spread.” He also noted the situation at Flow at went as far as to say “commercial radio is dead” and urged artist to find other avenues and outlets for their talents, like Fusion Radio our campus’ internet based community station as well as social media and hip hop websites.
Recently World Star Hip Hop a controversial hip hop website launched their Canadian webpage http://worldstarhiphopcanada.com/ because they want to capitalize on the ever growing Canadian Hip hop market. Itunes features songs and albums by Canadian artists weekly. Our own home grown hip hop website Hip Hop Canada .com[ii] has become the official website for hip hop culture in Canada, with daily features, articles, music and event promotions it is onestop shopping for everything you need to be immersed in Canadian hip hop.
As the most diverse city on earth, Toronto stands to be on the forefront of many trends because our citizens our so culturally diverse. Our deep ties to the Caribbean have been evident in our hip hop music for many years and the cultural diversity in our music will only continue to grow and be accepted by the world. Some websites to checkout for Canadian artists and the links to the artists featured here:
[i] http://www.muchmusic.com/music/rapcity/ [ii] http://www.hiphopcanada.com/
