Canadian hip hop

In addition to "Ladies Delight", Mr. Q (Jay McGee) released a handful of other rap singles through the last several months of 1979; one, "Party Rapp", included lyrics about the 1979 Mississauga train derailment.[1] He was also featured on Rap the Night Away,[1] a 1981 album by Bobby Boyer and Demo Cates which has been credited as the first full-length Canadian hip hop album.[5]

Toronto's CKLN-FM was an early supporter of the genre, with Ron Nelson launching Canada's first hip hop program, The Fantastic Voyage, in 1983.[6]

Artists such as Devon, Maestro Fresh-Wes and Dream Warriors did briefly manage to break into the mainstream in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1989, Maestro's first single, "Let Your Backbone Slide", was the first Canadian hip-hop single to break into the national Top 40, and the first to make the Billboard charts in the United States.[7] It remained the bestselling Canadian hip hop single of all time until 2008. Other notable rap singles of this era include Maestro's "Drop the Needle", Devon's "Mr. Metro", Dream Warriors' "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style" and "Wash Your Face in My Sink", Ground Control's "Another Dope Jam", MCJ and Cool G's "No Sex With My Sister" and "So Listen", and Kish's "I Rhyme the World in 80 Days".[8]

In 1988 Michie Mee became the first Canadian rapper to sign a deal with a US record label. This action did not result in significant chart success for her—she has asserted in interviews that the reggae influences on her 1991 debut album Jamaican Funk—Canadian Style were met with resistance from US label executives and radio programmers.[9]

The Toronto/New York-based hip-hop group Main Source released their classic debut album Breaking Atoms, in 1991, which featured the debut of a young Nas before his rise in popularity. Rap also began to surface in Canadian mainstream pop in the early 1990s with rapper Frankie Fudge performing a rap break in Celine Dion's 1990 single "Unison" and female R&B duo Love and Sas rapping in their 1991 single "I Don't Need Yo' Kiss".

An important influence for the development of hip hop in Toronto was Ron Nelson and his Fantastic Voyage radio show which aired Saturday afternoons on CKLN-FM from 1983 to 1991. Fantastic Voyage was the first exposure many youths had to the hip hop genre and provided the first airplay for many Toronto artists including Maestro Fresh Wes, Michie Mee, Rumble & Strong, Get Loose Crew, Simply Majestic and the Dream Warriors. Nelson was also an early hip hop concert promoter, organizing the first major hip hop concert in Canada at Varsity Stadium in 1987 featuring Run DMC, Public Enemy and EPMD, and provided exposure for local artists at venues such as the Concert Hall, the Spectrum, and the Party Centre.[10][11][12] In addition, Nelson helped set up events in Toronto that drew in well-known US hip hop acts, such as Big Daddy Kane and Run DMC.[13]

The first urban-radio show in British Columbia was 'Soul Sonic Shocks' in 1987 hosted by Bay-Area native DJ Maximus Clean.[14] Vancouver's first all-rap radio show, In Effect, was launched in 1989 by Niel Scobie on CITR-FM.[15]

In 1990, Denham Jolly's company Milestone Radio applied to the CRTC for an urban music station in Toronto, which would have been the first such station in Canada, but that application was denied in favour of a country music station—which Toronto already had on its radio dial.[16]

The decision was controversial, and hurt the Canadian hip hop scene considerably. Hip-hop and R&B fans in Toronto relied on Buffalo, New York's WBLK, an US station with no Canadian content responsibilities, while other Canadian cities often had no access to any urban music radio stations at all. After 1992, Michie Mee was the only Canadian rapper to make an appearance on the national pop charts until 1998—and even she didn't accomplish the feat with a hip hop song, but by partnering with the alternative rock band Raggadeath for 1995's "One Life".

Sol Guy, a hip hop promoter with Figure IV Entertainment, said in 1999 that

"...after "My Definition", nothing happened for two years. No labels were signing, or trying to sign, anything. Nobody was getting a shot. Radio disappeared with Wes and the Dream Warriors and it still hasn't come back."[17]

A special collaborative single, "Can't Repress the Cause", was released under the name Dance Appeal to advocate for greater inclusion of hip hop in the mainstream of Canadian music.[18] Participating artists included Devon, Maestro Fresh Wes, Dream Warriors, B-Kool, Michie Mee, Lillian Allen, Eria Fachin, HDV, Dionne, Thando Hyman, Carla Marshall, Messenjah, Jillian Mendez, Lorraine Scott, Lorraine Segato, Self Defense, Leroy Sibbles, Zama and Thyron Lee White.

Ottawa-based hip-hop group Organized Rhyme, which featured a young Tom Green before his rise to fame, had some success on MuchMusic with "Check the O.R." in 1993, but did not receive widespread radio airplay or reach the RPM charts. Maestro Fresh-Wes, who moved to New York City in 1992 and attempted to break into the US market with the albums Maestro Zone and Naaah, Dis Kid Can't Be from Canada?!!, found his career faltering in this era. Snow, who had a number one Billboard hit in 1993 with "Informer", is sometimes mistakenly labelled a rapper, but in fact his style was more accurately described as dancehall, a style of reggae, than as hip hop.

Many US hip hop artists were popular in Canada,[8] and Black Canadian musicians such as Infidels, Deborah Cox and The Philosopher Kings had notable successes in the R&B, pop and rock genres; however, even the most prominent Canadian hip hop acts during this era, including Ghetto Concept, Rascalz, Farm Fresh, TBTBT, Graphidi Logik and Hip Club Groove, struggled to gain any kind of commercial traction. Although Toronto-market radio stations CHOG and CING-FM began to include some Canadian hip hop songs in their contemporary hit radio formats, the hip hop audience in the city remained loyal to WBLK—and for most artists the only venues available for reaching an audience anywhere outside of the Greater Toronto Area were campus radio and MuchMusic's RapCity and X-Tendamix.[8]

That began to change in 1996, when the Urban Music Association of Canada was formed to build the domestic and international profile of Canadian urban music. The following year, Dubmatique broke through as the first Quebec rap band to top Canada's francophone pop charts, and some controversy erupted in Toronto when Milestone was again passed over for an urban radio station on its second application. Instead, the CBC was awarded 99.1 to move its existing Radio One station, CBLA, from the AM band—and, ominously, this was believed at the time to be the last available FM frequency in the city. The CRTC decision was not met with as much uproar as there had been in 1990, because the ruling was not seen as much of a shock; indeed, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the CBC would receive the frequency.

The most notable Canadian hip hop album during this era, Rap Essentials Volume One, was a compilation which featured the debut singles of both Kardinal Offishall and Choclair.

However, 1998 proved to be a transformative year in the development of Canadian hip hop, as the Vancouver hip hop band Rascalz quite unexpectedly found themselves at the centre of a sequence of events which gave Canadian hip hop an unprecedented level of media attention, leading the Canadian music and broadcasting industries to make a number of structural changes which would ultimately give hip hop musicians a more stable and commercially visible platform going into the 21st century.

First, Rascalz won the Juno Award for Best Rap Recording for their 1997 album Cash Crop. Because of Canadian hip hop's lack of commercial visibility, the award was presented during the non-televised portion of the ceremony, along with the technical awards, rather than at the televised main gala. The band had not yet arrived at the ceremony when the award was announced—when they did arrive, they were simply pulled aside and told that they had won the award.[19]

Alleging that racism was a factor in the award's scheduling, the band refused to accept the award.[17] Speaking to the press afterward, the group and their co-manager said that

In view of the lack of real inclusion of black music in this ceremony, this feels like a token gesture towards honoring the real impact of urban music in Canada. Urban music, reggae, R&B, and rap, that's all black music, and it's not represented [at the Junos]. We decided that until it is, we were going to take a stance.[19]

For several weeks cultural critics and hip hop musicians debated the issue in the press—some suggested, in fact, that the hip hop award's lack of visibility could be seen as not just a result of Canadian hip hop's poor commercial performance, but also a contributing factor.

Soon afterward, Rascalz released "Northern Touch", a collaboration with emerging rappers Checkmate, Kardinal Offishall, Thrust and Choclair. Originally recorded in 1997 for a compilation album that fell through and was never released, the band opted to release it as a standalone single in 1998.[20] It became a galvanizing statement of purpose for Canadian hip hop musicians and beat the odds to become the first Canadian hip hop hit since 1991.[21] Although the song just barely missed the national Top 40 charts, peaking at number 41 in RPM, it reached the Top 10 in most major markets, and was the first Canadian hip hop song to reach the Top 100 at all, and the first to garner widespread radio airplay both in Canada and internationally, since 1991.

Maestro Fresh-Wes, now known simply as Maestro, also broke his own hit jinx in 1998, with "Stick to Your Vision"—buoyed, in part, by a Guess Who sample—becoming his first Top 40 hit in seven years. Although he would not actually reach the Top 40 until 2001's "BaKardi Slang", Kardinal Offishall also made his first appearance as a solo artist in RPM's Top 100 in 1998, peaking at number 91 with "On wit da Show". Artists such as Choclair, Jelleestone and Saukrates were also beginning to make waves in the press, as the year's more dramatic events renewed attention on Canadian hip hop.

As a result of the Rascalz controversy, the Junos moved the Rap award to the main ceremony the following year. It was won by "Northern Touch". The participating artists performed the song live at the ceremony, the first time a hip hop group had ever performed live on the Juno stage.[22]

At the Juno Awards of 2018, the "Northern Touch All-Stars" were selected as presenters of the Rap award.[23] Winner Tory Lanez was not in attendance at the ceremony, and after accepting the award on his behalf, the group launched into an a cappella rendition of "Northern Touch" in lieu of the time that would otherwise have been taken by Lanez' acceptance speech. Although presented as an impromptu decision, CARAS president Allan Reid later admitted that he had encouraged the musicians to do it.[24]

On June 18, 1999, the CBC's Toronto station completed its move to FM. Because the FM frequency offered better broadcast coverage of the region, the CBC found that it was able to surrender two FM repeater transmitters serving communities outside of the city—thus opening two new frequencies for license applications. In response, the federal cabinet issued an Order in Council to the CRTC directing it to give precedence to applications that took into account Toronto's cultural and racial diversity,[25] effectively guaranteeing that Milestone would get a license in the new round of hearings.

On June 16, 2000, the CRTC awarded one of the frequencies to Milestone, on the company's third attempt.[26] The other frequency was awarded to Aboriginal Voices for a station to serve First Nations communities. At the beginning of this same year, the internet became home to Canada's largest rap/hip-hop website publication and community, HipHopCanada.

Also in 2000, the CBC created and aired Drop the Beat, a television series about hip hop music and culture which was billed as one of the first such series in the world.[27] The show starred Merwin Mondesir and Mark Taylor as the hosts of a hip hop show on a campus radio station; the cast also included Michie Mee, DJ Shamann and Kardinal Offishall. As a tie-in to help promote emerging hip hop musicians, the series released a soundtrack album in conjunction with the first season, featuring artists such as Maestro Fresh Wes, Infinite, Frankie Ano, Bahamadia, Ja Rule, Black Child, Choclair, Rahzel, Jully Black and Erykah Badu.[28]

Finally, in 2001, CFXJ (Flow 93.5) debuted as Canada's first urban music station. Urban stations quickly followed in several other Canadian cities, as well, and for the first time, Canadian hip hop artists had a network of radio outlets for their music—as well as numerous record labels committed to rectifying their past lack of interest in the genre. In the 2000s, numerous Canadian hip hop artists, including Kardinal Offishall, Drake, Classified, k-os, K'naan, Swollen Members, Sweatshop Union, Buck 65, Belly, Moka Only, Lil 808, Shad, Kyprios and Cadence Weapon, as well as many R&B artists, have emerged as mainstream stars. Cadence Weapon, in fact, was named poet laureate of Edmonton, Alberta in 2009.[29]

In addition to terrestrial radio, the national satellite radio networks CBC Radio 3 and Bande à part, which are both dedicated to Canadian independent music of any genre, also include numerous emerging hip hop artists in their playlists. Bande à part has produced a compilation album of unsigned Quebec hip hop artists, 93 tours, which it distributed as a free download from its website.[30] Several prominent contemporary hip hop artists, including Shad, Cadence Weapon, K'naan, Sweatshop Union, Radio Radio and Omnikrom, have in fact risen to prominence through these channels instead of through terrestrial radio.

Apart from a few major stars, however, the hip hop scene has faced continued struggle. Virtually all of the urban-format radio stations which debuted in the early 2000s, including Flow 93.5, have since shifted from a pure urban format to a rhythmic contemporary format. While the stations still play some hip hop, they now focus far more on artists who have already established crossover Top 40 appeal—meaning that emerging artists can no longer rely on the stations to help them build their audience. In 2010, further, Milestone announced a deal to sell Flow 93.5 to CHUM Radio, a division of the mainstream media conglomerate CTVglobemedia.[31] (Following another sale, Flow 93.5 is now owned by Newcap Broadcasting as of March 2014, and now airs a rhythmic adult contemporary format branded as "The Move".) However, a new radio station, CKFG-FM, was licensed to Toronto in 2011 as a community radio station authorized to broadcast a broad spectrum of African and Caribbean musical genres, including hip hop, reggae, soca and rhythm and blues.[32]

Canadian hip hop musicians have also continued to face obstacles when attempting to break into the American and international markets.[8] Music critics and journalists have sometimes attributed this to the perception, real or imagined, that stereotypes of Canada as a land of igloos and hosers get in the way of Canadian rappers being taken seriously.[9] As early as 1994, noted Canadian hip hop record producer Derek Brin was telling Billboard that "Americans like something that sounds American. From here, it seems if you don't have that sound, you ain't it."[8]

It wasn't until 2008, when Kardinal Offishall reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with a collaboration with established US star Akon, "Dangerous", that a Canadian rapper had a major chart hit in the United States. He was shortly followed by Drake, whose 2009 single "Best I Ever Had" reached number two on the Hot 100 and another major international breakthrough came in 2009 when a remixed version of K'naan's single "Wavin' Flag" was announced as the official Coca-Cola theme song of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.[33]

Toronto-based artist Drake has since dominated the Canadian hip-hop scene and beyond with his last eight albums/mixtapes and playlist peaking at number-one on the US Billboard 200 album chart; Thank Me Later (2010), Take Care (2011), Nothing Was the Same (2013), If You're Reading This It's Too Late (2015), What a Time to Be Alive (2015), Views (2016), More Life (2017), and Scorpion (2018). Drake's 2016 dancehall/afrobeats-infused single "One Dance" is the most successful Canadian hip-hop song of all-time, charting at number-one on the singles charts in 15 different countries, including the US and UK, making it the first Canadian hip-hop single to peak at number-one on the US Billboard Hot 100.[34] Drake had a large impact on Canadian hip hop, as after the Weeknd was involved in Take Care his popularity rose dramatically.[35]

Numerous other Canadian hip hop and R&B artists from the Greater Toronto Area, including the Weeknd, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Majid Jordan, Roy Woods, NAV, Dvsn, Killy, 88Glam, Pressa, Honey Cocaine, and Tory Lanez, have also attained wider international prominence in this era. Canadian entertainment company 6ixBuzz has also contributed to the popularity of numerous independently signed Canadian artists predominantly from Toronto. 6ixBuzz showcases Toronto's rap and hip-hop underground, and are recognised for bringing Toronto's hip hop culture to a global audience.[36] The company founders attribute the success of their online presence to the "lack of voice" of communities surrounding Canadian hip-hop culture.[37] The success of these artists, and the subsequent rise of hip hop artists in Toronto, was the feature of 2017 documentary 6ix Rising, produced by Noisey.