Canadian hip-hop got huge without help. It shouldn't have had to, say artists

Growing up in London, Ont., Shadrach Kabango didn't see his future.

The problem wasn't an inability to see any future. Talented as a child, he was already obsessed with music, consuming and writing rap and even playing guitar since his high school days in the '90s.

But in his mind at the time, that passion could never lead where it eventually did: the Peabody, Emmy and Juno Awards that now sit in a basement, the international shows, even seeing the name he'd become best known for plastered across more Polaris-shortlisted albums than any artist in history Shad.

"Not just unlikely," he said, "impossible."

Riding that impossible success, Shad has gone on to have a nearly 20-year career in a genre that turns 50 today. But the reason he felt it was impossible in the first place does much to explain why, all these years later, hip-hop artists in Canada have struggled without resources or recognition, despite consistently producing some of the genre's best artists since almost immediately after its invention at a Bronx house party on Aug. 11, 1973.

Coming years after the international success of Canadian artists like Michie Mee, Choclair, Kardinal Offishall, Maestro Fresh Wes and Dream Warriors, Shad's major hurdle may seem strange for a community that had by then already proven its cred.

It wasn't a lack of similar stars to point to, or parents against a career in the arts. For him, it was a much more realistic problem: though it was located just 200 kilometres southwest of Toronto, London didn't have any beat machines or engineers to work them a necessary component of any rap track.

After winning a $17,500 cash prize in an unsigned-artist talent show, Shad was able to fund his self-released debut, When This Is Over. But that simple equipment shortage was just part of a broader lack of infrastructure supporting hip-hop artists, stretching from the genre's inception to present day.

"I was like, 'I'm just gonna have to get my music out some other way.' Because I just didn't see how it could be beyond campus radio," he said. "I didn't see how, like, commercial radio could be a vehicle for my music."

Lack of hip-hop radio

Shad wasn't alone. For decades, that was the biggest stumbling block Canadian hip-hop musicians faced: a lack of radio play and platforms to celebrate and share the music.

While that was a nearly insurmountable hurdle to artists of the past, even today Vancouver lacks a dedicated commercial hip-hop station. The "prevailing opinion," according to a Vancouver is Awesome article, being that there isn't enough Canadian content to fill the airwaves, a requirement of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission.

A similar issue exists in Montreal, which also lacks a commercial hip-hop station. Speaking to the Montreal Gazette, radio host Don Smooth said the reason is a belief from traditional advertisers that hip-hop fans in the province are not a worthwhile market.

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Were a speck of French in an ocean of English, says the Canadian hip-hop artist, who stresses the importance of keeping linguistic diversity alive in Quebec's rap and hip-hop scene.

But that excuse existed in direct contradiction to Toronto's Flow 93.5FM, a hip-hop station that served the city for more than 20 years as Canada's first Black-owned radio station until it was unceremoniously merged with another last year, in what music execs in a Toronto Star article described as a loss for Black culture.

Created by the Jamaican-born businessman and civil-rights activist Denham Jolly, Flow 93.5FM helped numerous Canadian artists get their starts it was famously the first station to play Drake's music.

But launching it took a 12-year battle with the CRTC the agency initially denied the request to create a station servicing and highlighting Black music, instead favouring a new country music station.

According to the Globe and Mail, the CRTC's chairman at the time strongly dissented with the decision to award the licence to a country station, noting that "the allocation of scarce FM radio frequencies for an audience already servedcan only deprive groups who already feel alienated from the mainstream of Canadian society."

Globally competitive

While some of that thinking has begun to change, University of Toronto assistant professor of music and culture Mark V. Campbell explained it was indicative of a long-running refusal by Canadian institutions to support the genre or even recognize it as something more than a fad.

"It took time for the gatekeepers in Canada to think about their creative and cultural industries in a globally competitive way," he said, "rather than a sort of a naval gazing Canadian kind of way.

That resulted in many rappers leaving the country to find fame stretching all the way back to Michie Mee becoming the first Canadian hip-hop artist to be signed to an American label in 1988, onward to Drake signing with Lil Wayne's Young Money in 2009.

Canadian artists making it big outside the country before finding acclaim at home is a phenomenon that continues today. Vancouver's bbno$ found enormous success in China near the beginning of his career in 2018, though at the time he said if he'd staged a show in Vancouver "maybe 100 people would show up."

Campbell similarly pointed to Canadian R&B singer Daniel Caesar selling out shows in Australia around the same time, with comparatively little support, demand or attention in Canada.

"We have 37 million people here, and our artists are able to go overseas and find ways to continue their livelihood when there isn't the kind of support needed to cultivate their art forms," Campbell said. "Especially when they're art forms that aren't celebrated by the mainstream establishment."

Canada's 'pattern of erasure'

Francesca D'Amico-Cuthbert, chief research officer at New York's Hip Hop Education Centerand a professor at York University, said that long-running failure stems from systemic issues in Canada.

She says there's long been an unwillingness to perceive Black culture, and therefore Black music, as inherently Canadian. This reluctance can mean that there's a lack of investment and documentation for musicians who succeed in the genre.

One of the problems, D'Amico-Cuthbert said, is "the ways in which the histories of Canada are recorded."

The challenge here is a pattern of erasure, she said, "for reasons that are obvious to researchers and perhaps not as obvious to the public. And [those reasons] have to do deeply with patterns of anti-Black racism in the country."

To combat that, hip-hop artists in Canada have had to work around traditional avenues for promotion and production.

D'Amico-Cuthbert pointed to Much Music's show RapCity as one example. Created by Conestoga College graduate Michele Geister, it was the country's first program focused on hip-hop that allowed artists in the genre to find recognition in Canada, while also helping to elevate them to a level where they could go on to dominate international charts.

Similarly, pioneers like DJ Ron Nelson and DJX used campus radio to promote and nurture young hip-hop artists.

That spirit continues today, with artists like Akintoye, Connor Price and Freddie Dredd finding massive success on online platforms like TikTok largely bypassing the need for industry acceptance.

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While the universal nature of the internet lowers the bar for who can participate, Shad sees other concerns. While hip-hop can be created from anywhere now, he worries that the continued lack of recognition paired with ballooning costs in cities where hip-hop is most often made could keep those grassroots communities from forming.

"Things evolve and they change," he said, "but those are things that I feel like are much more difficult now, sadly, than when I started."