Everything But The Weed

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Linda Maze, a Wedding photography Gainesville FL in Gainesville Florida

Though not usually recognized as a mecca of good hip hop music, there’s been a recent boom during the past few years of highly proficient and recognizable Canadian hiphop artists. The hip hop scene first hit Canada in the 1980s. Rock music was the present category at the time and hip hop had a suppressed beginning. It remained an underground phenomenon till the 21st century.

In 2k, the CRTC awarded an FM station to Milestone Radio. This same year. HipHopCanada.com was also launched, becoming Canada’s biggest rap and hip-hop website publications. The CBC also created a television series called Drop the Beat. The entire series was devoted the hip-hop music as well as the existing cutlure. A year later Canada got its first urban music radio station, Flow 93.5 which soon started a trend in other cities. This permitted for a huge outlet for Canadian hiphop artists. This spawned an entire slew of mainstream hip-hop artists from Canada like Drake, OK Cobra, Classified, Buck 65, Shad, Kardinal Offishall, and others. The advent of satellite radio was also a blessing. The satellite radio network Bande created a compilation album called 93 tours which featured unsigned hiphop artists from Quebec.

As years passed lots of the radio pioneers such as Flow 93.5 changed formats. They no longer bill themselves as pure urban stations but have branched out to more up to date classes of music. The Canadian hip hop scene to this day is still struggling despite some widely known artists gaining notability. Radio stations are focusing their efforts on artists with more mainstream and crossover appeal, which makes hot hip-hop artists’ probabilities of recognition even slimmer. This in some measure has to do with the far smaller black community that is in Canada. An indie hip hop artist cannot solely depend on the black community for support but must branch out and find crossover appeal so as to launch a successful career.

There also are stereotypes at play that makes it difficult for struggling hip-hop artists. Canada, to many is viewed as the land of snow and igloos. Not the troublesome, street toughened image many American hip hop artists enjoy. The first time a Canadian hip hop artists made it huge in the U. S. was Kardinal Offishall’s 2008 release of ‘Dangerous’ in partnership with American rap star Akon. Arguably famous Canadian hip-hop artist Drake reached the number 2 spot on the hot 100 with is single “Best I Ever Had”. This has been the most notable single for a Canadian artist in the united states so far.

The Canadian hip hope scene still has an up hill battle but has come a long way in a relatively short period of time. Hopefully, with the continued success of artists such as Drake and Kardinal Offishall, unsigned hip hop artists will have an improved chance of launching a successful career.

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