The tradition & historical record
6 min read · 2 sourcesThe Canadian hip-hop scene was established in the 1980s. Through a variety of factors, it developed much slower than Canada's popular rock music scene, and apart from a short-lived burst of mainstream popularity from 1989 to 1991, it remained largely an underground phenomenon until the early 2000s. Canada's multicultural and multilingual fabric has given rise to various subgenres, including Indigenous, French, and Punjabi Canadian hip hop. Also notable is the influence of Caribbean rhythms in creating a sound unique to Toronto. In the early 1990s, Canadian hip hop artists like Maestro Fresh-Wes, Main Source, and Dream Warriors were popular in the underground hip hop scene. In 1998, the collaborative single "Northern Touch" brought hip hop back into the Canadian mainstream. Since the 2000s, Canadian hip hop saw a rise to mainstream success led by Drake, and to a lesser extent Kardinal Offishall, Tory Lanez, and Nav. Backxwash a Zambian-Canadian rapper and producer is known for a unique, heavy-metal-infused horrorcore sound. 1
Early 1980s
Canada had hip-hop artists right from the early days of the scene—the first known Canadian rap single, Mr. Q's "Ladies' Delight", was released in 1979 just a few weeks after The Sugarhill Gang's historic "Rapper's Delight", and the first French rap single, Lucien Francœur's "Le Rap-à-Billy", was released in 1983. For the most part, however, the infrastructure was not there to get most artists' music to the record-buying public; even "Ladies' Delight" was overlooked by Canadian music historians for many years, instead media and reference works erroneously credited Singing Fools' "The Bum Rap", which was released three years later in 1982, as the first Canadian rap single. 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. He was also featured on Rap the Night Away, a 1981 album by Bobby Boyer and Demo Cates which has been credited as the first full-length Canadian hip hop album. 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. 1