Toronto rap city

The GTA may be all about amalgamation, but its hip-hop communities remain divided and scattered

BY LIZZ MENDEZ BERRY

Citizen Kane's MC J-Spade is a bona fide Toronto b-boy -- he used to be a backup dancer for Michie Mee. But in an interview we did last year, this Scarborough native claimed he'd never heard of Ill-A-Mental, a downtown concert series that has been hailed by some Queen Street types as the saviour of Toronto hip-hop.

When I mentioned the series, and some of the folks who'd performed there, Spade replied, "I don't get into that jolly shit. You downtown people want to see the pretty groups. It's just too jolly for me. In Scarborough we're not as happy as you are downtown. We want to see the strugglers."

After a shooting at the downtown club the Big Bop a few years ago, promoters and clubs began to shy away from programming hip-hop concerts. But recently, downtown Toronto has experienced a resurgence of interest in hip-hop. It began with small but potent nights like Planet Mars, which attracted freestyle fiends from all over the city.

With events like the 416 Graffiti Expo and the Ill-A-Mental concert series, downtown hip-hop culture blossomed, as did the international "underground" hip-hop movement, which kept backpack-totin' young 'uns obsessed from coast to coast. Shunning "jiggy" trends, the somewhat stern rap underground prides itself on authenticity, valuing battle-ready lyricists, b-boys, turntablists and graff artists.

But J-Spade's lack of interest in Ill-A-Mental illustrates that the downtown underground scene is not necessarily in sync with what's going on in the rest of the city. In a recent phone interview with DJ Serious, a popular downtown DJ, I mentioned a local rapper called Jugganot, who hails from the Falstaff-and-Jane area. He hadn't heard of him. When I interviewed Jugganot, he wasn't sure if he'd heard of Serious, an almost ubiquitous presence at downtown parties. Clearly, there are strong regional distinctions between elements of Toronto's hip-hop scene.

DJ Grouch, a West End native and a member of Toronto's renowned Turnstylez crew, explains, "The crowds have changed from when I was going to parties back in the days. It's more suburban middle-class kids. The older urban kids are more likely to go to R&B parties or reggae parties. A lot of the suburban kids who go to events are expecting a show -- that hurts turntablists, because we just want to rock a party sometimes, and they don't dance."

But while downtown hipsters ogle DJs, natives of Toronto's marginalized neighbourhoods continue to make hip-hop on their own terms. Toronto's most famous hip-hop is pretty lighthearted -- from Maestro Fresh Wes' "Let Your Backbone Slide" to the Dream Warriors' "Wash Your Face in My Sink" and even Choclair's recent "Ice Cold" -- but there is a more hardcore element that has been bubbling under for years, typified by artists like Ghetto Concept, Jugganot and Citizen Kane.

Hardcore hip-hop brings up uncomfortable issues. As Canadians, we can listen to M.O.P. and Mobb Deep, safe in the knowledge that the gritty ghetto stories they tell refer to the squalor of U.S. housing projects. We can be shocked and appalled from a distance.

Says DJ Serious, "I really believe Toronto has the opportunity to make the best hip-hop in the world: there's such a richness of cultures we could harness. We could dominate internationally because of that. For a kid living in Toronto, there's really no ghettoes here, so there's nothing holding you down. The only thing holding you back is yourself."

It's true that the violent, economically crippled, ethnically homogeneous areas that typify some American inner cities don't exist in Toronto. Those are ghettoes: geographically isolated -- often hemmed in by highways -- with blocks of burned-out buildings, vacant lots and abandoned cars.

But Toronto, with its huge immigrant population, does have poverty and racism. Those ills manifest themselves in different ways than in the States, however. Because local hip-hop artists are certainly influenced by American acts, they are often seen as sensationalizing their own experiences of poverty to match those of U.S. ghetto dwellers.

When Rexdale's Ghetto Concept came out in '98 with lines like "Bring in the sawed off," many asked whether the grime was authentic. GC had made a palpable sonic switch from their jazzy mid-'90s Juno-winning songs, "E-Z on tha Motion" and "Certified," to a more raucous, American-style sound. Because of that musical transition, it was easy to dismiss their gun-slinging lyrical content as simply part of the new, Uncle Sam-itized Ghetto Concept.

Of course, that was the easy way out. Explains Grouch, "People front and think that it's not as bad here as in the States. Every city has its own degree of severity. Here, it's Metro Housing. I lived it. We weren't starving, but things went on in the area -- drug dealing, prostitution, murders. It happens, but people minimize it. It's Canada, it's supposed to be friendly compared to the States."

And in spite of the downtown naysayers, groups like GC have been able to maintain strong followings in their own neighbourhoods; rhyme realist Jugganot is well-loved in his Jane-and-Finch community. Says Grouch, "Kids up here are mostly into thug stuff. They'll listen to whatever's on BET -- DMX, whatever. But a lot of them support Jugganot, because they can relate to him."

Jugganot started to take rap seriously in the early 90s. "We used to get together on a Friday or Saturday night at a local park and hold a cipher," he recalls. "It became a big gathering. Other people from other places started coming in to represent. We had a beatbox, and people kicked freestyles and writtens. We used to have 'battle drills,' where one man would have to battle five or six men and see if he could hold his own. And then we got more serious about it, and we got some bigger Gs involved, and Brown Bricks [Jugganot's record label] was born."

On his recently released full-length Brown Bricks debut, Everything's for a Reason, Jugganot proves himself to be one of the most talented rappers in Toronto. His deft wordplay marries gutsy emotion with streetwise pragmatism. Though at times the production on the album lags, Jugganot makes a powerful case for local hardcore. Though he focuses on street life, he does so without glamourizing it.

"I've always been a believer in a better life, beyond what a black man in the ghetto has to go through," he explains. "But sometimes you gotta fight your way out. It's important to me to be able to relate to the kids that's going through not-so-nice things -- kids that's living through the real life, which is poverty, yo. The fantasy would be a nice house, a nice family, meals every night and peace. And that's just a real hard thing to envision from the perspective we're standing from."

"People in this city don't want to believe that certain things are going on, and they want to turn a blind eye. They're afraid of the truth. I'm not gonna lie and say it's as bad as the States -- when it comes to upkeep, things here are a bit better. But everything in this album is true. People just want to close their eyes and chill in their nice house with their nice car. I don't blame them."