Remember back in the days, sitting out on the front stoop with the summer evening breeze hitting your skin and the latest hip-hop sounds from your city streaming from your tinny laptop speaker, freshly torrented from the latest post on your favourite rap blog?
No? Fair enough. That never happened.
But from the mid-aughts into the early years of the following decade, blogs ruled everything around us when it came to hearing the latest in hip-hop. Blogs were our 21st century boombox at a moment in time stuck somewhere between MySpace and Soundcloud, the dawn of an era when technology made it possible for any hopeful to turn their bedroom mirror rap career into opportunity if they so dared.
National blogs like HipHopCanada and US outlets such as 2DopeBoys, NahRight and CocaineBlunts helped Canadian rap talent spread province to province and to cross international borders without having to stop at customs and forever altering our perception of possibility for hip-hop created north of the 49th parallel.
This also meant the end of rap music belonging strictly to Toronto and occasionally Vancouver. And in the lucrative and much-envied US market, Canadian talent stood a chance to overcome the gatekeepers at MTV, BET, and the Recording Academy.
With renewed interest in the time thanks to a new podcast, Complex Canada compiled some of the most important Canadian hip-hop titles that sprang forth during the blog era.
Some remain underground classics. Others saw the light of day in ways we could never have imagined at the beginning of the century. Still others were never heard by anyone but the most ardent of independent rap connoisseurs. Each found a wider audience courtesy of blog culture.
Skratch Bastid/John Smith/Pip Skid, 'Taking Care of Business'
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Year: 2005
Label: First Things First
With a stable of talent on par with the US midwest indie rap scene of the early aughts, Manitoba label Peanuts & Corn kept it farm fresh with project after project of oddball rhyme schemes and Prarie angst. The likes of label founder mcenroe and artists including YY, Birdapres and DJ Hunnicut made an indelible mark on college radio’s CanCon quota requirements, making fans along the way.
Then Halifax turntable legend Skratch Bastid swooped in, making off with P&C mainstay rappers Pip Skid and John Smith and getting that blog cheddar. Owing to Bastid’s national profile and the attention that gave him in internet music nerd circles, Taking Care of Business was probably the most impactful and buzzed-about release from the P&C camp that didn’t come out on the label with, and touring the likes of Sage Francis and J-Zone didn’t hurt. Nobody actually paid for it, so you know that means it was a blogger’s delight.
Wordburglar, 'Burglaritis'
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Year: 2006
Label: Backburner/Hand’solo
Halifax has the distinction of being the smallest Canadian city with the strongest hip-hop scene per capita. That was especially noticeable in the earliest days of the rap blogs. Jorun Bombay and Buck 65 had already been integral in shining light on the Maritime rap scene, and legions of their proteges took the spotlight, powered in no small part by the bloggers.
Burglartis is a solid example of the quality of beats, rhymes and talent the Hali scene fostered and caught indie rap accolades on P2P file-sharing networks worldwide. Burg would later move to Toronto, co-founding the $5 Rap Show events that have been a mainstay in the 6ix ever since and keeping the door open for the next generations of Canadian rap hopefuls.
Shad, 'The Old Prince'
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Year: 2007
Label: Black Box Recordings
Before Shad was a radio host, a Netflix documentarian and an award-winning semi-household name in hip-hop, he was the Old Prince, and he still lived at home in London, ON.
The Old Prince put Shad on the map across Canada, in no small part due to the video for its Fresh Prince of Bel-Air intro-aping single, “The Old Prince Still Lives at Home”—an ode to cheapskate life hacks that went viral before social media was any use for link sharing. Best believe that HipHopCanada got better numbers than ever for this one. Shad may have been the first Canadian MC who actually gave the blogs more cred than they generated for him.
Cadence Weapon, 'Afterparty Babies'
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Year: 2008
Label: Anti-/Upper Class/Big Dada
In 2005, at age 18, Cadence Weapon made his entrance on the national stage from Edmonton, Alberta with his entirely self-produced, glitch-hop leaning Breaking Kayfabe. The debut received critical praise in corners of the web that valued obscurity and innovation. Its 2008 successor, Afterparty Babies made clear that Cadence Weapon’s experimentations bringing electronic elements back to hip-hop hadn’t been a lark.
Production on Afterparty Babies leaned further into the dancefloor-ready influence of superstars like Daft Punk and underground darlings like Prefuse 73. As such, Cadence Weapon entered the conversation on rap blogs and indie rock sites alike, and he has remained as prolific, innovative and entertaining ever since. His autobiography, Bedroom Rapper, chronicles the journey.
Drake, 'So Far Gone'
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Year: 2009
Label: OVO
For Drake, three was the magic number. When his third street tape hit, he was ripe for the success to come, with co-signs from Lil Wayne and Jay-Z already massively boosting his place in pop culture. But lest we forget, before So Far Gone became an official Young Money release as an EP, it dropped on OctoberVeryOwn.blogspot, OVO’s first incarnation. And yeah, you know, what can you say? The guy’s been doing pretty well ever since.
D-Sisive, 'Jonestown'
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Year: 2009
Label: Urbnet
Another storied figure in Toronto’s hip-hop history, D-Sisive was there before, during and after the blog era. With roughly a dozen full length releases under his belt during the period between 2006 and 2013, the first tape in his Jonestown series was the one that catapulted him into internet infamy, albeit not the level his talent deserves.
That this release can be recognized as D-Sisive’s most pivotal owes much to its time and place, to the proliferation of the post-mixtape “street album” culture of free, studio-quality hip-hop releases that were the stuff of blog clicks and discovery at the end of one decade and the beginning of a new one. He’s back after a long hiatus.
The Weeknd, 'House of Balloons'
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Year: 2011
Label: Independent/XO
The Weeknd’s status among the biggest global pop sensations of the 21st century so far began as a humble series of free projects beloved by music nerds who searched their favourite music blogs daily to hear something new. At least one of those nerds put The Weeknd on Drake’s radar, and along came a new type of pop promise: unsigned, unconcerned about it, and unbeholden to anything besides his own instinct for what the people want.
Noah23, 'Fry Cook on Venus'
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Year: 2011
Label: Fake Four
The psychedelically enhanced Guelph, Ontario MC was using the internet to his advantage well before blogs were a thing, self releasing project after project, self-promoting tirelessly, and winning over fans one at a time by virtue of the lane he carved for himself by being present online. Fry Cook was a more polished studio outing, one that blogs from NahRight to Okayplayer could get their heads around in the wake of the dizzying volume of music Noah23 was busy creating.
Guest spots from US indie faves like AWOL One, Sole and Myka 9, Canadian talents such as Ghettosocks and Factor and an unsung slew of production weirdos surely collected along his high-speed connected travels gave this release its own particular set of legs that still stand out from Noah23’s considerable catalogue.
Various, 'Piu Piu Beat Tape Vol.1'
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Year: 2012
Label: Artbeat
Meanwhile, in Montreal, Quebec and across the province’s suburbs and regions, another set of principles was guiding bedroom producers who found themselves drawn together under the banner of a monthly beat tape listening session and the glow of their laptops. It was a moment, and that moment was both free for the taking and widely shared within the province and abroad.
Yes, the opening track from Kaytranada (then known as Kaytradamus) makes Piu Piu Beat Tape Vol. 1 and no-brainer to include here, but that’s far from the only reason.
Established (or already prolific) Quebec beatmakers such as KNLO, Ghislain Poirier and Scott C. (aka The Incubator) were featured alongside upcomers like High Klassified, VLooper, VNCE, Dr. MaD, and many more, all of whom made an undeniable impact on Quebec’s beat scene simply by showing up to play us what was on their hard drive that day.
The MCs are absent here. But the soundscape then labelled “piu piu,” with its signwaves modulated and drum loops sampled in the tradition of J Dilla’s off-time time signatures, paved the way for a new creative urgency in Quebec’s previously insular hip hop scene.
Dead Obies, 'Montreal $ud'
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Year: 2013
Label: Bonsound
While it’s hard to gauge how much Dead Obies, all bilingual rhymes considered, really made their mark outside of Quebec, this first studio LP came on the heels of their self-released Collation Vol. 1 mixtape.
DO propelled themselves into overnight infamy by way of their second-generation web savvy and the foresight to engage young fans with at the dawn of feasible, quality live streaming sessions. Forward-moving beats from the heart and soul of VNCE made a pitch-perfect sound bed for five versatile voices driven to combine their diverse styles under one groove and change history.
They signed to label Bonsound, and that thinking proved to be their best move. For the next five years, DO built a merch empire. Before Loud made the windbreaker a fashion statement for Quebec youth, the Obies sold a small fortune in hoodies, hats, t-shirts and show tickets, touring the province non-stop and delivering the best live rap experience Quebec had ever witnessed. With Montreal $ud, a new day dawned for the credibility of homegrown, self-taught hip-hop talent in la belle province.
