Hip hop’s debt to T.O. suburbs,
Hip hop’s best producers hail from Toronto suburbs — Mississauga, Brampton and Ajax
When Rich Kidd was first trying to make a name for himself in hip hop in his native Mississauga, he started from, quite literally, Square One.
Yes, the mall — not exactly a hip-hop hotbed, but in Kidd’s sprawling but relatively sleepy suburb, there weren’t many channels for a kid with a knack for forging beats to make himself heard. “I’d be in the bus terminal, handing out CDs,” he recalled recently. “’Sauga didn’t have places you could perform.”
Years later, Kidd has made plenty of noise as a rapper and, crucially, as a producer, crafting beats for the likes of Drake, Busta Rhymes and DMX.
Mississauga, meanwhile, hasn’t changed much, yet Kidd isn’t the only hip-hop talent to bust from its borders.
In fact, some of hip hop’s best and most promising producers are emerging from Ajax, Mississauga and Brampton — from heavyweights such as Boi-1da, T-Minus and WondaGurl to a bevy of swiftly rising talents. In fact, more than half of the eight rap albums to top the Billboard chart in 2015 featured a track produced by someone from Toronto’s suburbs.
But if the world’s urban music is increasingly coming from our suburban producers, the tough question is: why? Why are districts with no tangible evidence of a hip-hop scene proving such fertile ground for earth-shaking beats?
“In the suburbs, there’s not as much going on, so you have time to perfect your craft,” said Clifton Reddick, founder of Battle of the Beatmakers, to be held Sunday at the Opera House.
“(Producers) are more or less hermits in their houses creating music.
“Pretty much all the top producers are from the outskirts of the city,” he added.
It wasn’t always this way. Reddick recalls the dismissive reaction that initially greeted Boi-1da — now a Grammy-winning mastermind behind hits for Eminem, Nicki Minaj and Drake — at his first competition.
“People were laughing. ‘This guy’s coming from Ajax?’” he recalled.
“If you were a good producer, you had to be coming from Jane and Finch or Regent Park.”
Well, Reddick’s boredom-as-motivation theory definitely has its supporters.
Mikhail, who has scored tracks with Dej Loaf, Lil Wayne, Freddie Gibbs and Black Thought, immigrated to Mississauga from Moldova when he was 5.
In the formative years of his production career, he recalls barely braving daylight, spending roughly two years as a shut-in crafting beats for 18 hours a day.
“In Toronto, it’s really easy to get distracted,” said Mikhail, a former cohort of Grammy-winning Mississauga producer Arthur McArthur.
“In Mississauga, there’s really not much to do, so you sit in the studio and work on beats.”
That said, the influx of production tal- ent from the suburbs hasn’t exactly led to the industry shifting away from the core.
“Not much is going to happen for you just sitting in Mississauga,” Mikhail said. “No one’s coming to find you.”
So producers from the area still forge connections with trips to Atlanta, New York or L.A., or by reaching out online.
Raz Fresco, for instance, landed tracks with Mac Miller and Tyga via social media. Born in Toronto before moving to Brampton (and attending the same high school as rising star PartyNextDoor), he figures hip hop’s heart may have shifted as the cost of living soared.
“A bunch of people moved to get their kids out of metro housing,” he said.
Yet some aren’t necessarily keen to fly a flag for their suburban roots.
Eestbound — who has given Houston rapper Travi$ Scott a Top 20 hit in the creeping “Antidote” — is, like Mikhail, an immigrant, having moved to Brampton from Holland four years ago. He partially credits the Greater Toronto Area’s sprawling cultural diversity with inspiring his musical freethinking.
Still, he doesn’t seem interested in loudly repping the 905.
“If people ask where we’re from, we don’t say Brampton, we say Toronto, because that’s what people know,” he said. “I don’t feel like there’s a scene in Brampton.
“I mean, Brampton’s a bit boring.”