‘Is it worth it?’
A growing chorus is urging a new approach to ending deep-rooted violence in Toronto’s hip-hop community
Bizz Loc, a gravelly voiced Toronto rapper known for his aggressive flow — a man a judge once labelled a “menace to society” — recently did something few followers expected. He asked: “Is it worth it?” Again and again in a new music video, he raps that rhetorical refrain over the names and images of more than a dozen fellow GTA rappers gunned down in the past few years — all of them Black, most from the city’s poorest and most vulnerable neighbourhoods.
“All these mothers losing kids is it really worth it? All the rappers in my city started getting murdered,” he raps. “If you really want a mansion with the rugs Persian, think about the moves you make is it really worth it?”
With the video released last month, Bizz Loc — the Star is not reporting his real name over safety concerns — has joined a growing chorus of voices inside Toronto’s hip-hop community calling for the “craziness” to stop.
In an email, he explained the message is for everyone, but mostly for the youth who are “active in the streets and think that gangbanging or gangster rap is cool.” He wants them to “really think about what the outcome will be and if it is worth the decisions you plan on making.”
At least 20 underground Toronto rappers have been killed in the past decade, all in shootings; in May, Dimarjio Jenkins, 21, who performed as Houdini, was ambushed and killed while walking along Blue Jays Way in the middle of the afternoon. His companions returned the gunfire. A 27-year-old female bystander was wounded and a sixyear-old narrowly escaped being hit.
Jenkins, whose songs had millions of plays on YouTube and Spotify, had been hailed as a potential “next big thing” out of Toronto. He had just returned from Los Angeles, where he had been making videos and recording music.
Last month, his vigil erupted in gunfire and two men were injured — one of them an alleged gang leader now facing gun charges.
Bizz Loc, who wrote “Is it Worth It” before Jenkins’ murder, said he couldn’t speak specifically about any one incident, but added he also wants his fellow rappers to know “that being in the music industry in Toronto can and will put a target on your back.”
Increasingly, other artists and commentators are also speaking out.
In a recent episode of the popular “We Love Hip Hop” podcast, co-host PK Hercs called the violence “a pandemic, what’s going on, with all the Black people killing each other, the young kids killing each other.”
In the episode, the panellists discussed drug use, family breakdown and poor role models among causes of the violence, while being careful not to point fingers, saying “you got to watch how you talk on these platforms.”
Canadian film and music video director Julien Christian Lutz, known as Director X, is appalled by what he’s seen. He is urging Torontonians to sign a petition demanding Mayor John Tory and Premier Doug Ford implement the Advance Peace Initiative in the city. The plan, which was credited with helping to reduce the homicide rate in Richmond, Calif., by 40 per cent in 2007, involves hiring the young people most likely to be involved in gun violence to broker truces between warring factions.
Lutz wants to emphasize that it’s not hip hop, a genre often accused of glorifying violence, that’s killing young men, it’s society’s failure to address poverty, hopelessness and the toxic stress in dysfunctional communities.
“Rapping is not what the problem is. Somewhere along the line, these kids have learned that the way the world has come at them, that killing someone is a way to settle a beef,” said Lutz, who has directed videos for Drake, Usher, Rihanna and Justin Bieber, among others.
There are a lot of kids who love gangster-style hip hop who’ll never hurt anyone, he said. “What puts you in that place is trauma of abuse, the trauma of neglect, the trauma of someone trying to take your life. That’s what gets your brain to say ‘all right enough talking, we need to react, the world is a dangerous place, and we will treat it as such.’ ”
The Jenkins killing came just months after a series of Toronto artists lost their lives. Keeshawn Brown, 18, who performed as Why-S, was shot in Surrey, B.C., on Dec. 23. Early the next day, Jahquar Stewart, 24, known professionally as Bvlly, was gunned down in Oshawa. Farah Handule, 23, or 22Neat, was killed in Calgary on Boxing Day. A month later, Tyronne Noseworthy, 19, of the duo Tallup Twinz, was one of three young men to die in a shooting at a downtown Airbnb.
By the Star’s account, nine Toronto-area rappers have been killed since this time last year, from potential breakout stars like Jenkins to relative newcomers such as 18-year-old Joel Stennett, who performed as Stenno and was shot in Brampton in November.
Friday Ricky Dred, co-host of “We Love Hip Hop” with PK Hercs, recently paid tribute to the dead rappers, many of whom featured as guests on the show that streams live on their YouTube channel. The affable former rapper, who has written about how he quit booze and sorted out his life, said he’s noticed the violence increase since 2014, as a growing number of rappers have started building legitimately large fan bases for their DIY music on the internet.
Young men growing up in Toronto’s impoverished neighbourhoods have expressed themselves through rap ever since hip hop grew out of New York in the ’80s during a time of high crime, urban decay and white flight in that city.
But their music mostly had limited reach. That began to change here in the early-tomid-2000s with a popular series of DVDs that showcased Toronto kids, primarily Black, brimming with bravado — and sometimes waving firearms and drug paraphernalia — as they rapped about their hardscrabble reality.
A lot has changed since. These days, anyone with a smartphone can build their profile, reputation and influence online, so that a teen rapper from the Atkinson Co-op in downtown Toronto can travel to cottage country and draw a packed house.
“We’re seeing a flood of music that would have probably never have reached the audience that it does now,” said Calvin John Smiley, a professor in the sociology department at Hunter College—City University of New York, whose research includes popular culture music and social media. “These folks might have really strong ties to street life and that’s finding its way into their careers.”
The music is “a cry for help,” he said.
“The fact that folks are involved in criminal behaviour before getting into rap, but then getting into rap, shows they didn’t want to be criminals ... and that was maybe one of the few outs, coming from a community that has less resources and opportunities.”
Jooyoung Lee, a sociologist with the University of Toronto and author of the Los Angelesfocused book “Blowin’ Up: Rap Dreams in South Central,” said a lot of young people grow up around gangs, or associate with them, and “de facto become part of that network, even if they’re not necessarily on the front lines of gang beefs and violence.”
While the music may become a springboard from poverty, artists are often still seen as “representing” their neighbourhood, which makes it harder to “disentangle yourself from those people who are still deeply, deeply embedded in gang life,” Lee said.
Envy is also a problem in poorer neighbourhoods, just as it can be on Bay Street.
“Unfortunately, there are still people on the streets who don’t look kindly upon a person who is coming up from that environment, and see a person who is starting to make it out,” he said.
All you need to do is look at the comments attached to dead rappers’ music videos to find rampant speculation the artists might have brought about their own demise with lyrical disses aimed at enemy “opps” from rival neighbourhoods.
Bizz Loc said he can’t speak to that. But “what I can say is that being a rapper exposes your face to everyone that has access to the internet,” he wrote in his email to the Star.
“If you’re throwing up a block or set that other people have a beef with, you automatically become a target because you are now somewhat of a poster boy, the face or spokesperson for that hood or gang.”
He is not optimistic about stopping street violence in Toronto, though he advocates for more outreach programs for youth to keep them out of the streets.
Too many lives have been lost over “disputes (that) have been going on for generations, most over something as simple as a chain being stolen over 20, 30 years ago, before most of these rappers were even born.”
Bizz Loc, however, says he is focusing on making something positive with his life, leaving behind what landed him in federal prison.
“Seeing how far music could potentially take me has really humbled me and makes me question every move I make before I make it,” he wrote.
“Being in the music industry in Toronto can and will put a target on your back.”
BIZZ LOC RAPPER “Somewhere along the line, these kids have learned that … killing someone is a way to settle a beef.”
JULIEN CHRISTIAN LUTZ FILM, MUSIC VIDEO DIRECTOR