AGAINST ALL ODDS
Rumours of hip-hop’s demise have been greatly exaggerated
Though it’s hard to believe now, there was a time when hip-hop music was dismissed as a fad — just the next disco, fated to burn out the same way. That attitude was common in the mid-’80s, golden dawn of the music video’s reign at the top of pop culture.
In the United States, rap was conspicuously absent from MTV’s early programming. Here in Canada, the upstart MuchMusic offered a more diverse playlist — begrudgingly. From the station’s first days, host Michael Williams and producer Michele Geister pushed for the inclusion of “urban” (i.e., black) music.
They partnered to launch Soul in the City, which folded rap into an eclectic mix of R&B, blues, reggae, soul, funk and dance. Grandmaster Flash, Run-D.M.C., LL Cool J and other stars of America’s old school all appeared live on Much. Williams, a Cleveland native, became an important, authoritative voice in the development of Canada’s domestic scene.
RapCity, another Williams-Geister collaboration, followed on Soul’s heels. It arrived right on time to crown Canada’s founding king of homegrown hip hop: Maestro Fresh Wes.
The Toronto MC’s back-to-back crossover hits, Let Your Backbone Slide (1989), and Drop the Needle (1989), kicked open a door for Michie Mee, Dream Warriors, Saukrates, Kardinal Offishall and others to step through. RapCity was there to support them all with video play, live interviews, studio performances and more.
Williams left Much in 1993. He was succeeded as host several times over. Sometimes the mike went to another video jockey, other times it went to any MC who happened to be in Toronto with a concert or album to promote.
At its best, the show melted the border between Canada and the U.S., joining, for instance, the Maestro on his pilgrimage to rap’s Mecca (New York) or taking goggle-eyed Canadian viewers into Mecca’s rooms to meet its rulers. Check it: the Wu-Tang Clan, Nas and Biggie Smalls on vintage RapCity.
MuchMusic quietly folded the show in the mid-’00s, an era defined by Nas’s declaration “Hip hop is dead.” (The music video itself was not far behind, choked by the manicured hands of reality TV.)
RapCity came back to life in early 2011, with a new inheritor of the Maestro’s throne as its first guest: Drake. “I keep a constant notepad of ideas, play-by-play,” he told the newest host, T-RexXx. “If you read through that notepad, you could really see where my mind is at, where my life is at.”
Ever since then, rap — and Drake — have mostly thrived. Music on Much has mostly not. RapCity was removed from the channel’s schedule three years ago, along with a lot more non-reality programming.