The Drake Effect – Think About it Mondays

May 18, 2010 by     55,898 Comments    Posted under: Think About it Mondays

On Sunset Boulevard the men’s heads are locked downwards on their patent leather shoes and the ladies take fast, small steps in their skirts without leggings. I think I am the only one who looks up and notices the big Drake poster. The thing is friggin huge and it looks incredibly green to me (in every literal and pun connotation you can imagine). I take time to stop and look at it because where I am heading, I have no appointment.

I am not on this street for business or pleasure, I’m there out of sheer audacity. After seeing Jamie Foxx on The View talk about sex and his daughter, my mother got the idea that I should send my book LAID to his office in hopes that he reads it then chooses to pass it on to his not-so-little-anymore girl. I look down at my envelope (crumpled in the oddest places after years(?) of being behind Andrea’s TV) and feel confident that my package has a chance to reach the Oscar/ Grammy winners hands because of one name: (from) Shannon Boodram (address) Toronto Canada.

Can you guess which name I am certain will catch the megastars eye? Well let’s play out the conversation:

“Who the hell is Shannon Boodram?” says Foxx as he kicks my packaged book out of the eighth floor window.
“Toronto, Canada? Isn’t that where Drake is from?” says Foxx as he drops my package back onto his desk…

And this, my friends, is my newfound confidence care of the Drizzy Drake effect…

“Isn’t that where Drake is from? After announcing my Toronto residence, I kid you not this is the new sentence that has thankfully replaced do you speak French, do you live in an igloo, is that somewhere in Mississippi, are there any black people there, how are you enjoying running water, etc… Isn’t that where Drake is from?”

Answer: thankfully, yes.

I am well aware that us Torontonians are brand new to many of you. Not new in the just moved to town sense, but rather we are the kid who was always there but never acknowledged, never questioned. And maybe I am jumping the gun, but I genuinely feel like things may just have changed…

If you think Drake’s come up was weird in your city – put yourself in our shoes for a moment. I’d like to welcome you to Toronto, a city where no one is from. Yes most of us were born Downtown on University Avenue, raised in tiny houses with big backyards. Yes many of us can recite our national anthem in both French and English and YES we all just might know how long the bus from Eatons Centre to Yorkdale takes, BUT don’t get us wrong, we ain’t FROM here. We are Jamaican, Greek, European, Portugese, Guyanese, Tamil, Ethiopian, Polish, Chinese, HELL we’re even American. To meet someone (especially a minority) who claims this as the place they are from rather than the place they live, is rare. So creating a Toronto culture for people who would rather claim they are anything but, has been tricky to say the least.

And now let’s talk specifically about Toronto’s hip-hop history, a tale of a struggling genre that often spent more time focusing on blaming the audience rather than bettering themselves… This story begins in the 1980’s when Toronto’s Maestro Fresh West released Let Your Backbone Slide. This classic song exploded on radio and eventually crossed the border and went on to sell close to 100, 000 copies. Maestro became Canada’s top charting rap artist and our industry braced itself for Canada’s unexpected, yet bright hip-hop future… But sadly over 20 years after that song went stale, we still had not even come close to that number.

During these years the Toronto-urban crowd suffered a steady flow of verbal abuse. We were unsupportive, rude, dead, lacked pride in our country, stiff, neglectful of our own, etc… the end result, we were labelled with a thorn of crowns that so many people foolishly wore with pride: Toronto, The Screwface Capitol of the World.

The general consensus is that if you wanted to make it in the entertainment industry as a minority (meaning you weren’t singing rock or playing hockey) then you had to abandon the city that could never possibly love you anyway. That annoyed the hell out of me! Why was I being judged for having high standards as a fan of hip-hop music. What the hell did they mean when they said we refused to support our own anyway? Did they think that I would jam to a song, overhear someone saying it was Canadian and then toss my iPod out of my window like it had herpes?!? Did they think I found a perverse joy in leaving my damn house to go to a local concert just so I could stand cross-armed and expressionless in the front row?!

But what a genius way to pass off the blame for the lack of interest in urban music:it’s not our fault! It’s the damn screw face Toronto audience that doesn’t like anything unless it comes straight out of the Caribbean or the US.

Then this song drops and what can you say now:

I am proud to say that Drake is from my city because not only has he introduced millions to the city I love, he has also given me new hope for my own potential while living here.

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