50 years after the birth of hip-hop, success is still a struggle in Canada's scene

Growing up in London, Ont., Shadrach Kabango didn't see his future. 

The problem wasn't an inability to see any future. Talented as a child, he was already obsessed with music, consuming and writing rap — and even playing guitar — since his high school days in the '90s. 

But in his mind at the time, that passion could never lead where it eventually did: the Peabody, Emmy and Juno Awards that now sit in a basement, the international shows, even seeing the name he'd become best known for plastered across more Polaris-shortlisted albums than any artist in history — Shad.

"Not just unlikely," he said, "impossible."

Riding that impossible success, Shad has gone on to have a nearly 20-year career in a genre that turns 50 today. But the reason he felt it was impossible in the first place does much to explain why, all these years later, hip-hop artists in Canada have struggled without resources or recognition, despite consistently producing some of the genre's best artists since almost immediately after its invention at a Bronx house party on Aug. 11, 1973.

Coming years after the international success of Canadian artists like Michie Mee, Choclair, Kardinal Offishall, Maestro Fresh Wes and Dream Warriors, Shad's major hurdle may seem strange for a community that had by then already proven its cred. 

It wasn't a lack of similar stars to point to, or parents against a career in the arts. For him, it was a much more realistic problem: though it was located just 200 kilometres southwest of Toronto, London didn't have any beat machines or engineers to work them — a necessary component of any rap track.

After winning a $17,500 cash prize in an unsigned-artist talent show, Shad was able to fund his self-released debut, When This Is Over. But that simple equipment shortage was just part of a broader lack of infrastructure supporting hip-hop artists, stretching from the genre's inception to present day.

"I was like, 'I'm just gonna have to get my music out some other way.' Because I just didn't see how it could be beyond campus radio," he said. "I didn't see how, like, commercial radio could be a vehicle for my music."

Shad wasn't alone. For decades, that was the biggest stumbling block Canadian hip-hop musicians faced: a lack of radio play and platforms to celebrate and share the music. 

While that was a nearly insurmountable hurdle to artists of the past, even today Vancouver lacks a dedicated commercial hip-hop station. The "prevailing opinion," according to a Vancouver is Awesome article, being that there isn't enough Canadian content to fill the airwaves, a requirement of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission.

A similar issue exists in Montreal, which also lacks a commercial hip-hop station. Speaking to the Montreal Gazette, radio host Don Smooth said the reason is a belief from traditional advertisers that hip-hop fans in the province are not a worthwhile market.

But that excuse existed in direct contradiction to Toronto's Flow 93.5FM, a hip-hop station that served the city for more than 20 years as Canada's first Black-owned radio station until it was unceremoniously merged with another last year, in what music execs in a Toronto Star article described as a loss for Black culture. 

Created by the Jamaican-born businessman and civil-rights activist Denham Jolly, Flow 93.5FM helped numerous Canadian artists get their starts — it was famously the first station to play Drake's music.