This Is My Rifle: The Secret Behind Canadian Rap Mediocrity

We’ve all seen it before. At some point in time or another you’ve cruised the music stations on TV, flipped through videos on YouTube or searched through the millions of blogs on the internet looking for new music and come across something that appears to be from the early-mid 90’s. Upon discovery of it you say to yourself, “Wait a second. How come I never heard of this artist growing up? This isn’t that good but I’m gonna watch it just because it’s a throwback and I’m kind of interested in finding out exactly who this guy is”. And then the credits come up and you realize it’s not a throwback at all.

Nope, it’s just Canadian. And current.

As most of you know, I’m originally from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. As you may also know, I’m an artist and I absolutely refuse to deal with anybody that has anything to do with the Canadian music industry.

**SIDENOTE: If you’re reading this and you reside in a city outside of Canada, please don’t be deterred from continuing to read this article. While I’m going to give a complete breakdown of the hilariously awful state of music in Canada, I’m also going to do my best to generalize as much as possible so hopefully aspiring artists from all over the world can take something away from this. And if you’re not an artist, just sit back and prepare to actually laugh out loud at how brain-numbingly retarded the entertainment industry in Canada really is.**

I remember back to my yearlong stint as a resident of the city of Toronto. It was during this period of time that I first came across an artist you may have heard of before; some dude named Drake.

I was sitting on my couch at roughly 3am on a weeknight battling a ruthless hangover when his video for “Replacement Girl” came on MuchMusic (Canada’s low budget, red-headed stepchild version of MTV). Although the song wasn’t my particular taste in music, I remember sitting up and thinking to myself, “Wow, this is actually a solid song. This guy can rap!”. In the weeks after first discovering the up and coming emcee, I asked around to see if he was making any noise around the city. Most of the people I spoke to had never heard of him and those who did know who he was simply said, “Oh, that’s the guy in the wheelchair from Degrassi. I guess he’s trying to rap now” followed by a sarcastic “get the fuck outta here” look.

I was surprised by how little anybody knew about him at the time. Aside from just being a dope emcee, he was also on a weekly television show that most of Canada watches every now and then. Surely they had to be at least slightly aware that he was trying to build a career in music. Could it be possible that they just didn’t care? Were they sleeping on him because they didn’t like his music or was it because he was a local artist? Or was it that they didn’t even know he was out there?

The answer is yes. And I don’t blame the people of Toronto for this massive lapse in judgment either. There was really know way of knowing that he was making music at all unless you somehow managed to run into him and physically get your hands on one of his mixtapes. However, I do blame the executives in the gigantic folly that is the Canadian music industry. Once again, they managed to prove that Canada is right behind North Korea when it comes to supporting and effectively pushing new and groundbreaking artists.

Why doesn’t Canada have more of a presence in the entertainment industry? Why is every Canadian artist not backed by an American record label an embarrassing, dismal failure? I mean, we’re pretty much the exact same country as the United States (minus our strong beer, love for hockey and socialized medicine). So why can’t Canada ever seem to get it right?

Let me tell you why:

The only way that I can properly explain is to share with you a letter that I wrote to somebody in the Canadian music industry a few years ago after being asked to sit on a FACTOR jury. First, I’ll explain what FACTOR is.

FACTOR is a program designed by the Canadian government that provides independent artists with grants for videos and other endeavors dealing with music (recording, touring, mixing, etc) in order to encourage the arts in Canada. A few times every year people from around the Canadian music industry come together and decide who's going to receive the grant money for that period of the fiscal year. Being an artist myself, I was absolutely appalled that I was asked to sit on a jury and help decide the fates of my fellow artists. Just the fact that I was asked to sit on the jury tells you how flawed the system is. Did anybody ever think that maybe I might be biased because I myself am an artist? Did it occur to them that I might vote to give grant money to people that I have personal relationships with rather than base my opinion purely on who truly deserves it? I’m sure it did, but as always they’re either too stupid or too lazy to create an unbiased system that supports artists who are actually good. Below is my (unedited) response to their email:

Wow. Where do I start? Ok. Basically it goes like this.

I won't associate with people in the Canadian music industry for many reasons. First off, and this is the biggest part of it, they have absolutely no idea how to properly market and promote artists. And I don't mean on a worldwide scale, I mean within their own country! They mimic whatever is happening in the American music industry and the problem with this being is that by the time they find an artist that somewhat resembles somebody who's hot in The States, that time has passed and the industry is onto something else, i.e. any rapper or any R&B singer ever signed by Sony/BMG, Universal Canada or any MuchMusic show made, EVER. They don't strive for originality; they follow an image as they perceive it, which 100% of the time is completely off anyways. And when somebody from Canada does blow up (which I might add, they completely ignored) in The States they hop on the bandwagon and remind EVERYBODY that the artist is Canadian, which pigeon holes said artists to a point where they refuse to even speak about the topic of being Canadian. Next, they have a serious lack of earning power. You could say that this has to do with their lack of knowledge of marketing and promotion, but it also has to do with the fact that the Canadian industry works on the buddy system. A friend of a friend of a cousin is on the factor jury therefore they get the grant. We can all close our eyes and pretend that doesn't happen but I would like to ask the folks over at FACTOR why over 75% of the artists who receive grants are from the East Coast and why 99% of them are absolute and obviously complete trash. The Canadian music industry is built on a system of, "come hang out at the club with me and I'll give you a deal. Let's be best buddies forever!" where as the American music industry is built on a system of serious businessmen who only care about making money (trust me, I deal in it every day). And yeah, people could say that perhaps the American way is worse but then those are the people who are in the Canadian music industry and have no concept of business whatsoever. In any business you go into, there are always the investors that only care about the money. In the case of the American music industry, that would be the labels. They facilitate the artists and provide the much needed budgets. It’s up to the A&R's and the artists to play the creative roll. Most of them ultimately fuck up and put out horrible music in the quest to make a dollar, but at least they do it in a way that makes sense. And 14 year old girls STILL buy their album anyways. In the Canadian music world, it’s an embarrassing tailspin of gimmicks and worn out clichés. And then when they crash land they don't realize why and they do it all over again. It’s to a point where an artist like myself is constantly explaining how corny I know Canada is to American reps before I even get to talk about my music. To even further destroy any hope that music in Canada had, because the industry has no earning power, they also can't provide proper budgets to artists to push them in Canada let alone other markets around the world. Therefore the industry is in a constant state of brokeness. And that’s why Canadian artists would rather get RAPED by an American major than sit on the shelf at a Canadian "major" (I put that in quotes cuz calling them majors is really pushing it. It’s more like, "popsicle stand that sells cd’s"). Ask any artist or industry dude from Canada who switched over and now does business in the states if they would ever go back. I guarantee you they'll laugh in your face.

Thanks but no thanks.

If the above paragraph wasn’t descriptive enough, I’m going to break it all down below, piece by piece. I will also provide solutions to the problems to prove how easy it is to fix them.

THE MAJOR LABELS

The Problem - These guys are the blubbering idiots of the whole structure and ironically, the most powerful. They are so out of date and behind in their methods that it's almost like they're permanently in 1985. They follow the same old played out formula; find an artist that some what resembles somebody who's successful abroad, develop said artist, make a half-hearted attempt at duplicating successful artist's music, release single and album on a minimal/non-existent budget, watch carbon copy artist plummet to the ground, drop carbon copy from label, find another naive artist and do it again. This is the formula all major labels run on 90% of the time; the only difference is that the Canadian majors don't have nearly enough money to duplicate the success of an American artist that has multi-million dollar budget. So the end result is an embarrassing display of the labels scrambling for whatever they can recover while having the carbon copy artist performing for next to nothing just so they can try and maintain whatever relevancy they ever had. If they do manage to recover or break even, they still for some reason refuse to push their artists outside of their own country and then over saturate the tiny Canadian market (approx. 30 million people). They squeeze until the well is dry and then wonder why these artists don't have anything left to give, and even after the well is dry they refuse to let go and continue to throw themselves into the hole. It's because of this that the labels rarely have enough money to provide any of their artists with a sufficient enough budget to properly promote them within their own market. They resort to programs like FACTOR to assist with everything from recording to promo tools (videos, radio budgets, tour budgets, etc.) which in effect takes money away from the independent artists who truly deserve and need it. Therefore, the whole idea of FACTOR defeats it's own purpose and leaves the authentic artists without a chance in hell of reaching the audiences that would actually appreciate what they do. At the end of it all, everybody's broke. You may as well invest in time travel. At least that has a chance of happening within the next 1000 years.

The Solution - Ditch the old methods and look towards the future. Where you lack in finances make up for it with brilliant tactics. Watch the buying trends. The fact is, the average fan of Hip Hop music doesn't buy cd’s anymore so it makes no sense press to 50-100,00 copies of an album. Especially if you plan to release it in a market that only houses 30 million people, most of whom are 30+ years of age. Reduce your pressing and shipping budgets by at least 50% (think regionally) and use the remaining money to market your artists where they will be visible to the consumers, i.e. the internet. Hip Hop music lives on the internet now and you have to accept that a majority of the fans are not going to purchase the album, they're going to download it, which means finding other ways of capitalizing from the product. And keep in mind, the product is no longer the music itself, it's the artist, so you have to put a lot of thought into how you are going to brand your artists and not just throw out comparisons to Justin Timberlake or Kanye West. Think of the things that make them significant and what's going to make them stand out amongst the millions of established artists out there. The internet is also the best and easiest way of doing market research. Remember, through the internet you have access to a worldwide market and getting the music to the people who will take the time to get it to the masses is as simple as attaching an mp3 to an email and sending it out. From there you can determine where people are playing your music, who likes it and as a result, where to tour the artists. Next thing you know, you no longer have to make your artists perform at small town carnivals just to keep the lights on. Congratulations!

THE INDEPENDENT LABELS

The Problem - Thanks to Jay-Z and Puffy (I still refuse to call him Diddy) everybody wants to be a CEO nowadays. Young people coming up see the hundreds of millions these guys have made and they think all they have to do is put out a solid record and the money will come flowing in. You have no idea how many cards I get wherever I go that say CEO of "Super Corny Thug World Records" or something to that effect. Attention aspiring CEO's; if your record company doesn't even have a tax ID number, you are the CEO of nothing. Take a few years to learn about what you're trying to do and then decide if this is really what you want. For the aspiring CEO's that are intelligent and have a clear vision it simply boils down to a lack of resources. Since the majors are sucking up whatever money was available, the indy labels suffer incredibly. With no money, no tools and no help, the indies usually end up in eternal limbo, never getting ahead and never going backwards. Occasionally they'll have a break out artist and some moderate success for a few years, but then they get pulled into the retarded world of the Canadian majors and they're gone forever. Consider this, in the world market there has never been a successful Canadian independent Hip Hop label in the history of music. A few blips on the radar but none that have been able to maintain their success.

The Solution - The same as for the majors with 1,000,000% more emphasis.

THE MANAGERS/BOOKING AGENCIES

The Problem - Because the artist's labels refuse to market them abroad, the managers and booking agents use it as a cop out, turn into complete pussies and do whatever the morons at the labels are telling them to do. They will not, in any circumstance, take any risks and in most cases do the bare minimum required to keep the artists as clients. This means the artists end up touring Canada and playing for the same audiences over and over and over again, which is fine if you just wanna pay the rent but it provides no opportunity for growth or expansion. Imagine working the same job for 10 years at $10 an hour without ever getting a raise. That's what happens in this system. The artists become so disillusioned by the end of it all that they're lucky if they even feel like making music anymore. The managers and booking agents cover up their lack of effort and belief in their artists as being "Pro-Canadian" but that just translates to "I'm to stupid and/or lazy to even bother trying to see if my artists will work in any other markets". This whole cycle of bullshit has never made sense to me since managers and booking agents only make money if their artists make money (7%-20% of the net income. If your management is getting more than 20% you seriously need to re-negotiate the terms), so wouldn't it make sense for them to do everything they can to push their artists into other markets? Why not take the risk? They're obviously not making as much money as they would if their artists were touring other parts of the world. Imagine all the new people you could bring out and make a dollar off of. I mean, they might not speak english but they definitely know how to spend some money.

The Solution - Take the risk. Stand up for your artists, take the initiative and make shit happen. Don't rely on what some bonehead at the label has to say (unless you are one yourself). Once again, use the internet to push the artists. Find other markets where their music is getting a response and get in touch with the promoters. Every show you set up only opens more doors for other things such as merch sales (cd’s, t-shirts, etc.) and other unknown opportunities that might pop up. I've found in my career that you make the most beneficial connections in the oddest places. One show in Minnesota could develop into a soundtrack deal for your artists. You never know unless you try. And if for whatever reason your artists aren't viable anywhere else in the world other than Canada (which is highly unlikely), you can always go back to the old way of doing things.

THE MEDIA

The Problem - These people are a prime example of unoriginality at it's finest. Their information is always 2 weeks late, inaccurate and unbelievably useless. Every television program in Canada that would have any relation to Hip Hop music and culture whatsoever is a complete joke at best. I always wonder who does the research for these shows. Like, do they go to the blogs and look at what was posted a month prior? And the hosts of these shows have no idea what they're talking about when they interview the artists (with the exception of Nardwuar The Human Serviette who actually kinda overdoes the research). Much like the major labels, they rip-off all the good ideas that came out of The States but with 80% less money and the result is Punk'd but with no celebrities, just a gay dude in a park spraying water on people (that really happened). To make matters worse, the little bit of good music that does trickle down into the mainstream is then subjected to biased and off center journalism. So basically there's no media outlet for music at all.

The Solution - Fuck'em, they're too far gone. With the emergence of blogs, youtube, satellite radio, etc., there's no need for them anymore.

THE ARTISTS

Since this is a big task, I'm gonna break this one down into 2 groups. The Phonies and The Authentic.

THE PHONIES

The Problem - Much like their American counterparts, the problem is them. Everything they stand for (if there's anything at all), their message (if their is one) and their overall corniness. The difference between the Canadian and the American phonies is money. Where the American phonies have large budgets and access to big name producers, the Canadian phonies tend to look like broke down versions of Radiohead and Rihanna. Their attempts at mainstream success are feeble and are usually met with laughter and general "I feel sorry for you-ness". They are viewed across the country and even sometimes around the world (again, thanks to the internet) as absolute cornballs. Unfortunately for them and us, the Canadian majors usually see them as being marketable and this is what the rest of the world sees. Whatever money is available gets invested into these dummies and, of course, they fail miserably.

The Solution - Go fuck yourselves.

THE AUTHENTIC

The Problem - Besides the labels, the managers, the booking agents, the media and the phonies, once again, the problem is them. They refuse to accept that it's just not gonna happen for them here so they never live up to their potential and because the people they've hired to represent them are complete idiots, anybody who could help them and reach out to them are deterred. Artists are generally lazy people and don't do a lot to push themselves forward in their careers, therefore they need to have people around them to keep the fire lit under their asses. When those people are just as lazy and on top of that, retarded, it's a recipe for disaster. I've met a lot of artists across Canada who are extremely talented and definitely marketable that just don't have the right ideas. That's why they need to have people on their team who don't make music and focus primarily on the business aspect of things. But due to a lack of knowledge and foresight, they end up being represented by total douchebags. It sucks but that's just how it is. It makes my job easier though.

The Solution - SUCK IT UP AND GET THE FUCK OUTTA CANADA.

As you can see, it’s no surprise why Canadian artists run for the border once the opportunity presents itself. Every single Canadian artist actively successful in the entertainment industry has American backing in one form or another and rightfully so. I myself gave up on Canada a long time ago and I don’t even bother trying to promote myself or my music within the country because it’s a dead end road no matter where I turn. So in closing, I’d like to say this:

Thanks Americans for at least creating a system that works. I may not agree with a lot of what you do but after spending a significant amount of time in Canada I’ve learned to just appreciate the opportunities you provide. The rest of the world might not like you but you can hang out at my place anytime. And if Canada just so happens to come along, they can sit at the kiddie table.

(Jason James is an artist, freelance columnist and writer for RefinedHype.com. You can listen/download his most recent album, "Marvelous World Of Color", here and you can contact him here and here.)