ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FUTURES OF HIPHOP IN Strange Froots @ “I Was There!” CANADA Photo: Leilah Dhore 1 "Our expressions exemplify reality through artistic talents found in all municipalities 'cause hip hop you're growing like...." - Dan-e-o “Dear HipHop” 1Rock Records Nomadic Massive @ “I Was There!” Photo: Leilah Dhore Table of Contents A Message from the Minister p5 A Message from Ron Nelson p6 Conference Note p7 Day 1: Dig p8 Keynote Panelists p9-10 Day 2: Build p11-13 Day 3: Rep p13-15 Bios p16-30 3 Northside Hip Hop Archive would like to congratulate our 2017 Archive Fellows: Eklipz, DJ Ron Nelon, Eekwol and Butcher T. Thank you to everyone who came out to our celebrations in Saskatoon, Montreal, Hamilton & Toronto. Peace, Northside Hip Hop Archive http://www.nshharchive.ca SCHOOL OF 4 Ministry of Children Ministère des Services and Youth Services à l’enfance et à la jeunesse Minister’s Office Bureau du ministre 56 Wellesley Street West 56, rue Wellesley Ouest e 14th Floor 14 étage Toronto ON M5S 2S3 Toronto ON M5S 2S3 Tel.: 416 212-7432 Tél. : 416 212-7432 Fax: 416 212-7431 Téléc. : 416 212-7431 October 10, 2017 A Message from the Minister I am pleased to welcome and extend greetings to everyone attending One Hundred and Fifty Futures of Hip Hop in Canada. It’s a fantastic – and rare – opportunity to come together to discuss new strategies to sustain hip hop culture in Canada, and to share information to encourage future generations of artists and scholars to proposer and thrive. Though Canadian hip-hop took some time to break out in our country, it’s now propelling us to new heights. Kardinal Offishall, Drake and K’naan have helped take our nation to the international stage, and Black, Indigenous, and French Canadian hip hop have helped give Canadian hip hop a unique flavour. We must also not forget the founders of Canadian hip hop including Dream Warriors, Maestro Fresh Wes and Michie Mee. Hip hop is vital to help many racialized youth come into their own. It captures the innovation and resilience of urban youth, and it was an opportunity for me to become civic minded and more self- actualized. My hope is that others find the same kind of joy I do in Canadian hip hop. Enjoy the session. I hope it brings new insights. Michael Coteau Minister 5 September 18, 2017 Greetings, On behalf of Ron Nelson Productions, I would like to welcome the two- and-a-half day collaborative session: One Hundred and Fifty Futures of Hip Hop Culture in Canada to Toronto. Since 1981, Ron Nelson Productions has been active in scouting, nurturing and supporting raw local talent. I firmly believe that in order for our Canadian Artists to be recognized and supported Internationally, we must first invest in our own. By creating and providing a hub for our community, we honour this commitment and continue to stand tall, to make Canada proud. Please continue your efforts to sustain and propel our undervalued contributions to Canadian culture. You have my best wishes for a successful event and a great experience in Toronto. Sincerely, Ron Nelson Ron Nelson Productions | ReggaeMania.com 6 November 2-4, 2017 Toronto, Ontario #150futures With hip hop in Canada only a few decades old, it is premature to cele- brate the culture when there exists much work to do in sustaining and enhancing its presence within this country. One Hundred and Fifty Futures acknowledges the decades of creative labour necessary to build hip hop culture in Canada and seeks to bring together industry experts, artists, and scholars to collectively chart new paths forward and future successes. Over the course of two-and-a-half days, our sessions aim to build a body of knowledge to equip future generations to build infrastructure and sustainable cultural mechanisms to keep hip hop culture fresh North of the 49th parallel. The themes for our event are dig, build, rep. 7 DAY 1: DIG Thursday November 2, 2017 The opening evening event of #150Futures gestures towards and acknowledges the incredible work ethic of DJs and producers, those who dig deep into sonic archives to produce new music, remixes and crowded dancefloors. Day one of our sessions involves endorsing and emulating the ethic to dig by honouring those scholars who sought to write and publish about hip hop culture in Cana- da long before it was considered a trendy emerging field of study. KEYNOTE PANEL: HIP HOP STUDIES BEFORE HIP HOP STUDIES Like the hip hop architects who set the stage for current hip hop artists, we respect those academics who began studying, analyzing and documenting hip hop before hip hop studies was named as such. This panel will explore the study of hip hop and hip hop in the academy and pose difficult questions around knowledge production, the role of the university and the future or futility of area studies. Spark: Katherine McKittrick Panelists: Awad Ibrahim Charity Marsh Rinaldo Walcott Murray Forman Respondents: Idil Abdillahi & Chris Cachia Doors Open 6:30PM @ Ryerson University 8 Rinaldo Walcott Rinaldo Walcott is an Associate Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, the Director of Women and Gender Studies Institute, and a member of the Graduate Program in Cinema Studies at University of Toronto. From 2002- 2007 Rinaldo held the Canada Research Chair of Social Justice and Cultural Studies, research that was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Innovation Trust. From January 2010 to June 2010 Rinaldo was Senior Research Fellow at the Warfield Center for African American Studies and the Department of African Diaspora and African Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Murray Forman Murray Forman studies media and culture with a primary focus on popular music, race, and age. For over twenty years he has engaged in research about hip-hop culture, contributing to the emerging field of hip-hop studies. He is author of The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (Wesleyan University Press, 2002) and Co-editor (with Mark Anthony Neal) of That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (Routledge, 1st edition 2004; 2nd edition, 2011). His most recent book is One Night on TV is Worth Weeks at the Paramount: Popular Music on Early Television (Duke University Press, 2012). Forman serves on the advisory board of the Archive of African American Music and Culture at Indiana University and he is an editorial board member for several scholarly journals includ- ing, Journal of Popular Music Studies; Music, Sound and the Moving Image; Popular Music; Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society; and Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. His current research involves the theorization of hip-hop in and as diaspora and issues of age and aging in culture, media, and hip-hop. His most recent project, Old in the Game: Age and Aging in Hip-Hop, is under contract with Wesleyan University Press. 9 Charity Marsh Dr Charity Marsh holds the Canada Research Chair in Interactive Media and Popular Music and is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Media, Art, and Performance at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. In 2007 Dr. Marsh was awarded a Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) Grant and a Saskatchewan Fund for Innovation and Science grant to develop the Interactive Media and Performance (IMP) Labs as a way to support her ongoing research. In 2012/13 Dr Marsh was awarded a second CFI grant to expand the IMP Labs to include the Centre for Indigenous Hip Hop Cultures and Community Research, as well as the Popular Music and Mobile Media Labs. Dr Marsh has published on Indigenous Hip Hop Cultures; women in popular music including Bjork, Madonna, Eekwol, Kinnie Starr, and Peaches; gender and technology; interactive media and performance; as well as movement arts cultures. For more information: www.interactivemediaandperformance.ca Awad Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim is an award-winning Full Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa. He is a Curriculum Theorist with special interest in Hip Hop, cultural studies, ethnography and applied linguistics. He has researched and published widely in these areas. He has more than 100 publications. Among his books: The Rhizome of Blackness: A Critical Ethnography of Hip-Hop Cul- ture, Language, Identity and the Politics of Becoming (2014); Critical Youth studies: A Reader (2014; edited with Shirley Steinberg); Global Linguistic Flows: Hip-Hop Cultures, Youth Identities and the Politics of Language (2009; edited with Samy Alim & Alastair Pennycook). 10 DAY 2: BUILD Friday November 3, 2017 Day two of #150Futures embodies the communal and collaborative spirit of what it means to build. As a gathering of scholars, students and artists we envi- sion and invoke the kind of hip hop community and culture that interrogates pedagogy, education, global relations and builds sustainable communities. Rather than following a traditional conference style, we build through open ciphers and relationships rather than through the troubling notions of hierar- chy, power and ego. 9:30AM COFFEE & TEA @ THE DRAKE HOTEL 10:00AM-11:30AM SESSION: CRITICAL PEDAGOGY: LEARNING & TEACHING HIP HOP INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF INSTITUTIONS This session will discuss hip hop teachings inside and outside the academy, and the accompanying ethical, political and social implications. What does hip hop look like in an institution? What are our teaching goals, and how does hip hop inform our pedagogical approaches? How