Is The 6ix Currently Holding Hip Hop’s Aux Cable?

Views Before The Release Of “More Life”

So we all know Drake is on the verge of releasing what he calls innovation within music with his playlist-esk album. Whether or not the innovation shines through remains to be seen. For now I listen to DJ Premier albums for something similar in style (read: probably the exact same as what Drake will release logistically).

But I’m from Toronto so I will love it regardless.

And much of Toronto will love it too. Just like how we loved “Views” and we loved “What a time to be alive” — when skipping over Future’s tracks of course. Both of which received more critique than the usual Drake album. But I’m not here to D-ride.

There’s something to be said about the city of Toronto currently with the state of hip hop. And while your mind races continuously asking, What about Atlanta? What about Chicago? let me state my piece and THEN you can argue about it on Reddit.

Keyboard Warrior from Reddit

Look no further than the numbers. If you break down the top 40 albums of 2016 based on sales in the world, the only hip hop / R&B-ish (Abel blurs a lot of lines) artists that make the list are Drake and The Weeknd. Which makes sense because at any given moment you would probably hear one of them on the radio.

Numbers aside, Toronto has become the city artists flock towards to record and finish albums off. Just look at the client list at Noble Street Studios, it’ speaks for itself. Not to mention 40’s SOTA Studios where out of town artists like Future and Rihanna have been known to be recording tracks in the secret Toronto studio.

When you look at current hip hop rosters by city, it’s pretty hard to find a stronger one that will stand up in any city in the WORLD, not the U.S., the WORLD, than what Toronto has to offer as a starting 5.

Obviously Drake. Obviously Weeknd (back to the blurred lines comment).

Then you have Partynextdoor who just hit over 100 million streams on Spotify.

You got Belly, who although is from Ottawa, he’s a Toronto recruit because of his XO connection and projected to be the next Drake coming out of Canada — doesn’t hurt that Jay Z is backing him.

Rounding out the starting 5 is Tory Lanez — again if you have paid half an eye of attention to hip hop you are aware of the reach Tory is receiving with his music.

And you got the OG Kardinal Offishall as the coach, who if you don’t know Kardi, do yourself a favour and just listen to any of his stuff.

The wild card in Toronto is King of the Dot — one of the premiere battle rap platforms in the world that has survived the test of time since 2008. KOTD has become one of the most watched battle rap leagues in the world. If you follow the battle rap scene then you know there have been tons that have come and gone while KOTD has remained — long before Drake started showing up to them.

Now let’s see what “More Life” does for the city.