One of the biggest complaints that Toronto hip hop artists have is that they are ignored by local media, and, for the most part, they're right. Drop the Needle hopes to help remedy this by checking in with some of the city's finest artists each month to see what's up. Toronto hasn't seen a rapper quite like Luu Breeze before. The Scarborough-raised MC is unabashedly influenced by American hip hop stars and isn't particularly concerned......

Wes Williams is synonymous with Canadian hip hop. Bursting on the scene as Maestro Fresh Wes, Williams brashly declared, "'89 is mine." And it was. His debut single "Let Your Backbone Slide" was a crossover success and is the only Canadian rap single to go gold. His debut album Symphony in Effect remains the best selling Canadian hip hop album of all time despite being a year shy of its twentieth anniversary. Williams is......

One of the biggest complaints that Toronto hip hop artists have is that they are ignored by local media, and, for the most part, they're right. Drop the Needle hopes to help remedy this by checking in with some of the city's finest artists each month to see what's up. Photo by Mark Kasumovic. Since 1997, PHATT al has been dropping records and rocking crowds in Toronto. Back then, he was part of Tallisman's crew......

It's Canadian Music Week and that means there's an unusually large number of hip hop shows going on. KRS-One will be teachin' at The Opera House on Saturday as he continues his Stop the Violence movement. RZA dons his Bobby Digital mask on Sunday at the Phoenix. There's also grimy New York hip-hop (M.O.P. on Friday), French rap (DJ Orgasmic and Cuizinier on Thursday), and a strong showcase of local talent (Friday's Exclaim! event). Also......

Photo by Linnea Helmersson. There's something about Sweden and disco that is as perfect as America and apple pie or Toronto and complaining. Following the footsteps of ABBA, Ace of Base, and Robyn onto the dancefloor is critic's darling, Sally Shapiro. The mysterious singer will be making her first public appearance in North America spinning a set with her producer Johan Agebjorn at Wrongbar on Tuesday. Shapiro has other links to Toronto as Paper......

Photo by Media Eater. It's hard to believe that it's been 12 years since DJ Shadow dropped his groundbreaking debut, Endtroducing .... Since then, the Bay Area DJ has helped form the respected indie hip hop label Quannum Projects and released a couple of lesser acclaimed albums including 2006's hyphy influenced, The Outsider. Since then, DJ Shadow has been working with fellow crate digger and former Jurassic 5 DJ, Cut Chemist. The pair will......

Photo from Plexifilm. For lovers of Detroit techno, the new year keeps on giving. This Saturday, legendary DJ Derrick May hits up Footwork. He will be joined by local favourites Greg Gow, Derrick Ramirez and Gerald Matrix. With his high school friends, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson, May became known as one of the Belleville Three. The trio invigorated the 1980s Detroit house music scene and are credited with pioneering techno. May continues to......

Photo by Jeremy Farmer from Flickr. It’s an end of an era as the popular indie night Easy Tiger shuts it down on Friday after a 14 month-run. A hipster haven, Easy Tiger is responsible for introducing hundreds of people to the booze can downstairs of College Street Diner that is Tiger Bar. Midland’s finest, Born Ruffians (pictured), will take the stage and the Easy Tiger DJs will spin the tunes. Expect plenty of......

According to Environment Canada, this winter will be the coldest in fifteen years. That news should send us all running for the comforts of indoors, but once again Harbourfront Centre provides the perfect reason to play outside. DJ Skating Nights return for a third year, providing those who brave the cold to skate under the glittering skyline with a soundtrack from local DJs. The five Friday nights of the series will feature five different......

Hip-hop blues music maker Buck 65 drops his new album Situation at the end of the month. The release is an ode to 1957, a time period the man born Richard Terfry considers world-changing in terms of pop culture (or, as he says in a video on his website, "the year all hell broke loose") thanks to events like Bettie Page going into self-imposed exile, those iconic plastic pink flamingoes appearing on lawns everywhere, and......

This week Musicologist will be checking out Regina Spektor at the Kool Haus, thanks to the insistence of a friend who pretty much exclusively listens to hip hop. The fact the he loves Spektor means she's gotta be good. It's sold out, but Musicologist never shies away from listing sold out shows—we all know there's always an (expensive) last-ditch way to get in if you're desperate. (Why does that sound dirty? We mean scalpers,......

Perhaps that headline is a bit over-the-top. Then again, so was this entire show! Maybe it was just this Torontoist's own expectations that a show selling itself as a gay hip hop opera couldn't really take itself too seriously; would be ironic; would be tongue-in-cheek. Not so. BASH'd is a gay hip hop opera that wants you to know that it is a gay hip hop opera and there's nothing wrong with that! There's......

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us. Austinist has a chat with the ever-fashionable Golden Girl Rue McClanahan, and managed to catch some local fashionistas making......

Every two weeks "What's The Frequency, Campus?" will highlight some of the intriguing shows and special programming happening on Toronto's campus and community radio stations. Community radio is known for its championing of emerging Canadian talent, and it was in this spirit that Dig Your Roots was born. An initiative of the National Campus and Community Radio Association, DYR is a series of compilation CDs accompanied by cross-Canada tours. Each set is focused around a......

This Thursday marks the premiere of Toronto's Hip-Hop Karaoke night. Brought to you by Never Forgive Action and Earwaks, and hosted by local rapper More or Les (who was interviewed by Torontoist last spring) and local DJs Dalia, Numeric and Ted Dancin', this party promises to be more than your basic karaoke night. First of all, it's hip-hop, so you may want to practice ahead of time or do the track you've known since you......

Photo by avp17 from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. There's a more interesting way to keep those "this year I will get in shape, no, really" New Year's resolutions than a membership to some stuffy gym that you'll stop using in a month and a half anyway-- a way that can even help you show off your new buffness and make you appear cooler on the dance floor next New Year's Eve, in the last......

The year is winding down and so is the music, which is kind of nice, actually, because there seem to be a lot of tours already gearing up for 2007. Hopefully Alexisonfire isn't one of them...we have no idea how they can manage to go onstage and scream for 7 solid days (they have a few more shows this week). Insanity. Best bets for this week include Royal Wood tonight at the Cameron House......

Torontoist visits the site of a new Frank Gehry structure, stalks "the elusive Bahamas streetcar", and watches Tom Green get surgery. Phillyist rejoices in the Phillies' wild card chances, mourns the injuries sustained by Eagles defensive end Jevon Kearse, and goes pirate on our asses. SFist notes that Guns and Roses were in town, that San Franciscans are taking over reality TV, and that the San Francisco Chronicle's skills of original nomenclature could use some......

It's a bitter-sweet day in the hip hop neighborhood as Best Kept Secret, one of CHRY 105.5's longest-running shows, and a true staple of the Toronto hip hop scene, airs for the last time this evening from 6-8pm. Best Kept Secret began 12 years ago, when a post-velvet-catsuit era DJ Dalia was introduced to high school student DJ Venus, who would skip class and sprint to the studio to thug it out on air......

Toronto has exploded in festivals this weekend. Scream, Toronto Outdoor Art Expo, Fringe, uh, Molson Indy. Not to mention The Big Game. But there is another festival happening right now that is worth making time for: Beats, Breaks and Culture. This Harbourfront festival focuses on urban electronica, global flavours, and touches on the 4 pillars of hip hop, including live graffiti creations and the largest breakdancing competition in Canada. Yesterday was a vibrant day at......

It takes a really good cause to get more than nine of Toronto’s busiest women of hip hop together on one stage in the same night. Tonight is that night, the Rivoli holds that stage, and the good cause is a benefit for the Toronto Rape Crisis Centre, as Vanilla Queen Entertainment presents the second annual Ladies Of Urban Sound Against Rape. Providing the emcee/vocalist versatile microphone fireworks are Belladonna, Kaysun, Latté D. Kyd,......

What what? Gymnastics & hip hop? Someone released the all-girl sports & dancing movie of our 2006 dreams, and no one told us? Fear not. We followed our favourite ass-kicking Toronto b-girl crew, Shebang! to Stick It, and we're back to report that if you like movies like Bring it On or Bend it Like Beckham, you need to gather your entire all-female soccer team/sculls crew/precision skating line/ what have you and go see this......

Londonist prepares a Happy Birthday bath for Buddha this week and then things get all cliched. A madman goes on a rampage while axe-wielding and London's mayor warns an American diplomat to avoid the kitchen if the heat bothers him so much. LAist has finally come around to purchasing tickets for Clipper Train. Hyper local dating sites are spamming L.A. neighborhoods and the fascinating Dame Darcy talks with LAist about art, the city and earthquakes.......

Torontoist likes being socially aware and with that, we bring you Inner City Visions. IC Visions is North America's first governmentally funded hip-hop & urban music centre. They have a full in-house studio where they invite young people with an interest in music to come in and record their songs and compositions totally free of charge. As studio equipment and recording times are hard to come by, IC Visions is providing a most fabulous......

One the things we like best about Toronto is how easy it is to be a vegan in the city. Sometimes we complain, but mostly we love. We were reminded of this over and over this past weekend, during a healthy two-day bender of Torontoist vegan extravagance. Saturday morning started late with brunch at Fressen, which we usually start looking forward to sometime around noon on Wednesday. It's not that we can't live without the......

Let’s open with an image. By far our favourite image of film in the past...Ooh, ages, Date Movie’s unique take on Napoleon Dynamite. I can almost hear the two (count ‘em) writers from Scary Movie in the pitching office. “Okay, get this, right. We’ve got a version of Napoleon Dynamite. Now, you know how all the kids are wearing those ‘Vote for Pedro’ t-shirts, right?” (The movie exec nods with recognition, a feign he’s......

- Curiously, recording artists Jamie Lidell (take a blue cd and multiply?), James Blunt (yuck.) and Bluth family member Tobias Funke all have an affinity for blue. - It's Mozart's birthday today. That guy was hilarious at the end of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. - $25000 to anyone who finds the stolen slippers. Or, anyone who can create a reasonable facsimile using cheap slipper material and a bedazzler. - Cubano hip hop! Revolution......

In daily newspapers, politics, radio and TV, hip hop music dominates this city. One explanation: Those who didn't join the ranks of plaid-shirted in 1994 formed a subculture that hip hop still thrives on; with tonnes of underground material and a very unavoidable stigma attached. That generation, raised on Cypress Hills, the Wu-Tangs and Ice Cubes, is now approaching (or in) their 30s and remain unflinching purveyors of the genre. Diverse Toronto rap acts......

"My album's like walking a dog, because you should get fined if you don't pick the shit up" - Juelz Santana Whether he's throwing down on the mixtape circuit, draping himself in an American flag, or just grinding with Lindsay Lohan on the Tonight Show, Juelz Santana has got to be one of rap's most intriguing personas. Embrace his eccentricities or not (Pitchfork calls him "functionally retarded"), Mr Santana represents a new force in......

If the DJ Socalled's XPACE* performance at the ReJEWvenation (why?) festival on Sunday night (replete with circumcision tent and drunk people dancing as if the Messiah had come) scared you off, muster up some strength to hear SoCalled (aka Josh Dolgin) tonight, when he brings his Yiddish Hip Hop to the Drake Hotel. He manages to bring the house down with the odd combination of a sampler and an accordion, and his hair is......