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......

You've got less than three weeks to prepare yourself for Earth Hour on Saturday, March 29. That's when people around the world are being encouraged to turn off their lights for one hour to raise awareness about global warming. Toronto was the first Canadian city to sign up for the international event late last year, and has since been joined by most other GTA municipalities, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, and many more—close to 50 cities......

In the wake of TIFF celebritymania, it's hard to imagine any Torontonian giving a Big Name the cold shoulder. But The New York Daily News reports that chef Guy Rubino of Rain threatened to kick Nelly Furtado and her entourage out of the elite pan-Asian fusion restaurant after her manager got uppity in the kitchen. "She made a reservation for ten guests," explained Rubino at the Bon Appétit magazine awards dinner on Monday. "She......

Torontonians are generally polite and unassuming, which is probably why a bunch of city residents didn't know how to react one morning when local musician Jon Levine and his band set up on their lawns for an unsolicited, impromptu performance. Necessity is the mother of invention, so lacking a record deal or a video budget, the project was a cheap way to get some attention—and not always positive, as testified by the end of the......

A lot happens in and around Toronto, but we can only write about so much in a week. Here's the best of the rest, in a new weekly feature we're calling Superfluist. Superfluist will appear every Friday night. Cathy Gordon decided to get very, very publicly divorced on Monday, with an art piece she called "On My Knees." For it, she crawled around Toronto for a while (on her knees!), signed divorce papers, and then......

Nelly Furtado wins five Junos. Clearly, we will respect her if we get it. In other news, Jim Cuddy won the Juno for best adult alternative album, which means he did the best job of taking actual alternative music, dropping it to quarter-speed and setting it to acoustic guitar. Toronto is number fifteen! In the annual Mercer Human Resource Consulting review of best cities in Canada the world to live in, that is. Every Canadian......

For the next few weeks a handful of local personalities will be photographing the city as they know and love it for a project organized by Mayor Miller and his minions. My Life, My City will see everyone from Nelly Furtado to Susur Lee to Ben Mulroney (ugh!) playing amateur photographer, and playing fast and loose with our urban affection. Sayeth the release, "This photography exhibit takes viewers behind the scenes to reveal a typical......

Toronto hip-hop hunk K-Os plays a blockbuster concert for UrbanAIDS tonight at the famed Ricoh Stadium. The event is in preparation for World AIDS Day on December 1, 2004. K-Os will be joined by Alicia Keys, Keshia Chanté, Swollen Members and Nelly Furtado. The charity show is expected to draw upwards of 10,000 fans, though less than 10 ticket holders admit to liking the Swollen Members. All proceeds go to HIV/AIDS charities such as The......