The Canadian hip hop scene was established in the 1980s. Through a variety of factors, it developed much slower than Canada's popular rock music scene, and apart from a short-lived burst of mainstream popularity from 1989 to 1991, it remained largely an underground phenomenon until the early 2000s.
Canada's multicultural and multilingual fabric has given rise to various subgenres, including Indigenous, French, and Punjabi Canadian hip hop. Also notable is the influence of Caribbean rhythms in creating a sound unique to Toronto.[1]
In the early 1990s, Canadian hip hop artists like Maestro Fresh-Wes, Main Source, and Dream Warriors were popular in the underground hip hop scene. In 1998, the collaborative single "Northern Touch" brought hip hop back into the Canadian mainstream. Since the 2000's, Canadian hip hop saw a rise to mainstream success led by Drake, and to a lesser extent Nav, Kardinal Offishall, and Tory Lanez.[2]
