Misconductin’ Thangs

Maestro Fresh-Wes, the first Juno rap winner. Photo by Steve Carty.

In the beginning — i.e., 1991 — the decision by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences to present a Juno award for Rap Recording of the Year seemed like a smart, if obvious, idea. With hip hop bounding up the world’s music charts, CARAS had every excuse to honour Canada’s contributions to the rap game. The category started strong: Maestro Fresh-Wes certainly earned the inaugural trophy for his anthemic Symphony in Effect; a year later, he lost what must have been a close decision to the Dream Warriors’s My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style.

Then came 1993. The Maestro copped his third consecutive nomination, but also his second consecutive defeat, this time to Devon, a.k.a. Mr. Metro, a two-hit wonder who instructed his fans to Keep It Slammin’. That alone is no calamity. Toss in the nomination of Organized Rhyme, though, and one has to wonder if lunatics had taken over the Academy. OR, it pains to recall, was how comedian Tom Green found his first 15 seconds of fame, rapping as MC Bones. (Green’s rhyming skills? On par with his acting chops: “I lay more chicks than Mother Goose / Pass the OJ, ’cause I got juice.”) Their novelty hit Check the OR had all the artistic merit of Kris Kross crossed with Marky Mark, but won CARAS’s heart anyways.

What should have been a one-time gaffe started a trend: from 1993 onward, the history of the Junos’ rap category reads like a dramedy of errors. (Nominees for the rap category are not determined by sales numbers, and are chosen by a “panel of experts;” winners are voted on by CARAS’s members. Last year, there were 1,632 eligible voters.) Among the lowlights:

1994

And the Juno goes to... You must be kidding. Too Bad To Be True, a quartet of smooth-cheeked Toronto teens (their eldest member was 16 at the time), claimed the hardware for their single One Track Mind — despite should-have-been-obvious questions about the fitness of young boys flipping lines like, “This goes out to all you girls out there with a one track mind / ’cause girls like you are hard to find.”

CARAS’s bigger boo-boo, though, was failing to nominate Snow in the Juno rap category. (He won the reggae award that year.) Granted, Snow — an Irish roughneck who performed in a put-on West Indian patois (“Pure black people man that’s all I-man know / Yeah, me shoes are-a tear up an-a my toes used to show-a / Where me-a born in-a the one Toronto ”) — was basically the northern Vanilla Ice, but he moved records like no Canadian urban performer before or since. His smash single Informer, a slick mix of dancehall, hip hop and pop, sold eight million copies worldwide. Stumping for the song feels like backing Titanic as a legit Oscar winner, but TBTBT’s victory? Simply too bad to be true.

1998-1999

Rap at the Junos plunged to rock bottom in 1998 when Vancouver’s Rascalz publicly declined their trophy for their album Cash Crop. Reason? In this and preceding years, the show’s producers omitted urban music categories (i.e., rap and R&B) from the televised portion of the awards ceremony. “[The award] feels like a token gesture towards honouring the real impact of urban music in Canada,” Rascalz member Misfit explained backstage.

A year later, Rascalz returned with a roar, this time taking the stage alongside peers Kardinal Offishall, Choclair, Checkmate and Thrust to perform their posse banger Northern Touch. The act sizzled; the rappers claimed a Juno later that night for the song on live TV. Juno host Mike Bullard, however, rescued defeat from the jaws of victory, joking about hip hop as the sound of a “drive-by shouting.” The CBC’s cameras cut to the scowling faces of Rascalz et al.

2001

Heading into the 2001 ceremony, Kardinal Offishall seemed poised for coronation as the nation’s newest rhyming hero: the Toronto dynamo was nominated for his own single, Husslin’, then again with Baby Blue Soundcrew for Money Jane. Kardinal was featured in the urban music tribute that preceded the rap category’s (televised) presentation — but was then caught on camera, mouth agape, as the Juno went to... Swollen Members, a duo from Vancouver that, at the time, was little-known outside their home city... for an album released in 1999.

“What bothered me about that night was how my crew was treated,” Offishall later told Toronto’s NOW Magazine. “We were told by the people running the Junos that I was going to win. That was the reason we were sitting in the audience. [The organizers] were like, ‘After you win, go here and then go here to do your press.’”

2004

The rap category has received intermittent screen time in the years since Northern Touch. Last year’s winner, Choclair, thanked his mother twice in his acceptance speech. His fans had to read about it later: rap was omitted from the ceremony’s broadcast lineup.

2005

This Sunday, expect Offishall to take another stiff-arm at the Junos. His nominated album, Kill Bloodclott Bill, Vol. 1, is the strongest work of his career. Look for it to get passed over, though, when the Juno goes to k-os’s chart-topping, hot-selling Joyful Rebellion.

Or not. All predictions are, of course, pure speculation — but anyone ringing a bookie right now should remember that Kyprios, nominated for the album Say Something, is new, from Vancouver and tight with Swollen Members.

Matthew McKinnon writes about the arts for CBC.ca.