THRUST on the History of Canadian Hip Hop

As an artist coming out of the T-Dot, THRUST has held an important role as one of the early pioneers that helped cultivate and develop the culture of hip hop to where it is today. Long before Drake became a worldwide phenom, it was rappers like Thrust who were doing their part to shift this underground movement into mainstream.

“Toronto is a very special place in the history of hip. A lot of people don’t really know because we only caught the light obviously in the last 5-7 years with Drake’s movement. And before that we hit with the “Northern Touch”which was the first one that was on an international level. But before that, its been here since the late 70’s and 80’s because we’re one of those cities that’s super close to New York. Even me, all my hip hop, all my growth, all my whole thing is because I was always travelling to New York. How it started was people like me that had family in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan – we just be going there since we were kids and we kept hearing the music and we would bring it back on mixtapes.”

THRUST

Check out this interview with THRUST as he offers up some historical perspective on the birth of hip hop in Toronto as well as touch on the mega smash single, “Northern Touch” which he did in collaboration with Checkmate, Kardinal Offishall,  Rascalz and Choclair. Northern Touch goes down as one of the most important songs in the history of Canadian hip hop.