Photo by Jake Kivanç
About a year ago, Toronto's Flow 93.5 radio station became 93.5 The Move and adjusted their playlist to focus on 90s and 00s pop hits after years as the city's premier urban format station. It was a bummer for local rap and R&B artists, who were already struggling with an infrastructure that did not support or was outright hostile to their chosen genre. The rebrand essentially meant that Toronto now officially had no centralized rap radio, which was distressing in a time when the scene received an influx of attention from outside its borders.Recently, NOW reported that 93.5 would be reintroducing contemporary rap into their lineup. The station's operations manager Steve Parsons told NOW that "Trends in music have changed significantly in the last couple of years and the rise of hip-hop is a big part of that," and he cited the rise of Cardi B, Post Malone, and Kendrick Lamar as examples, also stating that no radio station in Toronto has been playing them.This assumption that hip-hop is only vital now, in a year where the genre has dominated streaming, is a callous and capitalistic one. The hasty rebrand also really makes 93.5's programmers look as though they're playing catch-up and were caught off-guard by a "new" trend that's been around since at least 2014. That being said, it's better late than never for Toronto to finally adopt rap on the radio, but it's still disheartening that it took inescapable number one hits by the likes of Cardi or Post to prove that it was even worth playing.And that's not even mentioning the biggest test; whether the new new 93.5 plays not only superstar American artists but also local artists that aren't Drake. According to NOW, Parsons cites Daniel Caesar, Belly, Alessia Cara, and PartyNextDoor as examples of cutting-edge Canadian urban Canadian acts. These are all already big names, but it's a start. Branching out into hyper-local future stars is the next step and an important one if 93.5 wants to be relevant.Phil is on Twitter.
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