Two summers ago, Canada was a weird fucking place. Not only were we in the midst of a deadly global pandemic that forced us into an unprecedented worldwide quarantine but, due to the graphic state-sponsored murder of George Floyd, white people seemingly had a revelation that violent racial prejudice was actually still a thing. But, white people discovering racism isn’t what made shit weird because, historically, white people always rediscover racialized brutality despite Black and Brown folks constant cries for help (like in the 60’s after Black Sunday). What was interesting was the corporate white response to this tragedy. While it’s typical for liberal white allies to stand in solidarity with the Black community during times like that, what was unusual was the white corporate conservative response. Shit, not only did white people discover racism and pledge to help fight it, but large corporations even went as far as committing themselves, on record, to creating massive change in their own corporate structures.

And then, four months later, Canada lost it’s only Black-owned radio station.

With the sale of G98.7 to Neeti P. Ray, many of us saw the writing on the wall for what was to come next for Black radio in Canada, despite CRTC mandates about ensuring the station continued an “urban” format for Black-Canadians. While G98.7 retaining it’s format by merging with FLOW 93.5 (Canada’s first Black owned station) may have been a bit of a surprise for the average Black radio listener in Toronto, watching our already meagre options be marginalized even further was not surprising at all.

For me, a Black Canadian man born to two Bajan parents who has been actively listening to hip-hop since 1989, I always knew that white folks didn’t really want us to be on air like that in this country. In that very same year I found hip-hop, Denham Jolly’s Milestone Radio applied to the CRTC for an urban radio station and were passed over for country station CISS. For the next decade, urban music debuted some of the biggest stars in the history of modern music including rap legends like 2Pac, Biggie, Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, Snoop Dogg, and Eminem, and R&B legends like Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey and Boys II Men. Here in Canada, we experienced a renaissance of emerging DJ’s making international waves like Starting From Scratch, Mastermind, Baby Blue Soundcrew, and Dr. Jay, and emerging artists like Tamia, Deborah Cox, Kardinal Offishall, and Jully Black. And still, in the late 90’s, with urban music having fully broke through to mainstream success globally, Milestone Radio was denied again.

It wasn’t until 2001 that Denham and Milestone finally broke through to debut Flow 93.5 FM.

But, the question remains: if hip-hop was the fastest growing music in North America in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and urban music on a whole had broke through to achieve massive mainstream success, why the hell was it so hard for the CRTC to find one spot on the dial for us?

Well, it’s the same answer as to how an entire nation can have Black artists that are some of the biggest music stars in the entire world, and not even have one Black owned radio station: Canada does not give a shit about Black culture. Canada does not give a shit about Black art. Canada does not give a shit about Black ownership. And Canada absolutely does not give a shit about hip-hop culture, Caribbean culture, or anything they dismissively throw under the title “urban”.

While the U.S. definitely does not give a shit about African-Americans, America, at least, isn’t ignorant enough to allow their prejudice to cloud their vision of supporting urban culture. The U.S. corporate structure is starkly aware of Black American’s billion-dollar buying power and, unlike Canada, they refuse to delude themselves into thinking that Black culture is without value.

It’s a sad fucking day when we have to accept that Canada is ultimately far more prejudice than the United States.

But, in many ways, this should not be surprising. What we’ve learned about Canada’s white corporate response to the George Floyd murder is that they think the biggest favour they can provide Black folks with is creating room for our Black asses to exist in their predominantly white spaces. They actually believe that their tolerance of our existence is actually the big win for us. So just like these corporations hire Diversity & Inclusion consultants to imperceptibly impact their office culture by peppering in some more Black and Brown faces in their cubicles without addressing the overarching systemic racism that exists throughout their organization chart, Canada’s corporate entertainment ecosystem will accept exceptional Black artists like Drake and The Weeknd onto their airwaves without any thought of revamping or reshaping those spaces to be equitable and advantageous for us.

And here’s the part I think that white Canadian corporations will never get: you can’t replicate our culture. You can not replace Mark & Jemeni with any ol’ mix of folks and think you can retain the cultural authenticity they bring. You can not just throw a few Black faces into your top-40 line-up and think that will galvanize our broad cultural support. You can not fake this shit.

As much as I still think that radio is a dying medium, I also think that the problem of Canada’s corporate ecosystem effectively hating Black culture is a larger, cross-platform problem. Whatever mediums are created, this sort of thing will continue to exist as long as the importance of Black-owned, Black staffed corporate cultural entities are not publicly and privately supported.

This Is Your Conscience