Marco Polo photograph by Robert Adam Mayer

Becoming a respected hip-hop producer is like being a basketball player whose team is trying to make jump shots in near darkness: it takes ages to taste even a hint of success and, when you finally do, most spectators won’t know who did it. Ask a hip-hop listener to list 10 famous tracks they’ve listened to recently, and then ask them who produced them; aside from the genre’s biggest names — Marley Marl, The Bomb Squad, Dr. Dre, DJ Premier, The Neptunes, Timbaland, J Dilla, Organized Noize — odds are that even serious fans won’t be able to name more than a handful.

In just a few years, Brooklyn-based beatmaker Marco Polo has become a known quantity in the hip-hop world, making records for titans such as KRS-One and Buckshot and Boot Camp Clik. For a producer, that’s a feat in itself. But Polo, whose real name is Marco Bruno, is an even rarer breed. He’s a Canadian hip-hop producer, and for the first time in our city’s history, he’s leading the advance guard of a group of GTA producers who are making their mark on hip-hop from behind the boards, rather than in front of them.


“When was the last time I was in Toronto? That’s a good question.”

There’s an ominous pause over the line — he’s either racking his brain, or the Skype connection carrying Marco Polo’s voice from New Zealand into my apartment has been interrupted. In the months before he scored several DJ slots on a globe-trotting tour featuring hip-hop founding father Masta Ace (of The Juice Crew, the late-’80s outfit that also gave the world Biz Markie and Big Daddy Kane) and Boston vet Edo. G, Polo shot two videos back in his native T-Dot. One was for a track from Double Barrel, a 2009 album he recorded with Brooklyn MC Torae that won top marks from the likes of XXL magazine, Unkut.com and legendary Gang Starr producer DJ Premier, as well as prominent exposure on NahRight, the linchpin of the hip-hop blogosphere.



The second video was for a cut from The eXXecution, another collaborative album — this time with Ruste Juxx — released this past March. Both albums are rife with drums as fat and heavy as wrecking balls, subtly thickening and updating the boom-bap sound of classic east-coast hip-hop; unlike most artists who position themselves in opposition to the Southern bass music– or pop-dance-influenced tracks on today’s major label hip-hop albums and urban radio stations, Polo’s tracks draw on ’90s-era east-coast rap’s ruffneck aggression.

“Sometimes you don’t have to be that lyrical,” Polo says, as I suggest that non-Top-40-oriented rappers are too focused on piously displaying their verbal dexterity. “You can just be, like, talking about how great you are, or how you want to punch someone in the face, or whatever.” Listening to Double Barrel and The eXXecution, as well as Polo’s new disc, a multi-MC project called The Stupendous Adventures of Marco Polo, it’s clear that Polo is drawn to rappers who spit grimey flows, sometimes with filthy punchlines to match. When it seems like every rapper wants to brag about how all they do is loaf around in the club cheerfully ordering bottle service, it’s not hard to appreciate a duo like D-Stroy and Bad Seed, whose “Buggin’ Out” opens Stupendous Adventures: “Fuck a bouncer, fuck a list, fuck a bartender / you fuck around, I’ll put your head through your car fender.”

The album is full of instantly classic material from names well-known to rap fans (Royce da 5’9”, Skoob of Das EFX) and newer artists whom Polo holds in high esteem, such as Skyzoo, the group Diamond District and Ruste Juxx. “Duck Down put me on to Ruste Juxx. [Label co-founder] Dru Ha encouraged me to link up with him. So I gave him a bunch of beats and he came back in four or five days with songs done. And they were good songs, it wasn’t like he was trying to impress people with, like, ‘look at these songs I made in four or five days.’”

Along with The eXXecution, which is a more-than-worthy successor to Double Barrel, Juxx also appears on Stupendous Adventures (on the heavy-hitting track “Bomb Shit”) though even he’s a veteran compared to Promise. A Torontonian-turned-New-Yorker, Promise, whose rhymes on “The Bridge” might just make it a local anthem — “home, every movie you know is probably based in / so although it’s cold, we hot like Cajun.” Polo praises the MC, saying, “He’s a young guy and he’s got a lot of energy. I’d really like to make a video for that track, because the possibilities are endless.” The question is, would the CN Tower appear at the beginning, or at the end?

While Polo might be firmly based in New York for the time being, Toronto holds a significant piece of his heart. Maybe all of it. Part of the evidence lies in his commitment to Toronto talent — unlike a lot of Snowbirds who’ve downplayed their Canadian roots, Polo made a point of featuring Kardinal Offishall on Port Authority, the producer’s 2007 debut album — and part derives from the ties he maintains. Several of the MCs and producers appearing with Polo at his CD release show at The Great Hall, dubbed “Beat Showcase: Toronto Edition” go back with him a long way, such as Shylow; when I ask about him, Polo’s tone warms noticeably.

“Shylow is my brother from another mother. He’s the executive producer on Port Authority and on all my albums. He taught me how to make beats, we were in our first rap group together, we’ve wanted to strangle each other, but now we’re a team.” Polo has also known MoSS for years, and went to high school with Frank Dukes; he and Rich Kidd, the youngest of the group, connected when Polo contacted him to compliment him on his recent work. The Toronto rap community is larger than it was, but most of its members tend to be separated by no more than one or two degrees. And with Toronto producers and MCs having unprecedented success at all levels of the American mainstream (see sidebars), it’s a network that stands to become even more powerful. Whether that might mean in a few years that an artist can work with top-notch talent on a regular basis without leaving the city, the way you can in Atlanta, LA and a handful of cities other than New York, remains to be seen.

“It’s tough, man. When I get off that plane at Pearson and I’m waiting for my people to come pick me up, I just get that feeling. But at the same time, I really like living in New York. At some point, I feel like I’ll want to come back home when the time is right. The one thing about living in New York is that you get to work with a lot of people in person, and I really like that. I don’t like doing it by email; technology is great, man, but when it comes to making music and being creative, it’s not the same.”

One of the benefits of trafficking in a style that has moved from the centre of the culture to a more niche position is that it puts you in contact with the elder statesmen. Along with his work producing for and DJing with Masta Ace, KRS-One and Sadat X of Brand Nubian, Marco Polo cites one connection in particular as having blown his mind. Stupendous Adventures features a remix of the Port Authority track “The Radar,” featuring none other than Large Professor.

“That track was one of the highlights of my life, man.” Polo is awed by the iconic New York producer who, in addition to making some of the genre’s dopest songs, ironically enough came to prominence by partnering with expat Toronto MCs Sir Scratch and K-Cut under the name Main Source to make Breaking Atoms, a 1991 album that’s still regarded as a milestone. As well as rapping on “The Radar,” Large Pro also used one of Polo’s instrumentals on his 2008 solo album, Main Source. (In fact, Polo’s beat was the only one on the album not produced by Large himself.) But perhaps the best compliment came from fans’ reactions to “The Radar,” where Large Pro spit it raw over Polo’s hard-as-a-rock instrumental.

“Some people thought that he produced that track,” Polo says. “I wasn’t offended at all.”

TEAM T-DOT
The three other GTA-based producers appearing at Marco Polo’s album launch (modelled on past Beat Lounge events) have already left their mark on hip-hop:



MoSS
BRAMPTON
Big tunes: Ghostface Killah, “Kilos”; Obie Trice, Special Reserve; Raekwon, “Have Mercy”
And what: Having placed a song on Ghostface Killah’s Fishscale amid cuts by Pete Rock and J Dilla, the doors of the industry are already open to MoSS. He’s signed to DJ Premier’s Works Of Mart label, and is working with Canadian-born, NYC–based MC Eternia on their At Last LP, which will drop soon.



Frank Dukes
TORONTO
Big tunes: 50 Cent, “Talking In Codes”; Joell Ortiz feat. Corey Gunz, “Line Em Up”; Jojo Pellegrino, Sean Price and Inspectah Deck, “Triple Homicide”
And what: He brought home the championship from the Red Bull Big Tune finals in Atlanta last year. We’ll hear his legendary bass on Sean Price’s next LP, Mic Tyson; Dukes is also working on joints for Saigon, the new Ghostface Killah disc and his solo album, which will feature Ghostface, Roc Marciano, Havoc and more.



Rich Kidd
MISSISSAUGA/TORONTO
Big tunes: Billy Danze of M.O.P. feat. Busta Rhymes, “Undescribable” (mixtape); k-os feat. Saukrates, Nelly Furtado, “I Wish I Knew Natalie Portman”
And what: Hip-hop fans in the city will know Rich Kidd from his many appearances, both spinning his own beats and as a ferocious MC. With his third volume of We On Some Rich Kidd Shit out earlier this year, featuring Kidd‘s hits plus cuts by various locals including Drake, Kidd is working closely with Saukrates on the veteran’s hotly anticipated new album, Season One.

THE 411 ON BOI-1DA
The city’s most famous MC brought his producer into the spotlight with him

Astute readers might have heard about a certain MC from Forest Hill who, ever since a little mixtape called So Far Gone happened to take off, has been in the news a couple of times. What you might not know about So Far Gone’s breakout hit, “Best I Ever Had,” is that the song’s beat — intimate, melancholy and a little bit rough — was made by a producer who’s just as much a product of the city as Drake is.

You can’t talk about Toronto hip-hop producers blowing up without mentioning Matthew Samuels, a.k.a. Boi-1da (pronounced “boy wonder”). Having already been a fixture in the local scene for years, the producer tasted international success when Drake hooked up with Lil Wayne in 2008 for “Ransom,” a Boi-1da production, turning Drake’s name into a fixture on numerous rap blogs. From there, Boi-1da’s next big break came when “Set It Off,” one of his tracks from Kardinal Offishall’s album Not 4 Sale, turned into a hit, particularly the remix featuring rapping from none other than Dr. Dre — who was reputed to be a big fan of Boi-1da’s beat.

With the storming, er, success of further Drake and Boi-1da collabs such as “Forever” (featuring Lil Wayne, Eminem and Kanye West), Boi-1da has since been tapped for songs by Rick Ross (“Money Maker”), Bun B (“Put It Down”) and even Eminem for “Not Afraid,” the lead single from his new album, Recovery.

If the group of Toronto producers hitting hip-hop is a tidal wave, then Boi-1da is riding on the crest.