Buyers Outside Canada and the US, Click Here
ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY
The MegaCityHipHop.Com Compilation CD is finally here. The disc features 15 tracks by
15 different artists from across the GTA (see tracklisting to the right).
The CD is available for order here on MCHH for the low price of $10. Everyone in Canada or the United States who places an order through our site will receive FREE shipping. If you reside anywhere else, shipping is still only $2 per CD.
The compilation is also available at various other online websites and retail stores as listed below.
 
 
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Preview the album at Last.FM
1. Roti - Good Morning Toronto
(prod. Jmilla Productions)
www.myspace.com/enterthedot
2. Sporadic - Foundation
(prod. Tyme)
www.myspace.com/sporadicthedarkpoet
3. KJ - Couple Dollars
(ft. Castkit & Dylon) (prod. Dylon)
www.myspace.com/kjmusiconline
4. General - Black Spaceship
(prod. Rush)
www.bornhungry.net
5. Freeze - You Can Never Get Too High
(ft. Doxx, Psy & Young Fam) (prod. Freeze)
www.listenclosemg.com
6. Adversaree - You Ain't Never
(prod. Sinima)
www.myspace.com/adversareeteamfresh
7. Eternia - The Mega
(prod. M-Phazes)
www.urbnet.com/eternia
8. Rhythmicru - Smoke the Night Away
(prod. D-Ray)
www.rhythmicru.ca
9. Angerville - Dear Dad
(prod. Gamshooter)
www.myspace.com/angervilleforever
10. The Impressionistz - Fake Art
(ft. Sharky) (prod. Lazy Ace)
www.myspace.com/theimpressionistz
11. Mike Alan - What You Want
(ft. Promise) (prod. Mike Alan)
www.myspace.com/mikealanmusic
12. Tru-Paz - Hotel Hell
(prod. DJ Unknown)
www.tru-paz.com
13. Cale Sampson - Fed Up
(prod. Classified)
www.myspace.com/calesampson
14. Mic Boogie - You Should
(ft. Renny Holladae) (prod. Bazill "Rush" McIntosh)
www.micboogiemusic.com
15. R-Tripz - Stop Frontin'
(ft. Erik Flowchild) (prod. Mccallaman)
www.myspace.com/rtripz
CD Also Available at:
Online:
Amazon - www.amazon.com
CD Baby - cdbaby.com/cd/megacityhiphop
eBay - www.ebay.ca
eMusic - www.emusic.com
iTunes - www.itunes.coma>
LaLa - www.lala.com
Mumbles Hip Hop - www.mumbleshiphop.com
Rhapsody - www.rhapsody.com
UndergroundHipHop.com - undergroundhiphop.com
Toronto, ON:
Beatz 2 Da Streetz
Play De Record: 357-A Yonge St.a>
London, ON:
Grooves - 353 Clarence St.
REVIEWS
MegacityHipHop.com (Indie) Rating: 4 out of 5
We are well past the point where the overflowing talent in Toronto has no choice but to take matters into their own hands, doing what the major labels are unallowed to: sustain our local hip hop culture by exposing what's underneath the surface. Roti's sentimental praises for Caribana and Dundas Square are nice, enhanced by some surgical turntablism. Sporadic gets gully over some cinematic, sinister Tyme production, defining the fundamentals of artistic progress quite succinctly. Freeze, Doxx, Psy and Young Fam sound like they're just fucking around, yet still entertain with You Can Never Get Too High. Adversaree gets serious like that Dim Sum DJ, before Eternia waxes nostalgic about the Beat Junkie and Canadian humility in general. D-Ray's production skills are improving nicely, giving Rhythmicru a lushious tapestry to smoke the night away to. Trupaz's Hotel Hell still sounds like the mafia music made for Papillon. Dorc polishes this product until it glistens; only a couple of the 15 songs fail to impress. And though the packaging isn't particularly compelling, don't overlook this compilation, as it exists among the best collections of Canadian hip hop to be made in the new millennium.
AS
Matt Eagleson runs megacityhiphop.com, a website dedicated to hip-hop in Toronto. In late 2007, he made a decision to release what is now known as the MegaCityHipHop.Com Compilation. In early 2008, Eagleson put out a call for submissions and then arranged the album after selecting the tracks he felt worked best together. What he’s come up with is a 15-track album that cuts a wide swath across the Toronto hip-hop landscape. The tracks cover a variety of subject matter, from a fantasy of life on the run in “Fed Up” by Cale Sampson to Angerville’s love for their respective fathers in “Dear Dad.” Two tracks in particular stand out because they focus on Toronto. Roti’s “Good Morning Toronto” is a positive, upbeat-sounding track that covers many aspects of the city, from traffic to sports, in just three minutes. “The Mega” by Eternia is unique in that it offers her thoughts on the positive elements of Toronto from afar, as she spends a significant portion of her time in the U.S. This is a commendable venture from Eagleson and it comes off sounding pretty good.
By Neil Acharya
exclaim.ca
3/5
While it would have been a nice surprise to come across the experimental sounds of an emcee like Mindbender or the aggressive raps of someone like Modulok amongst Mega City’s 15 tracks of mellow, mid-tempo boom bap and straight forward rap styles, the trade off is a highly cohesive compilation that contains its fair share of highlights. General has been making some noise with his soul-tinged cruising anthem “Black Spaceship,” as has Angerville with their somber ode to their fathers, “Dear Dad.” Eternia, who has made the move to the U.S. to advance her music career, drops a nostalgic love song of sorts for her hometown with “The Mega.” Two of the best beats come courtesy of Tru-Paz, who put a wicked Spanish guitar-laced beat to good use on “Hotel Hell,” and Rhythmicru, who get the most quirky for their stoner anthem “Smoke the Night Away.” And for something a little more hype, Sporadic’s “Foundation” pays respect to the roots and elements of hip hop, while KJ, Castkit and Dylon drop some freestyle-like braggadocio on the horn-y “Couple Dollars.” MegaCityHipHop.com may play it a little too safe with their first compilation of Toronto-based hip hop, but it is a good starting point that is unlikely to scare away any potential fans of the city’s hip hop scene. If you like what you hear here, you might want to try and dig a little deeper for a bigger cross-section of the hip hop this city has to offer. [Thomas Quinlan]
urbnet.com
I know what it's like to live in a city that doesn't get the respect it deserves. I live in an area known respectfully as the armpit of California, renowned for its raisins and not much else. When people think of my hometown, they conjure up images of backwardness and poverty, and, presumably, lots of grapes. Toronto has a different kind of image problem. If anything, it's too damn perfect, lacking in many of the noticeable flaws that hip hop prides itself on critiquing. Canadians have universal health care, a higher standard of living, and cleaner air, or so we're told, lending to everyone north of the border an aura of competence and normalcy that we in the States can only mock as lacking in the spice-of-life variety that we use as a code word for abject fucking poverty and abysmal living conditions.
As with the stereotypes about my neck of the woods, I'm sure most of these are misrepresentations that are vastly out of touch with reality, but they shape our perception of the area anyway. The result is a general disdain for the mere idea of Canadian hip hop, and when Clear Channel radio stations (read: ALL radio stations) refuse to play anything to disprove our beliefs, we go on unimpeded in our false sense of superiority.
Enter Mega City Hip Hop. Their website proclaims, "We are well past the point where the overflowing talent in Toronto has no choice but to take matters into their own hands." The answer they present to this conundrum is "MegaCityHipHop.com," a 15-track compilation by various artists bubbling beneath the surface in the Toronto scene. What this album makes immediately apparent is the love these artists possess for the music they make. From word choice and syllable placement to the sound quality of each snare drum and crash cymbal. Hip hop is clearly a craft they take seriously, and that alone is worthy of respect.
The beats are the backbone of the compilation, and they consistently keep your head bobbing. The style is low-key – in the same vein as underground east coast stuff circa 1994 but without much of the darker edge – full of smoothed out samples layered with delicate touches like tinkling bells and set off with on point scratching. The most impressive thing is not just how good the beats are all the way through, but how well they all fit together into a cohesive album. This is no mean feat on a compilation album that features fifteen different producers on fifteen different songs, but the music flows effortlessly. If you didn't know any better, you might think there was one mastermind behind the boards here. Instead, there is a wealth of Toronto talent on display, from the piano-laced bounce of "The Mega" (by M-Phazes) to the Freestyle Fellowship-worthy jazz aesthetic on "Smoke the Night Away" (by D-Ray).
The Mega City MCs hold up their end of the bargain as well, with precise flows and sharp rhyme skills. Roti opens things up with the first of many homages to the T-dot, professing his love of everything from the Caribana street fest to Friday rush hour traffic, while Cale Simpson spins a Bonnie & Clyde tale about a young couple dreaming of more and "dreaming of leaving that small town behind." There are very few, if any, weak performances on the mic, which is further testament to the album's consistency and cohesiveness, but if there is a knock here, it's to be found in a general lack of personality. Every rapper performs just fine, but when it's over you'll be hard pressed to pick any of them out of a line-up. That certain swagger that puts a tight MC over the top is missing from many of these songs, so that when a charismatic performance comes along, you stand up and take notice. This tends to occur when the vibe switches up from the breezy, free-flowing mood to the more straightforward, harder knocking stuff. The Freeze track "You Can Never Get Too High" featuring Doxx, Psy, and Young Fam boasts a sparse beat of a funky bassline and intermittent vibes, which provides the MCs with plenty of room to verbally gesticulate about the pursuit of a good time. They're not talking about anything that deep, but the singing has a nice Lyrics Born inflection and the raps play with the beat to perfection. Another track with a simplified swag is "Couple Dollars," where the line-up of KJ, Castkit,, and Dylon spits some borderline inane raps but has a rollicking good time doing it. The plodding horns and barely there drums don't hurt, either, in keeping things new. Then there are the more traditional lyrical efforts that just plain old blow your socks off, as Mike Alan does on the self-produced thinker "What You Want," where he writes rhyme schemes so intricate that you can almost lose their path, only to be wowed when everything finally comes together.
"MegaCityHipHop.com" is a strong effort from a skilled bunch of musicians who easily deserve more shine than they're getting. The producers especially put on a show, making you wonder why you haven't heard more of these names before. It's rarely spectacular, but it is always a pleasure to listen to, which is more than you can say for a lot of the crap we claim as our own in the good old U.S. of A.
as reviewed by Emilee Woods
Music Vibes: 7.5 of 10 Lyric Vibes: 7 of 10 TOTAL Vibes: 7 of 10
rapreviews.com
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