Image via Complex Original
To outsiders, Torontonians burst onto the global hip-hop scene out of nowhere. Churning out hit after chart-topping hit, homegrown darlings Drake and The Weeknd are now familiar faces to even casual music fans, but photographer Ajani Charles wants to show the world that there's much more to The 6ix than these boldfaced names.
Charles, 31, has been documenting the evolution of Toronto's hip-hop community for a decade, capturing tens of thousands of black-and-white photos of local musicians, dancers, graffiti artists, entrepreneurs, and more. His goal? To create a comprehensive "photographic documentary," called Project T Dot, which looks at the community's history since its inception.
"It's going to be hard because not only do I want to feature the most well-known and influential members of Toronto's hip-hop community, I also want to include some of the lesser-known and obscure and maybe sometimes ignored members of Toronto's hip-hop community," Charles told NTRSCTN.
Women, members of the LGBTQ and aboriginal communities, youth from underserved neighborhoods, and new immigrants will be among the more than 100 people profiled, he added.
Entirely self-funded, Charles hopes to complete Project T Dot by the end of 2016, and publish his photos and accompanying interviews in a book next year.
Charles sat down with NTRSCTN to discuss his project, and provided these never-before-seen photos of Drake and other members of Toronto's hip-hop community.
NTRSCTN: What motivated you to start Project T Dot?
Charles: The combination of my passion for hip-hop and the fact that the Toronto market was so saturated ... and also my love for photojournalism—so storytelling through photography and words—also factored and motivated me to create a project that was unique to me, that has never been created in the history of Toronto or elsewhere. ...I felt really passionate about learning more from the city's hip-hop scene, and telling the stories of the individuals that made up that scene—stories that had never been told at that point, and many of which are still unknown to the masses.
Why is Project T Dot still in development after 10 years?
Because Toronto's hip-hop community got so complicated, because there were so many radical developments within Toronto's hip-hop community—obviously in music and in other ways, too. ...Only now am I ready to wrap things up, but even then, I need more resources to do that.
What has been the biggest change in Toronto's hip-hop scene?
A decrease in the funding attributed to the arts, especially urban arts in Canada, was a huge thing that I noticed. ...Seeing the budget shrinking in the urban arts and in the hip-hop community, the government-funded programs shrinking, those were major developments. The individuals featured in my documentary just getting older and having huge paradigm shifts was very impactful. Seeing individuals who quit being hip-hop artists—regardless of whether they were dancers or musicians or whatever—because they were never able to turn it into a sustainable career; they got frustrated and just quit. Seeing an artist like Drake, seeing him go from a somewhat successful underground artist to where he's at now—when you see that first-hand—was a pretty amazing development to say the least.
Sounds like this lack of funding is a negative development.
It's totally a negative change. Less funding for the urban arts, less funding for hip-hop, less funding for marginalized people and people of color who were involved in the arts have happened over the years. And I've witnessed this first-hand.
Why is highlighting marginalized groups in Project T Dot important to you?
Because hip-hop culture is incredibly diverse, incredibly multifaceted and involves a lot of different cultures and influences. It's not just, you know, the typical African-American male archetype. In Canada, that's especially true. I think Toronto's one of the most diverse hip-hop communities that has ever come to fruition. Being from Toronto, including all aspects of the culture was an important part of the manifesto for me.
How did Drake's involvement in these programs affect his career?
Drake is a product of many of the programs that [over the past 10 years] haven't been able to acquire the type of funding they undoubtedly deserve. ...I think he recorded his first couple of mixtapes at The Remix Project, which is probably one of the best examples of an urban arts organization that does profoundly great things, and that is an amazing representation of what Canadian youth can do. Organizations like that should have the biggest budgets imaginable—and they don't.
So, Drake is a product of a time in Toronto's hip-hop community when it had lots of support. Do you think he would've achieved the same level of success if he started out now, considering that funding is poor?
No, he wouldn't. Again, The Remix Project is a huge catalyst in regards to his early career, and if it didn't exist at the time that it existed in, and if The Remix Project didn't have the funding that it had at that time, Drake would not be where he's at today. He wouldn't have met the people that he needed to become good friends with to get his career off of the ground.
Can you give some background on these shots of Drake?
Those ones were shot at the Sound Academy. I was on stage with Drake, and it was his first solo sold-out show in Toronto. To me, it's like the most important moment of his entire career because it was the first time that he was easily able to sell out a venue of that size in Toronto, and it was just undeniable at that point how big he was going to become. It was just—after shooting Project T Dot for about three years at that point, I had never seen a reaction to a musician in Toronto like the reactions I saw that night.
How did you get that close to him on stage?
It was just the result of all of my relationships from shooting Project T Dot, making it possible for me to be on stage with him, shooting like no photographer today. Even the photographers that he's incredibly good friends with could never get that close to him just because it would disrupt his performance today. He performs on such huge stages now. I was so close to him, it was almost like a security issue. ...They put all his best friends from Toronto's hip-hop community on stage with him that night, as well as his childhood friends, so that was really cool to see that he was at that point—he still is—but at that point especially, he was very much connected to Toronto's hip-hop scene. ...He put so many of those talented men and women on stage, almost as a symbol to himself that, "Yeah, this is what I represent. This is where I came from and I would never have gone to where I am today without the direct and indirect influence of these people and what they represented."
Your photos are really intimate; how did you get such great access to all these artists and venues?
Toronto's hip-hop community is small. To an outsider, they would look at great graffiti artists like Skam or an amazing emcee like Drake, or an amazing singer like The Weeknd, or any one of the amazing breakdancers in our city, and maybe there'd be a disconnect there. They might think to themselves: How would I even be able to connect or speak to that person? But from my perspective, and from shooting Project T Dot, Toronto's hip-hop community is very small. Everyone—especially when I first started shooting—everyone was easily accessible when I told them what I wanted to do and when I showed them my photographs. It was really, "Hey, I want to tell the entire story of Toronto's hip-hop community. Are you going to be in the studio next week? Can I meet up with you? Can I interview you [and] take some pictures?' And 99 percent of the time, it was like, 'Yeah, this is what I'm doing and let's meet up."
Graffiti artist Skam in front of his store, Homebase, in 2013. / Image via Ajani Charles
The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.