Page "Canadian hip hop" Paragraph 2

Even if a Canadian hip hop artist could get signed to a record label at all, it was very difficult for them to get widespread exposure — even if their music videos were played on MuchMusic, many artists still couldn't get their records into stores or played on the radio.

Although a few Canadian hip hop artists did break through to mainstream success around 1990, and a few Canadian acts such as Maestro Fresh-Wes, Main Source and Dream Warriors even gained cult-status recognition internationally from the underground hip hop scene, through much of the following decade, Canadian hip hop acts experienced a slowdown without any significant artists breaking through to the mainstream — although many hip hop musicians continued to record and tour, not one Canadian hip hop song reached even the Top 100 on a Canadian pop chart between 1992 and 1998.

Beginning in 1998, however, a sequence of events spurred by the anthemic collaborative single " Northern Touch " finally brought hip hop back into the mainstream of Canadian music.