That’s an important distinction, because the real Toronto has problems just like any other city: rising inequality, a budget that’s tougher to wrangle every year, infrastructure deficits and transit planning woes, and an identity crisis that’s bubbled beneath its surface for almost two decades.
Like many hip-hop locales, it’s a city closer to the realm of theory-and fantasy-than reality.
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His mythological Toronto is a metropolis where everyone knows your name and exes are always lurking around the corner, a forest of penthouses with a panoramic view, a park-studded playground where the skies are free of ambient light and the highways are always clear. Rappers and producers from the 6 are getting more attention, and a new generation of artists now have a career to emulate and a legend to chase. No MC has ever attempted to play tourism director on such a grand scale for Toronto, a city more renowned for its hockey players and indie rock collectives, but Drake’s mission is proving to be a success.
Dre’s dispatches from the streets of Compton, to OutKast’s sketches of a colorful, creatively vibrant Atlanta. His intense civic boosterism isn’t particularly novel in itself: Rappers have been writing love letters to their cities and building rose-colored landscapes in their music for decades, from Dr.