Northside Hip Hop Archives

Northside Hip Hop Archive (NSHH) is a digital collection of Canadian hip-hop history and culture. This site is a living archive, which means they are always in the process of digitizing, cataloguing and engaging communities across the country. NSHH envision themselves as an archive and a counter archive: one that attempts to disrupt some of the traditional ways in which archiving has been imagined, to the benefit of Canadian culture and the global hip hop community.

In 2010, Northside Hip Hop began with a desire to preserve elements of Toronto hip hop history that were not on the internet and thus unknown to young people who acquire their information online. In the last decade, Northside Hip Hop has grown into a nationally focused digital archive with collections held at partner facilities and an active artist collective.

Nshharchive.ca is an online archive that aims to capture the many oral histories that best embody the essence of hip hop’s youthful exuberance in the 1980s & 90s. By digitizing oral histories, event flyers, posters and analog recordings, nshharchive.ca takes seriously the accomplishments and hidden histories of Canadian hip hop and is interested in providing resources for future generations of hip hoppers. Emerging out of the rumble that was the South Bronx in the 1970s, the cultural phenomenon now known as hip hop is clearly a defining feature of this generation. Despite its current multi-billion-dollar yield, hip hop’s humble origins reveal much of its revolutionary potential and appeal.