Kardinal Offishall To Boycott Future Junos
Monday April 03, 2006 @ 07:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Kardinal Offishall

Kardinal Offishall is considered by many to be Canada's official hip-hop ambassador, but his diplomatic tenure at the Juno Awards has officially come to an end.

The rapper says he's never going to attend a Juno Awards show ever again.

"I'm not going to be the Juno's monkey no more," he said from the red carpet of Sunday evening's Juno Awards broadcast. "I'm not coming back any more."

Offishall, who has one win for the six Juno nominations he's garnered since 1997, cites Canadian hip-hop's low profile at this year's awards as the catalyst for his decision.

"Really, to me it's really atrocious what they do to hip-hop in this country and what they do for the artists," he said. "And it's one of those things, I just feel like the token hip-hop artist from Canada."

This isn't the first time a Canuck hip-hopper has had issue with the Junos. Back in 1998, Vancouver group the Rascalz refused to accept their best rap recording award because they felt that the genre had been marginalized and kept off the televised portion of the awards show due to racism.

This year, although dance act Massari, R&B; songstress Divine Brown and American hip-hoppers Black Eyed Peas all had performing slots during the show, no urban music awards were actually presented in front of a TV audience.

"For urban music in this country, I mean, not only was hip-hop not televised, but also reggae and R&B;," said Offishall. "To me, it's sickening — and then they have the nerve to bring in a hip-hop act [Black Eyed Peas] from outside the country. I just had enough.

"The Black Eyed Peas are huge and if I was getting paid as much by the Junos as they were getting paid, I'd be here too," he said. "It has nothing to do with the Black Eyed Peas."

Offishall had performed to a music industry audience during the Saturday evening non-televised Juno Awards gala ceremony and also teamed with Sophia Milman to present the artist of the year award to Michael Buble on the TV show.

"They had me perform last night and give away the award — to me it's all a farce," he said. "I really can't put up with it anymore.

"It's not even that it's embarrassing, it's just disappointing. It doesn't matter what you do in this country, for me anyway, they don't recognize what I do.

"It's just a bunch of garbage so I won't be a part of it anymore."

—Aaron Brophy