Belly Leads The Revolution In Canadian Hip-Hop

By Steve McLean

Belly is the first independent Canadian hip-hop artist to receive a gold certification this century in recognition of his two-disc album The Revolution selling 50,000 copies domestically.

But life hasn't always been this good for the young man, who was born in Palestine and left his battle-scarred homeland as a child, only to turn to drug-dealing as a teenager in his adopted hometown of Ottawa. But his love of hip-hop got him off the streets and, after releasing three mixtapes and establishing himself as a songwriter and producer while still in his teens and early twenties, he released The Revolution in June — the same month as his clip for "Pressure" (featuring Ginuwine) won a MuchMusic Video Award for best rap video.

It was a bit of a risk releasing a double-album as his debut, and there are 28 songs on it. Disc one (dubbed The People) features songs about politics, poverty, sex and street life. The second CD (The System) is more about having a good time. Combined, they express the different facets of the prolific artist.

"I couldn't do it no other way," Belly says of putting all that material in one package. "I had too much to say and too little time to say it all on one album."

Revolution is also notable for the high-profile guests who appeared on it. Aside from Ginuwine, it features contributions from hip-hop and R&B stars Fabolous, Scarface, Kurupt, Nina Sky, Mario Winans, Monique and Belly's CP Records labelmate and fellow Ottawa resident, Massari.

"You've got to have a combination of good business and good music," says Belly, in explaining how a relatively unknown Ottawa artist could attract big-name American artists as collaborators. "It's the business that will get you into the door as far as contacts go. Then once people hear the music, and they like it, they have no problem working with you."

In addition to "Pressure," Belly has made five other videos of songs from The Revolution and plans on doing two more. While they've received valuable play on music television, those channels now largely focus more on specialty programming than playing videos. But that doesn't worry Belly.

"Videos put a face to the voice," he says. "Videos give people a chance to relate and understand who I am.

"As great as MuchMusic and MTV and BET are, the greatest exposure now for videos and that type of content is the internet. At the end of the day, there can be specialty programming on those TV channels all day, but there are six billion people who live in this world and three billion of them probably have computers. You won't get three billion people to watch you, but the potential is there."

What makes Belly's success in the music business even more impressive is that he's hard of hearing in his right ear.

"I turn my left ear to the music when I'm listening to it," he reveals. "If I plug my left ear, it's pretty hard for me to hear."

Belly believes that the problem may have developed from listening to music at a high volume through headphones. He now takes more precautions with his hearing.

Belly has come a long way in both his life and his career, and he says he'd like that to set an example for young people.

"My main theme is that I came from a place where survival is almost impossible. But not only did I survive, I made it here. I made it up the ladder when I got to Canada and made it to where I am. Nothing is impossible."