Mustafa The Poet commissioned some of Toronto’s brightest stars to speak candidly about the city’s growing gun violence. Against a black backdrop Rax, Gilla and the Six-God himself Drake, all discuss losing a peer senselessly to the streets.
Titled Remember Me, Toronto the somber 11-minute documentary shed a light on the emotional after effect gun violence has on the victim’s loved ones. “They don’t know the pain I’ve been through,” Boogz from Malvern said. “The friends I’ve lost.”
Drake attributed the city’s violence–which boasts more than 98 homicides and 406 shootings in 2018, making it Toronto’s bloodiest year on record– to feuds passed down generationally. “In a lot of the situations in the city it’s passed down by elders, people don’t even know the logistics of the beef or why or what really happened, it’s just I am conditioned to hate this area of this group of people, ” he said.
While street life may be glamorized in some artist’s music, Baka NotNice noted the consequences of that lifestyle are far from braggadocious.“You know that feeling when you get the cuffs put on you and you get put in the back of the car. It’s not a game when that happens It’s for real,” he said.
The “God’s Plan” rapper also discussed the power street credibility has on the male ego. “It’s a daunting path to try and be the biggest and baddest from your ends,” Drake said.
Reflectively, Gilla said all this death could be a great teacher in a perfect world.
“I wish we could push a button so that everyone we lost to street life, they’re back, but everything that happened that led up to this sh*t we can remember, and all the pain and sh*t that we still felt we can still feel it and now we have a chance to be like ‘Yo, do we really want to do this sh*t again?’
Check out Remember Me, Toronto Shebib scored documentary above.
