Each month, we will speak to an athlete, celebrity, designer, or non-Hip Hop entertainer about what Hip Hop means to them. This feature is intended to showcase how far-reaching the influence of Hip Hop culture has grown in the past 50 years and how much the culture means to so many.
This month, we spoke with Raine Maida, tech entrepreneur and frontman for legendary multi-platinum Canadian Rock band Our Lady Peace.
Emerging from Toronto in the early 1990s, Maida led Our Lady Peace to massive commercial and critical success with seminal albums like Naveed and Clumsy, solidifying his place as a defining voice of Canadian alternative rock and selling tens of millions of records.
Beyond his massive musical legacy, which includes solo projects and extensive songwriting collaborations with his wife, Chantal Kreviazuk, Maida is a passionate humanitarian, a recipient of the Order of Canada, and a forward-thinking entrepreneur.”
SO RAINE MAIDA, WHAT DOES HIP HOP MEAN TO YOU?
“My relationship with Hip Hop is really a relationship with language. Artists like Mos Def ,Saul Williams and Talib Kweli taught me to treat every syllable like it earns its place . I learned that the space between words matters as much as the words themselves. That discipline changed how I hear melody. Artists like Sage Francis have the ability to tell stories more prolific & expansive in one verse than most artists in an entire album.
I grew up on the beat poets, but some of the greatest wordsmiths have come from Hip Hop, and that influence continues to find its way into my music to this day.”
Follow Raine Maida on Instagram.
