Well this nice thread took a bad turn.
I think Toronto's cool and has definitely come a long way and even though it was far from where I grew up (Honolulu) -- there were a lot of music/bands/artists that were popular in Hawaii from there and pretty much unknown to most other parts of the US like Messenjah, Maestro Fresh-Wes to Snow (well before he became popular in the US with Informer, we had already been bumping Lonely Monday Morning). (Latin) Freestyle music was also very popular in Hawaii in the 80s, 90s & early 2000s with the majority coming from places like NY, Florida, California, some from Chicago & Philly but also from parts of Canada of which we knew about too like Elissa, VLA, Joee, etc. Prior to that I didn't know much about Toronto but for some reason it's music made the long journey all the way out to Honolulu back in the day & we dug it.