Earlier this decade, Toronto was the place not to be. Pro athletes didn’t want to play here, high school kids were rocking Yankee fitteds, music – especially hip-hop – wasn’t enjoying the international acclaim it deserved and overall there was just a lack of love & pride by Toronto citizens for their own city. Fast forward to January 2012, we’re in the midst of a “Toronto movement,” influenced by motivated groups of young people – photographers, designers, visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, writers, you name it – invading every creative sector of the city’s culture and having global impact at that.
“It started when Mayor Miller approached T-Rexxx and The Remix Project to come up with a concept for how the city is going to be involved in the Caribanna parade for their 40th anniversary. T-Rexxx had the idea of ‘1 LOVE’ for a while. We did the float, we had the t-shirts, we were on TV and all of a sudden, everyone started asking us where they can get those shirts.”
He added, “I think part of that movement that we were talking about earlier, it has become intertwined with the t-shirts. People are now buying them at the shops, buying them at the pop-ups and wearing it around the world. It’s definitely a movement of young and old energetic people that are proud of the city.”
The “Toronto movement” is documented throughout every single music video that drops, every song, every piece of art made, etc. “Toronto has always been kind of held back. We’ve always had this little brother/little sister syndrome to New York and all the bigger cities that are well-known and have the history of specifically an arts and culture background. Now, people are coming here and want to know what’s happening. They’re excited about the talent coming out and I think it starts with our civic pride.
The civic pride was also a building process, as the city was somewhat known as the “screwface capital.” It’s a term that describes the aura of hate Torontonians showed to pretty much everybody, especially in the hip-hop realm. Fuck, back in 2008, there was an article written by the city’s biggest paper, The Toronto Star, that featured a music producer by the name of Marco Bruno aka Marco Polo and the first sentence you read said, “The chances of making it big in Toronto’s famously cynical hip-hop scene are about the same as being struck by lightning while holding a winning lottery ticket at a Notorious B.I.G. concert.” Obviously, hip-hop artists didn’t have it easy with the city. “ The term represents all the screwfaces we would give to performers who would come from outside of the city and think they can do a ‘whatever’ show. But that wasn’t the case. We have a very high standard for entertainment in the city. It was a word that represented a certain demographic of Toronto hip-hop culture that held the bar really high for performers, so if you sucked and you came from New York or Chicago or whatever and your show wasn’t on point, we’d let you know. We would boo, throw bottles, whatever. That was a screwface.”
Outside of hip-hop culture and looking at the civic pride of the city, it sometimes goes back to the little brother syndrome to the big name cities. “Canadians in general have this thing where we doubt ourselves a little bit or we’re not as proud as we should be as compared to someone from the states. But times have changed. Across the board, I think the energy and the spirit of what we bring to the table have been heightened.”
Times have changed for not only the city, but also for Brock. The news spread rapidly after he updated his Facebook status saying, “I’m going back to school… but this time as a teacher!” He’s now a marketing strategies professor at Humber College, the same school he graduated from years back. “I’ve been sitting on the board of the advisory committee
at Humber for the last four years and they mentioned there were some job openings coming up.
I asked what kind of jobs and said to send it my way because I’m always interested. One of the jobs was marketing and after reviewing the curriculum, I was like, ‘you know what? I can teach this.’ I’ve got enough experience in the industry and life examples to create the curriculum along with what the course outline was.”
Being a college student myself, the word, “course outline” isn’t the most exciting thing to hear on a Saturday afternoon, but to Brock he’s all about giving them advice on how to succeed in this tough industry. “I just want them to get the real deal. I’m not too much older than some of them, but I’ve been able to do a lot in my short time after graduation and I would love for them to get an understanding of the industry from the inside out. A lot of times people will have guest speakers, but maybe they’re 45, 50, 60-years-old and they have so much experience that it’s almost too much to handle and it goes over the student’s heads. But when it’s someone like you or me talking to a student that’s willing to learn, I think the outcomes are a lot more tangible,” said Brock, who added that on the first day on the job, a couple kids came up to him and asked if he was their teacher. History was made as I’m sure not too many college professors these days rock Legends League “Strangerhood” fitteds with jeans. “I was wearing that and people didn’t understand that I was the teacher at the front of the class.”
But it’s not about what you wear, but about “trying to kick knowledge” to these kids and put them on the right path. Brock’s an artist, he likes to paint, illustrate, draw, do graphic and web design as well as graffiti. This comes to no surprise that someone with such a wide variety of talents would have the knowledge to teach the younger generation. But working in other fields such as business and promoting, the question is: Why teach or mentor? “To be honest, it kind of chose me. Before I became the creative arts leader at Remix, Bryan Espiritu was the guy. Back in ’05 or ’06, he asked me if I would mentor design in his program. At that time, I was freelancing so I had some extra spare time and I said yes. After doing that, I realized there was something inside of me that really enjoyed the giving back factor or teaching someone from my perspective. Remix is
I never had someone teach me this stuff when I was a kid and I had to learn it on my own. I felt like if I could give them a jumpstart, why not. It transitioned me into getting hired here after Bryan left and now we talked about Humber – we transitioned into that as well.”
The everyday transition for Brock isn’t easy, however. He doesn’t get any sleep; he woke up in the afternoon about an hour before our interview, a day after sitting courtside at a Raptors game and partaking in some post-game partying well into the night. Call it the “Brockstar Lifestyle.” His life is a heavy rotation of teaching, business meetings, organizing events and establishing relationships with new people everyday. He hesitantly froze and started to ponder after being asked what the most rewarding accolade of his career was thus far. “I don’t think I can narrow it down to one. Everyday is incredible. Look, I’m here chilling with you on a Saturday afternoon because for some reason, you selected me to be a part of this feature. That’s cool. Not everybody can wake up everyday to something like this. Every single day there’s some experience that allows me to be happy. I don’t think I can ever narrow it down to one thing, but I do appreciate everyone that’s been introduced into my life and I appreciate the opportunities that I’ve had. Remix has built me a certain way, taught me things. All my friends, my team, everyone that I’ve worked with for 1 LOVE TO. Even all the events we do like Shuffle – I can’t narrow it down. I can’t complain.”
We move outside and walk about a block down the street for the photographer to take some stills of Brock. It’s minus twenty-something outside and we’re all freezing our asses off. Brock plays it cool, sunnies stay on. Although he’s without his fitted cap today, expect him to continue rocking them in and out of classrooms while representing his city to the fullest in the midst of this Toronto resurgence. Shit, with all the Jays fitted caps and snaps being worn, Torontonians are now making the Blue Jays hat more famous than a Blue Jay can. Much in part to the man who’s got the whole city behind him.
words by Michael Nguyen
photos by Maria Kulesza
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