The Canadian hip hop scene was first established in the 1980s. Through a variety of factors, it developed much more slowly than Canada's popular rock music scene, and apart from a short-lived burst of mainstream popularity from 1989 to 1991, it remained largely an underground phenomenon until the early 2000s.

Canada had hip hop artists right from the early days of the scene — the first known Canadian rap single, Singing Fools' "The Bum Rap", was released in 1982.Toronto's CKLN-FM was also an early supporter of the genre, launching Canada's first hip hop program, The Fantastic Voyage, in 1983. For the most part, however, the infrastructure simply wasn't there to get most artists' music to the record-buying public.

Even if a Canadian hip hop artist could get signed to a record label at all, it was very difficult for them to get widespread exposure — even if their music videos were played on MuchMusic, many artists still couldn't get their records into stores or played on the radio. Although a few Canadian hip hop artists did break through to mainstream success around 1990 and a few Canadian acts like Maestro Fresh Wes, Main Source and Dream Warriors even gained cult-status recognition internationally from the hip-hop underground scene, through much of the following decade Canadian hip hop acts experienced a slowdown without any significant artists breaking through to the mainstream — although many hip hop musicians continued to record and tour, not one Canadian hip hop song reached even the Top 100 on a Canadian pop chart between 1992 and 1998. Beginning in 1998, however, a sequence of events spurred by the anthemic collaborative single "Northern Touch" finally brought hip hop back into the mainstream of Canadian music.

Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic subculture that originated in African-American and Hispanic-American communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically within the Bronx. The term often refers to hip hop music, which consists of poetry that is spoken - rather than sung - over either original or sampled instrumental recordings mixed with new original sounds from drum machines, and/or other instruments. However, the culture has expanded far beyond its original roots, and now is considered a worldwide subculture comprising rapping, DJing, hip hop dance, and graffiti art - known collectively as "Four Pillars of Hip Hop".

The block parties of DJ Kool Herc at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, where Herc would mix samples of existing records with his own shouts to the crowd and dancers, are generally considered the birthplace of hip hop. Kool Herc is credited as the 'father' of the art form. DJ Afrika Bambaataa of the hip-hop collective Zulu Nation outlined the four pillars of hip hop culture: MCing, DJing, B-boying and graffiti writing. Since its emergence in the South Bronx, hip hop culture has spread to both urban and suburban communities throughout the world.Hip hop music first emerged with Kool Herc and contemporary disc jockeys and imitators creating rhythmic beats by looping breaks (small portions of songs emphasizing a percussive pattern) on two turntables, more commonly referred to as sampling. This was later accompanied by "rap", a rhythmic style of chanting or poetry presented in 16 bar measures or time frames, and beatboxing, a vocal technique mainly used to imitate percussive elements of the music and various technical effects of hip hop DJ's. An original form of dancing and particular styles of dress arose among fans of this new music. These elements experienced considerable refinement and development over the course of the history of the culture.