In the booth
Toronto slang in songs
The city's vocabulary got its passport through music. Here's how 10 Canadian artists — from Maestro in '89 to Mustafa now — used the slang, and what each line is actually doing. Short excerpts quoted for commentary.
Drake — Know Yourself
2015 · Toronto“Runnin' through the 6 with my woes”
The line that exported Toronto's nickname worldwide. 'The 6' compresses the city's 416 and 647 area codes — and the old six boroughs — into one syllable, and 'woes' (working on excellence) became the OVO shorthand for your day-one crew. After 2015 you could hear tourists saying 'the 6ix' in Yorkdale.
Full annotation →Termsthe 6ixKardinal Offishall — BaKardi Slang
2001 · Scarborough“We don't say 'you know what I'm saying' — t'ings kinda different here”
The founding document of Toronto slang on record. Kardi built an entire song out of the gap between US hip-hop vocabulary and how the city actually talks — Patois-inflected 'tings', dropped consonants, T-dot instead of Toronto. Two decades before the 6ix wave, this is where the accent got its flag planted.
Full annotation →Pressa — Canada Goose
2017 · Jane and Finch“Mans not stressin', winter cold in the Goose”
'Mans' as a first-person singular — 'mans is hungry', 'mans not stressin'' — is the single most identifiable grammatical move in Toronto English, borrowed from UK road slang and re-tuned uptown. Pressa pairs it with the Canada Goose parka, the city's status coat and its winter reality at once.
Full annotation →Jazz Cartier — Dead or Alive
2015 · Downtown“Opps outside, but I'm still on the ave”
Jacuzzi La Fleur's writing is dense with geography. 'Opps' (opposition) travelled from Chicago drill into Toronto by 2014 and stuck; 'the ave' keeps the location deliberately vague — every neighbourhood has one, and naming it is the point of not naming it.
Full annotation →NAV — Myself
2017 · Rexdale“Wallahi, I came from nothin' in Rexdale”
NAV put Rexdale — and the Punjabi, Arabic and Somali vocabulary of northwest Etobicoke — on major-label records. 'Wallahi' is Arabic for 'I swear to God' and in Toronto it crossed religion and background entirely: it's now just how you mark that you're not joking.
Full annotation →Puffy L'z — Lookin Like
2019 · Rexdale“Styll, the mandem outside in the whip”
A clean three-word sample of Toronto drill grammar. 'Styll' works as agreement, emphasis and sentence filler at once; 'mandem' is the Jamaican-via-London word for your group; 'whip' is the car. Nothing in the line is uniquely Toronto on its own — the combination is.
Full annotation →Haviah Mighty — Thirteen
2019 · Brampton“Brown skin girl in the 905, chirping back at the system”
The Polaris-winning Brampton MC writes from the 905 — the suburban area code ringing the 416 — which the city treats as a punchline and which produced a generation of its best rappers anyway. 'Chirping' is the Canadian word for talking trash, straight out of hockey rinks and into the bars.
Full annotation →Maestro Fresh Wes — Let Your Backbone Slide
1989 · Scarborough“Nothin' but a party, my brudda, and I'm the host”
The first Canadian hip-hop record to go platinum, out of Scarborough in 1989. 'Brudda' — Caribbean 'brother' — was already the default address term in the city's east end decades before it showed up in drill. Toronto slang didn't start in 2015; it just got a bigger microphone.
Full annotation →Jessie Reyez — Figures
2016 · Rexdale“You had me peak, now I'm out here on my own”
'Peak' in Toronto means the opposite of peak — it's rough, unfortunate, a bad look. 'That's peak' is sympathy and mockery in the same breath. It's one of the few local terms that reverses its dictionary meaning entirely, which is why it confuses everyone outside the GTA.
Full annotation →TermspeakMustafa — Air Forces
2021 · Regent Park“My g, don't reach for it, you know how it ends”
Mustafa writes Regent Park elegies in folk arrangements, and the slang lands harder for it. 'Reach' carries two Toronto meanings — to show up somewhere, or to reach for a weapon — and the ambiguity is exactly what the song is about. 'My g' is the city's all-purpose term of address.
Full annotation →
Lyrics are quoted in brief for the purpose of linguistic commentary and criticism. All rights remain with the artists and rights holders.