Toronto rapper Haviah Mighty.Connor Tadao/Supplied
In the press release for Haviah Mighty’s new single Double the Fun, the song is referred to as an “underdog anthem.” And on social media recently, Mighty marked a post with the hashtag “upcoming rapper.”
Is she though, an underdog? An up-and-comer? In 2019, she won the Polaris Music Prize for her debut solo album, 13th Floor. The follow-up mixtape, Stock Exchange, earned Mighty a Juno Award, making her the first woman to win in a rap category. Her latest album, the break-up record Crying Crystals, was praised by the taste-making online publication Pitchfork in a review that noted her fearsome skill as an MC.
Seems like we’re getting into overdog territory.
“It’s a matter of perspective,” says the Toronto-based 31-year-old Jamaican-Canadian. “People might know my name in Vancouver or Quebec, where I played three shows this year, but if I go to Ohio, I’m still the underdog. I’ve made an impact, but there’s so much more to be done.”
On Saturday, Mighty keeps her roll moving when she co-hosts the first-ever Billboard Canada Women in Music award ceremony. The annual Women in Music gala has been a major date on the record industry calendar in the United States since 2007. Last fall, Billboard magazine, the music business bible, launched a Canadian edition that is now holding its own Canadian Women in Music event in Toronto. Among the honourees are Alanis Morissette (Icon Award) and Quebec pop-supernova Charlotte Cardin (Woman of the Year).
Mighty will also perform at the high-profile ceremony. Some in the audience will be familiar with her socially conscious rap; others will not. The Black queer woman who opened up for Juno-winning white bread rockers the Arkells for three nights at Toronto’s Budweiser Stage in 2021 makes no allowances for who might be in the audience.
“I’ve learned to perform without being dependent on how the crowd reacts,” she says. “I can give a lot of energy to people looking in the opposite direction.”
She’s had practice with indifference – any female rapper would, especially in Canada where hip hop is dominated by men even more than it is in the United States. “I gotta do two times more to get four times less,” Mighty sang on her 2019 song In Woman Colour.
When she was younger, before she joined the female hip hop group the Sorority, Mighty was often the only woman among fellow performers. Getting on stage, she noticed crowd members grabbing their cigarettes and heading toward the door. She was the smoke break.
“I learned the negative connotation of being a female artist,” she explains. “They expect you not to be as good as your male counterpart.”
That attitude is baked into the system. A recent study conducted by University of Ottawa professor Jada Watson revealed significant gender inequity on Canadian radio over the past decade with only marginal improvement on pop-oriented formats. According to Share the Air: A Study of Gender Representation on Canadian Radio (2013-2023), songs by women were under-represented in each format studied: country, alternative rock, active rock, Top 40, mainstream adult contemporary and hot adult contemporary.
Women of colour are especially marginalized.
“You asked me earlier about being an underdog,” Mighty says. “Being a woman in hip hop, it very much feels like that.”
The gender imbalance has long been an issue, not only relating to artists but the industry movers and shakers as well. That’s improving, however. In July, Billboard Canada named its 10 “power players.” Seven were women: AEG Presents executive vice-president of global touring Debra Rathwell, Reservoir Media CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi, SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) CEO Jennifer Brown, FACTOR (The Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings) CEO and president Meg Symsyk, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment senior vice-president of music and live events Melissa Bubb-Clarke, Groupe CH president France Margaret Bélanger and Warner Music Canada president Kristen Burke.
Burke, the lone woman heading a major record label in this country, will be honoured as Executive of the Year at this weekend’s Billboard Canada Women in Music awards. Artist award winners, in addition to Morissette and Cardin, are Jessie Reyez, the Beaches, Allison Russell and LU KALA.
“We’re starting to see a lot more women making noise here,” says Billboard Canada national editor Richard Trapunski. “It’s something we want to celebrate.”
A lot of what Mighty does with her music and performance is advocacy for women. It’s not planned – it is innate and unavoidable. She didn’t even realize she was doing it at first.
“I was just trying to rap, to be better than the competition, and the competition happened to be guys,” she says. “But I learned early on that what I was doing was more important than just being good at rap. There’s a strength in what I’m doing.”
Billboard Canada Women in Music takes place on Sept. 7, at DPRTMNT, in Toronto.