Citizen Kane

Websites:  No
Origin: Scarborough, Ontario, 🇨🇦
Biography:

Scarborough-based Hip Hop duo Citizen Kane began their professional emceeing career in the mid-1990s. Made up of emcees Jeff “J-Spade/Spade” Duke and Rob “Blye’ Paris. Citizen Kane was managed by Adrian Perry and released their debut single, "Soul Survivor" in 1995. While they began their professional Rap career in the mid-1990s, Spade began in Hip Hop culture in the 1970s as a b-boy (dancing for Rebound Breakers, Intrikit Crew, Michie Mee, Dream Warriors), graffiti artist (Graffiti Knights as Crazy Roc), cutting Hip Hop hairstyles (Cut Creator) and creating fashion items for B Kool, Michie Mee and Maurice and Bolton. As an emcee, he and Blye would release their first EP “The Epic '' in 1997, and later their full-length album “Deliverance” in 1999 (under their independent record label Treehouse Records). Citizen Kane’s efforts to promote “Deliverance”, in the face of Canadian hip hop's struggle to gain commercial and critical attention in that era, was filmed by Duke's sister — Alison Duke — for the National Film Board of Canada’s documentary Raisin' Kane: A Rapumentary (released in 2001). The duo was also nominated for a Juno Award — first in 1999 for Rap Recording of the Year for their EP “The Epic”, and then again in 2000 for their album “Deliverance”. In May 2020, Citizen Kane teamed up with TopLeft Recordings to put out the “Scartown Unreleased Classics” mixtape - a collection of past recordings from 2001 to 2005 that were never released - which was mixed by DJ Law and mastered by Quarter Inch Kings.

Citizen Kane was a Canadian hip hop duo, active in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They were most noted as two-time Juno Award nominees for Rap Recording of the Year, for their EP The Epic at the Juno Awards of 1999 and their album Deliverance at the Juno Awards of 2000.

Raised in the public housing of Scarborough, Toronto, the group consisted of rappers Jeff "J-Spade" Duke, a first-generation Canadian, and Rob "Blye" Paris, a Black Nova Scotian; they were managed by Adrian Perry. Duke started in the music business as a dancer for Michie Mee and Dream Warriors.

They released their debut single, "Soul Survivor" in 1995, and followed up with a number of singles before releasing The Epic in 1997. They followed up with Deliverance in 1999; their efforts to promote Deliverance, in the face of Canadian hip hop's struggle to gain commercial and critical attention in that era, were filmed by Duke's sister Alison for the National Film Board of Canada documentary Raisin' Kane: A Rapumentary, which was released in 2001.

They released a couple of further singles after Deliverance, but broke up before releasing another album. In 2012, TopLeft Recordings released the mixtape Scartown Unreleased Classics, composed of tracks recorded by the group from 2001 to 2005, which were intended for a second album. Several of their singles, including "Soul Survivor", "Black Rain" and "Raisin' Kane", were reissued in 2018.