Thirty-five years on, Dream Warriors’ “My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style” remains the record that proved Toronto rap could travel. The single samples Quincy Jones’ “Soul Bossa Nova”, a melody Canadians already knew as the theme to the game show Definition.
Dream Warriors were King Lou (Louie Robinson) and Capital Q (Frank Allert), a Toronto duo formed in 1988 who refused to sound like anyone else. Their debut album, And Now the Legacy Begins, arrived in 1991 and went gold in Canada, and its lead single did something no Canadian rap record had done before: it crossed the Atlantic and stayed there.
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A Toronto record built on a familiar melody
The genius of the record is the sample. Quincy Jones recorded “Soul Bossa Nova” in 1962, and from 1974 to 1989 it played in Canadian living rooms every weekday as the theme to CTV’s Definition. Dream Warriors flipped a piece of Canadian television furniture into a jazz rap single, and the familiarity worked in both directions. British listeners heard a fresh groove, while Canadian listeners heard a joke they were already in on. The GRAMMYs’ own history of jazz and rap still lists the album among the records that connected the two genres.
“My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style” reached No. 13 on the UK Singles Chart. The follow-up, “Wash Your Face in My Sink”, reached No. 16, and the lead single sold 300,000 copies worldwide. A third single, “Ludi”, leaned into ska. None of it sounded like New York, and that was the point.
Dream Warriors my definition of a boombastic jazz style wins its Juno
The song won Rap Recording of the Year at the 1992 Juno Awards. The category was only in its second year: Maestro Fresh Wes had won the first one in 1991, and Dream Warriors made it two Toronto winners in two years. Jones himself noticed. Speaking to The Canadian Press in 2024, shortly before his death, he recalled the record fondly:
“I want to meet the Dream Warriors, because they made me a lot of money, you know.”
King Lou added that Jones saw the sample as a turning point, a merging of the generation gap between jazz and hip-hop. It is hard to argue. A 1962 big band record became, through two Toronto MCs, one of the defining jazz rap singles of its era.
Why the song still anchors the story of toronto rappers
The honours have kept pace with the song’s reputation. “My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style” has been inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and Dream Warriors performed it at the 2023 Juno Awards as part of the celebration of 50 years of hip hop in Canada. CBC Music counts And Now the Legacy Begins among the 25 best Canadian debut albums ever made.
Every history of toronto rappers starts within a few pages of this record, because it settled an argument early: Canadian hip hop did not need to imitate anyone to be heard. It needed a melody the whole country already knew, and two MCs confident enough to rap over it like they owned it.
