Hip-hop icon Michie Mee is ‘overjoyed’ about getting her own Canadian stamp

Canadian hip-hop legend Michie Mee is still vibrating from her phone call with Canada Post.

The rapper and actress, known as the godmother of Canadian rap, will soon be featured on an official postage stamp. 

“I was in disbelief, and I was like, ‘You’re kidding me.’ And then I was just overjoyed,” she told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. “I’m still screaming at the top of my lungs inside.”

She will be featured on one of three stamps honouring Canadian hip-hop trailblazers for Black History Month in February, alongside Toronto rapper and producer Maestro Fresh Wes, and Quebec trio Muzion.

“Each of the artists is recognized for helping to shape the genre of hip-hop and rap in Canada,” Canada Post said in a press release, noting the Jamaica-born, Toronto-raised Michie Mee was “among the first to bring Jamaican patois into her rhymes.”

Maestro Fresh Wes, it notes, was the first Canadian MC to break mainstream with his 1989 single Let Your Backbone Slide, while Muzion brought “a distinct sound to the world of hip-hop, layering French, English and Haitian Creole into their music.”

CBC has reached out to Maestro Fresh Wes and Muzion for comment. 

1st stamps featuring hip-hop artists

Canada Post has released stamps for Black History Month every year since 2009, but this is the first time the Crown corporation has issued stamps celebrating hip-hop artists.

“It’s been so long in terms of being recognized for women in rap, much less Canadian women in rap,” Michie Mee said. 

Michie Mee, whose legal name is Michelle Ann Camille McCullock, was the first Canadian hip-hop artist to be signed in the U.S. in 1988.

She says she forged her career during an era when Canadian hip-hop was underfunded, underplayed and overlooked. 

She and her cohorts in ‘80s and ‘90s, she said, were bringing “a genre to life in a country that didn’t necessarily have a radio for urban hip-hop,” and when it did, “were being spoon fed other artists that weren’t Canadian.”

“So the fact that we really had a voice, we had a scene, we had impact, we had slang, we had clothes, we had ways that we expressed ourselves, and now we’re being recognized?” she said. “And we didn’t stop. We really didn’t stop, not once. And we’re still going.”

Pioneering hip-hop artists built a scene, she said, by building community — not only with each other and their fans who crowded concert halls to see them, but with Canadian musicians of all stripes.

“It wasn’t just hip-hoppers hip-hopping. It was rock ‘n’ roll, and ska heavy metal and alternative, rocking to that hip-hop. And it was hip-hoppers rocking to rock ‘n’ roll,” she said.

“That’s what I love about being a Canadian hip-hop artist. We got to unite a little bit different than the people around the world because we only had each other in the music.”

‘Still having fun’

The Canadian hip-hop stamps will be unveiled at a private event at the The Concert Hall in Toronto on Jan. 27, and then made available to the public in February.

Michie Mee says she doesn’t know how Canada Post came to the decision to honour hip-hop this year, or why they chose her, in particular.

But she’s grateful, she says, to be “alive and getting a stamp.”

Whatever hers looks like, she says she’ll be happy, because there’s no part of herself that she doesn’t embrace.

“It’s all a part of me, so I don’t think they can choose a bad pic. It’s who I am, who I was, who I will be forever,” she said. “I’m just grateful for all of me.”

As for the next generation of Canadian artists, she has some advice.

“Save your money; it will save you. Believe everybody has a job and they’re doing it. Don’t get distracted from interpretations that are not yours; just believe in yourself,” she said.

“Don’t get discouraged. The fun is in the journey. The fun is getting there. I’ve had so much fun, and I’m still having fun.”