Haviah Mighty is first hip hop artist to win Polaris Music Prize
October 19, 2019
The enormity of the achievement is just beginning to sink in for Haviah Mighty.
Less than 48 hours after becoming the first hip hop artist to win the 2019 Polaris Music Prize for her album, ‘13th Floor’, she flew to Paris for the start of a four-city tour that included stops in London, Cologne and Montreal.
Presented by CBC Music in the last 14 years, the $50,000 prize goes to the best Canadian album of the year based on artistic merit.
The nominees were given an opportunity to perform at the awards ceremony.
“To be honest, that was where my focus was because it was live and going to a national audience,” said Mighty. “That was going to be the largest audience that I was going to reach so far in my career and I wasn’t going to mess up the opportunity.”
With a make-shift band backing her up, Mighty’s nervousness was understandable.
“We did things on stage that we had never done before like introducing click tracks and transitioning songs,” she noted. “We pulled in a drummer I knew who recommended a guitarist that he knew and I brought one of my older sisters to play the keys while another sister, who got two dancers for us, sang with me on stage. A good friend that produces for me assisted with arranging the technical stuff. A lot of trust was placed in musicians that were new to me and I was very nervous.”
Mighty used her time allotment that – with the organizers approval -- extended by 20 seconds to showcase four of the tracks on her latest album.
“To start the set, I did ‘Thirteen’ that’s the deepest song on my album because it speaks to the 13th Amendment in the United States,” she said. “That was followed by ‘Wishy Washy’ which is an Afro-beat kind of song and the summer single for me, ‘Blame’ which is a hip hop track single and ‘In Women Colour’ that speaks to what it is like for a coloured woman navigating a rap career.”
Polaris Prize winner Haviah Mighty
13th Floor is Mighty’s sixth solo album. She also collaborated with the Sorority on their debut album, ‘Pledge’, that was released last year.
“I have new management and a booking agent, so I figured people would think that this is my first album and I treated it like that,” she said. “Even though I have done solo albums before, that’s in the past and you are only as good as your next album.”
Dr. Mark Campbell, an Assistant Professor in the University of Toronto’s Department of Arts & Culture Studies, said Mighty’s Polaris Prize win is a monumental accomplishment in the digital age when hip hop is overly commercialized and streaming services induce the slow death of the album.
“Haviah’s 13th Floor, showcasing her range of killer flows, topics and beat selection, is a deeply conceptual piece of sonic art,” he pointed out. “Her bold tackling of social issues, like patriarchy, mixed with her Black consciousness, finds a way to balance entertainment and social commentary which is a much needed dose of fresh air in the noisy online world of popular music.”
A few years ago, Mighty stumbled upon the 13th Amendment while watching a YouTube video. Passed by the American Congress in January 1865 and ratified 11 months later, the amendment formally abolished chattel slavery in the United States.
“When I delved into it a little more, I learnt there was a clause in the amendment that justifies treating people as slaves if they have been convicted of a crime,” she said. “When I came upon that fact, the song just poured out of me. My fear, always as a Black woman, is to write a song about my experience, but with too much of my opinion. To read the 13th Amendment meant I was reading a fact and to base the song on fact meant no one could question the validity of the song. That song made people cry and I knew it was powerful, so I began to think about how it can relate to the title of the album. 13 and 13th Amendment were considered, but I thought that was too specific because there are other songs on the album that has nothing to do with the 13th Amendment.”
The album's title derives from the phenomenon of high-rise buildings in many countries often not designating a 13th floor due to the superstition that the number 13 is bad luck.
“The 13th Floor is something that we remove from our reality because it is something that we don’t understand and therefore we dismiss it,” said Mighty. “The title, therefore, represents naming and speaking about and acknowledging issues and narratives that have been dismissed or ignored.”
Growing up in a home that embraced music, Mighty was enrolled in singing classes from ages four to 11 and her Jamaican-born dad – Ewan Mighty – presented her with a guitar at a young age.
“Despite the fact that I was surrounded by music, I wasn’t allowed to listen to hip hop when I was very young,” the fourth of five siblings said. “My parents didn’t expose me and my siblings to that kind of music, but I eventually gravitated towards it.”
Mighty, whose British-born mother Greta has Bajan roots, completed Fanshawe College’s two-year music industry arts course and was a three-time Honey Jam participant. In 2016, she collaborated with Lex Leosis, Keysha Freshh and Phoenix Pagliacci for a cypher to celebrate International Women’s Day. The freestyling rap battle went viral, reaching almost two million viewers in five months.
All of her siblings are creative artists.
The Mighty sisters
Omega, who accompanied her sister on stage at the Polaris Awards ceremony, is a singer/dancer/pianist/choreographer/ make-up artist & realtor, Novlette is a singer & pianist, Alicia is a singing/piano teacher & educator and their brother, Negus, produced three of the songs on Mighty’s album.
