Drop the Beat

Drop the Beat was a Canadian television series produced by Back Alley Films, which aired on CBC Television in 2000. A short run dramatic series, the show was one of the first television series ever built around hip hop music and culture. The show, a spinoff of the earlier CBC series Straight Up, starred Mark Taylor as Jeff and Merwin Mondesir as Dennis, the hosts of a hip hop show on CIBJ-FM, a fictional campus radio station in Toronto, Ontario. Michie Mee starred as Divine, a rapper who was part of Jeff and Dennis' crew, and Ingrid Veninger played the station manager. The supporting cast also included Arlene Duncan, Vanessa Ford, Jennifer Baxter, Jason Harrow, Shamann Williams and Omari Forrester. The use of a campus radio station was a deliberate reflection of Canadian reality — until Toronto's Flow 93.5 hit the airwaves in early 2001, Canada did not have any radio stations dedicated specifically to urban music.