Endangered Elements

Endangered Elements was a Canadian Hip-Hop group active in the early to mid 90’s, consisting of MC’s Gravity, Prominent and Castro. Prominent was born and raised in Toronto while the other two members came as kids from St Kitts and the UK in the mid 1980’s. Prominent (Exotik) and Gravity (D-tekz) met in high school around 1991 in the lunchroom during “table and beat box sessions”. They shared Hip Hop beats, rhymes and life stories and after hanging out for a while began to record their own beats and rhymes together at Gravity’s place of residence. It was there that Prominent (Exotik) met Gravity’s younger brother Castro (Grimm), who then began to write his own story into the mix, thus creating the first incarnation of the Endangered Elements crew. Through Gravity’s older brother, a DJ on CKLN called Tony Tone, the crew started to get their music heard on Canadian college radio. They would frequently hit up CKLN 88.1 FM, CHRY 105.5 FM and CIUT 89.5 FM and met up with on-air personalities like Mastermind, Thrust, Qwame, Pauly Lopez, Ron Nelson, John Bronski, DJ Power and DJX to drop live freestyles on their shows. College radio became a significant outlet for the boys. Those radio connections led to hooking up with Michael Williams and Master T who were involved with Rap City on Much Music in Canada. After the radio exposure, a number of television appearances followed and from there they started to perform, mostly in Toronto and the neighboring US States. They appeared alongside other T-Dot acts as well as successful 90’s Hip Hop stalwarts like The Roots, Jeru the Damaja, Dj Premier, Gangstarr, Redman, Sadat X and Leaders of the New School.