The last time I reviewed a concert at The Rec Room Square One, it was a celebration of Toronto excellence in both music and sports, as the Raptors won the 2019 NBA Eastern Conference Championship on the same night Choclair was celebrating 20 years since releasing his debut album. This time around, we’d be celebrating more homegrown talent with a show featuring several local artists from the GTA and headlined by none other than Mississauga’s own JD Era, who would be celebrating his own milestone of 20 years since he entered the music business.

JD Era first made waves in the mid-2000s and early 2010s, gaining traction with mixtapes like Th1rt3en-Black Tape, signing to Raekwon’s ICE H20 Records and earning a Juno nomination for his 2012 album/mixtape, No Handouts. He’s been relatively quiet on the music front since then, putting more energy into supporting the local scene through companies Up North Studios and Roadman Productions, which have also brought some touring artists like Onyx, Curren$y, Mobb Deep, Elzhi and Smif-N-Wessun to Toronto for live shows in recent years. It was actually at Onyx’s last show in Toronto in 2025 that JD Era opened for them to debut a new album produced entirely by Fredro Starr, Yellow Goose, which one could assume would be getting the most shine at this concert since he hasn’t taken that new music on tour yet. While JD Era has done a lot of tours and live shows in Toronto over the years, this would surprisingly be his first time performing in Mississauga, and so we’d be going into this one expecting a lot of that hometown love, especially with tickets being pay what you want at the door.

The DJ duties for the evening would be shared between DJ T.Lo and DJ Chino, with T.Lo spinning classics as The Rec Room slowly filled up, and DJ Chino stepping in to back the local openers. Mississauga’s own Juno Award-winning Rich Kidd would be hosting for the evening, setting the stage with a story about how he first met JD Era while doing his high school co-op at a recording studio, and ended up producing a few beats for JD to record over. The performances would get started with a 6-song set by The Wolfpack’s own Swann & Resin. Having released the new album The Wolfpack in late 2025, the duo’s set would include a few songs off of that album, highlights including “Awaken The Beast” and “Nefarious,” of course bringing that eerie, dramatic Reel Wolf production that they’re known for.

The last song of Swann & Resin’s set would be used to transition to the next act, as the duo Hella Treez (D.O.V. & Gambit) would join them on stage and perform a song that all four emcees feature on: “Stop Frontin’.” Hella Treez would then take over with their own 6-song setlist, with much of the focus going towards D.O.V.’s latest solo albums, 2025’s D.O.V. is GOD produced entirely by Cortez, and 2023’s Hail & Fire Mixed With Blood produced entirely by Swann. Early highlights included both D.O.V. & Gambit nailing their verses on the songs “Marijuaneros” and “Represent,” and D.O.V. shining on his solo track “P.O.S.”

The Hella Treez set would have something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in my decade-plus of reviewing concerts: the fire alarm got pulled somewhere in Square One, and with The Rec Room being attached to the mall, the alarm was sounding as the concert continued. In a display of underrated raw skill, D.O.V. held it together and somehow kept his flows in-pocket as he performed his Swann-produced Ruste Juxx collab, “Body Bag Em,” with the fire alarm sometimes blending in with the beat and at other times throwing it off just enough that a less experienced emcee may miss their mark. Of course all the jokes were made about how Hella Treez spit enough flames on the mic to make the fire alarm literally go off during their set. There would be a bit of an intermission as DJ T.Lo took over the turntables to spin some records as the fire alarm situation got sorted out.

When the show was ready to continue on, the next artist on stage would be a hometown artist whose music I would admittedly be experiencing for the first time, Mezziah. The Mississauga-based emcee is coming off of a game-changing year, winning Album of the Year at the 2025 Mississauga Music Awards for his album A Summer In Sauga, which itself takes a unique business model, being available strictly via physical USBs that can be purchased in a fan-pack, and not found anywhere on any streaming platform. As a first-time listener, the first few songs he performed were tough to pick up on the lyrics as he rapped over his own recorded vocals, but you could tell he was spitting every word of his rapid-fire verses and coming with a ton of energy. The recorded vocals got pulled back midway through his set though and he was spitting raw the rest of the way, highlights including him bringing out special guest Lady J The Artist to sing on the track “No Reservations” and Reggae singer Nkrumah to perform their collab for the ladies, “Top Prize.” Overall, Mezziah’s set was less hardcore than the previous openers, but he still came with some dope flows that put some positive energy in the room, especially with Mississauga being central to his music and branding.

There would be a bit of a break for DJ Chino to switch places with DJ T.Lo again, and pretty soon it would be time for the main event, with Rich Kidd making the introduction to bring JD Era to the stage.

JD Era would set things off with a segment for the day-one fans, taking it to his early mixtape days with songs like “Prince Of The North,” “Love 2 Hate” and “You Know This,” cranking up the energy right away with songs he hadn’t performed in front of a crowd in years. He’d take a moment to speak on the 20-year milestone he was celebrating and talk about the full-circle moment of performing in Square One with DJ T.Lo backing him; this being the building where he won his first rap battle all those years ago and T.Lo also won his first DJ battle at the same time. This set the tone for what would feel like a Mississauga Hip-Hop heritage moment.

With a nod to the days of artists posting their music on MySpace in the early and mid-2000s, JD would continue with more throwbacks from that era (no pun intended), performing the single “Paper Chase,” featuring an interpolation of Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.,” which one could say helped manifest JD’s future collaborations with Raekwon. That collaboration wouldn’t be too far away in the setlist, as JD Era later performed his verse from the 9th Wonder-produced, Raekwon-featuring “9th Inning,” but not before pulling out one of his early Drake collaborations, “Black Magic,” saying he knew the Iceman before he was Iceman, regardless of how fans feel about Drake today. The highlights of JD’s high-profile collaborations and rivalries over the years would continue, as he took a minute to speak on losing the 2013 Rap Recording of the Year Juno Award to Classified’s “Inner Ninja” single (but still being friendly at the end of the day), before performing a few more songs off of his Juno-nominated album, pulling out a collaboration with the late Mac Miller, “Hate Me Later.”

JD Era would go in with a segment focused on that No Handouts mixtape, giving a shoutout to Onyx for taking him on tour during that time, speaking on how he would always put Canada on his back when he performed internationally, and getting the crowd to join in by the time he performed the track “Canada Eh.” Notably, this show was slated to be a JD Era & Friends concert, and so JD started bringing out some special guests to perform with him, first being the singer Shi Wisdom, performing her featured vocals on another cut from that mixtape, “I Need You.” The romantic vibes on the RnB collab had the crowd mellowed out, and so JD would follow up with a high-energy weed smokers anthem, the Lex Luger production sounding very much from that early 2010s era of Hip-Hop on the track “Smoking Good.” Next, JD would bring out the biggest special guest of the evening.

Taking a moment to set the stage, JD Era would speak on the days of coming home from school to watch Rap City on Much Music and seeing his next guest on the TV, then years later getting a direct co-sign and support from that same artist. That artist would be Choclair, who’d come out giving JD his props, telling the crowd that they have several songs recorded together still in the vaults, and would kick off a short solo performance with 2003’s “Back Where I Stayed,” followed by the 1999 classic “Let’s Ride.” It was like deja-vu seeing that last song performed with the same classic routine with the crowd interaction, in the same building and on the same stage where we saw Choc perform it just over 7 years ago during the Raptors championship playoff run.

After Choclair’s quick guest appearance, JD Era would return to the stage and would get into a segment focused on his latest album, 2025’s Yellow Goose, kicking it off with track one: “The Hustler’s Anthem.” With the intro track being a bit of a mellow start, JD quickly picked the energy up, jumping into the deep album cut “Pots N Pans Freestyle” and getting some extra energy out of the crowd with DJ T.Lo flipping the beat to Ghostface Killah’s “Mighty Healthy” for JD to rap over on the second verse. He’d get a similar energy boost from the crowd as he went on into the single “Go Crazy,” spitting the second verse acapella just to show off the raw breath control and flow. He’d then close out the segment with the title track from the album, getting the crowd to join in on hook.

JD Era would call that the end of his setlist, but he wasn’t quite ready to end the show there. Plugging some new music, he’d mention he has a new EP called 4 For 4 dropping in July, and hinted at performing an unreleased song from that project. Before getting into that, he decided to have some fun and got DJ T.Lo to play the beat from Choclair’s “Let’s Ride” for him to freestyle over. Choclair would join him on stage mid-verse and would jump in on the freestyle session, and you could get a sense of how special this moment was for JD to have one of his major influences rapping with him on stage in his hometown. After that dope moment with Choclair, JD would go on to perform that unreleased track to close out the show, and after being drenched in sweat from an energetic hour-plus on stage, he’d invite fans to stick around for pictures and autographs after he got a chance to change his shirt.

Overall, this was a dope moment to witness seeing JD Era headline his own concert in his hometown for the first time. Mississauga hasn’t historically had the infrastructure to support a live music scene, with very few concert venues available, and even fewer open to hosting Hip-Hop shows, but this moment shows the growth this community is slowly achieving as more local artists develop and more concert venues become available to open their doors. JD Era is an underrated pioneer of Mississauga Hip-Hop, having to carve a path out of a rapidly-changing landscape where we went from physical media to free digital media, before the monetization of that digital media existed. Even today, artists like Mezziah are showing how inadequate that monetization still is with ever-evolving business models to navigate the music industry’s landscape.

Not only did JD Era have to navigate a shift in the way fans consume music, but he also had to travel outside of his hometown in order to gain traction, more globally known as a Toronto-based artist despite him more accurately being from the 9-0-5. Putting on a concert in Mississauga to celebrate his 20-year milestone is just one small step taken towards legitimizing the local music scene without having to physically be in Toronto. While celebrating the foundations of Mississauga Hip-Hop, this show also gave us a glimpse of what the future may look like, with local artists finally having a platform to perform their music live.

JD Era and Roadman Productions are bringing Stove God Cooks to Toronto on July 12th, tickets can be found here!

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