Two 23-Year-Olds Built Canada’s Biggest Underground Rap Festival, and Four Cancellations Didn’t Stop It

Three days before First Class Fest was due to open in Toronto, co-founders Jake Pretorious and Leo Strang got a call: Nettspend was out. He wasn’t the first. Che, Black Kray and Skaiwater had already pulled out, and now a major Saturday set was suddenly empty. Both founders are 23, and it was their first outdoor festival.

The festival went ahead, on Aug. 28 and 29 at The Bowl at Sobeys Stadium, with a bill that Billboard Canada had described in February as led by “explosive rising star Osamason” and Lancey Foux on Friday and Lucki and Nettspend on Saturday. A week later, Strang and Pretorious told The FADER how they pulled it off.

The week it nearly came apart

Stereogum reported that the festival lost about a fifth of its lineup in the days before opening. Che’s exit was “unforeseen and beyond our control,” the organizers said, and he was replaced by Xaviersobased. Black Kray was replaced by TwentyThree, and Skaiwater by Diamond* and Jaeychino. Nettspend announced his own cancellation with a short post: “Sorry 2 my fans. I Will not be making it 2 Toronto.”

Read moreNettspend at 19: Fame Is 'A Gift and a Curse,' and NXO Is Next

The organizers were publicly unhappy. Their statement said he “did not provide us with an explanation” and added, “We do not condone the disrespect it shows to First Class Fest, and more importantly, to everyone attending the festival.” To Strang, it came with a lesson:

You can do everything in your power from a legal and contractual standpoint, from an effort standpoint, but sometimes people just don't want to do things, for whatever reason.

Leo Strang, to The FADER, The FADER

The fix was a Friday headliner. They asked OsamaSon to play a second set on Saturday, a “leaks and unreleased” show, with 1oneam and Apollo Red also added. “Him and Nett are really the faces of this new underground scene,” Strang said. “So there wasn’t really a replacement out there that we felt was fitting besides doing Osama again.” Lucki closed the night.

Where it started

The pair met almost four years ago, around the time Playboi Carti was supposed to play Toronto and couldn’t cross the border. Strang was making YouTube ads for artists, and Pretorious was managing a studio on Queen Street. Within a week they were on a local college tour in an RV, ten people performing in frat basements in Guelph. Their first festival was in 2022, and the biggest show before this one drew 1,500 people.

They started planning in June 2025, 14 months out. Locking in Lucki alone took about six weeks of negotiation, and the full lineup took three and a half months. Rolling Stone Canada says around 9,000 fans were expected each day.

Saturday’s chaos

The FADER interview is a tour of near-misses. During Apollo Red’s set, Strang says, roughly a thousand fans jumped the fence and rushed the pit and the police wanted to shut the show down. After conversations backstage, the show held. OsamaSon’s DJ went on stage to ask anyone without a yellow wristband to leave the pit, and Strang went out himself. Afterward he had what he called a panic attack behind the venue, until Tezzus told him, “You did that shit, boy! You got it back!”

His other favorite memory was smaller. Lucki’s manager said no photos on the way to the car, but the rapper stopped anyway, and Strang and Pretorious got the picture they wanted.

What they want next

Pretorious says the point is to build the scene in Canada. “There’s so much talent in Canada, all over Canada, but there’s not a lot of spotlight on it, which I think will change in the coming years.” Their lineup already leaned that way, with Toronto acts including Sorisa, Jahsh, Katozai and 10k Moss & Wavy Jackson on the bill, and the pair name Amo, Pnkrok, Bronclair, Yurms and Offgrid as artists worth watching.

As Pretorious puts it, the goal is simple: give Canada’s underground rap scene the spotlight and the stages it has mostly lacked.

Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.