Blake, of
Jamaican descent, was born in
Scarborough,
Ontario, in east
Toronto. Starting at the age of 11, he followed in his older brother's footsteps, and decided to become a rapper. Blake attended
St. John Paul II Catholic Secondary School, which is when he first started performing under the name "Choclair". In 1995, he released his debut single, "Twenty One Years", on his own independent label,
Knee Deep Records. In 1997, he released the
EP What It Takes, which was accompanied by a
music video featuring
Jully Black.
What It Takes won the "
Best Rap Recording" award at the
1997 Juno Awards. Choclair then expanded his team and joined
Virgin Music Canada in July 1998. In 1999, he signed with
Priority Records, and released his debut album
Ice Cold, produced by Saukrates. The album was certified
gold in Canada (50,000 copies) and spawned the hit single "
Let's Ride", produced by
Kardinal Offishall. Let's Ride reached #31 in Canada on the
BDS radio chart.
Ice Cold won the Juno award for "Best Rap Recording" in 2000. He was stated saying "It wasn't just hip-hop artists that inspired me, I used to like to see those old rock groups perform in front of a whole bunch of people in their '80s videos too - it was the whole music and entertainment combination that I was hooked on." (Western Gazette, November 15th 2000) Later that year, "Let's Ride" won a
SOCAN award and a MuchMusic award. He was presented with a 2001 Urban Music award from SOCAN. Also in 2001 he opened the Music Without Borders concert at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. On March 5, 2002, Choclair released his next album,
Memoirs of Blake Savage, which included a lot of drug-related lyrics. He released the single "Skunk" from that album, which featured
Kurupt of
Tha Dogg Pound. After parting ways with Virgin Music, Choclair started his own independent label Greenhouse Music in partnership with Sextant Records/EMI Music Canada. On June 17, 2003, he released the album
Flagrant, which won a Juno Award as best rap recording in 2004. He also released other Canadian hip hop albums in conjunction with Sextant Records and
EMI. Greenhouse followed that with the release of
My Demo, a collection of Choclair's early underground recordings. In 2006, Choclair released the album,
Flagship. He was also featured on
Karl Wolf's single, "Desensitize". In 2018, Choclair and other members of the team who recorded "Northern Touch" performed the song at the
2018 Juno Awards ceremony. Also in 2018, Choclair joined
Classified and
Maestro Fresh-Wes on the "Canadian Classic Tour". == Legacy ==