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 Toronto, Ontario campus radio station. Michie Mee starred as Divine, a rapper who was part of Jeff and Dennis' crew, and Ingrid Veninger played the station manager.

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.