Music

A Toronto rapper brought a Bengal tiger into Kensington Market

by Tyler Munro

Photo by Eric Zaworski.

You can see some weird shit in Kensington Market, but last night, rapper Tasha the Amazon cranked things up a notch when she walked through the distinctive Toronto neighbourhood with an actual, real-life tiger.

It wasn’t just a stunt, though. With help from Bowmanville Zoo’s trainers and handlers, Tasha and Robbie, an 8-year-old Bengal tiger, took to the streets to film her video for “Thru the Fire,” which understandably caught pedestrians totally off guard.

Not that they weren’t warned.

We won’t politicize the incident only to call it a weird one.

Robbie the tiger is no stranger to urban life, with the zoo’s website noting that he was rescued—or seized—from an exotic dancer’s apartment in Toronto. He’s also no stranger to the silver-screen, having starred in a TV adaptation of the once-popular Animorphs book series. Still, bringing him to an area so heavily populated by activists, environmentalists and otherwise leftists seems like an obvious attention grabber.

And since we’re writing about it, we guess it worked.