AllMovie

A late 20th and early 21st century Canadian rapper (not to be confused with the soca artist of the same name who was killed in the late '70s), Maestro began life in Toronto in 1968 as Wesley Williams and gravitated to musical expression as a young man, successively adopting the monikers Melody MC and Maestro Fresh-Wes, then shortening his stage name to simply Maestro. As such, he did much to pioneer Canadian hip-hop and rap, checking in as the first Canadian rapper to crack the Top 40, and scoring the top-selling hip-hop recording for many years with his premier outing, the 1989 Symphony in Effect. Maestro branched out into movie roles in 2007, with a supporting turn in the gritty, Daddy Yankee-headlined coming-of-age saga Talento de Barrio.