Pam Grier on her love of Canadian hip-hop and her Toronto Black Film Festival tribute

Many know Pam Grier blazed a trail for female action heroes, but not everyone knows about her affinity for Canadian hip-hop.

“I love Moka Only,” the 73-year-old film icon says on a video call from Santa Fe, N.M.

“I went to the record store and picked up all his music on vinyl,” she says of the Vancouver-based rapper born Daniel Denton, who gained popularity in the early 2000s as part of rap group Swollen Members before branching out solo.

“I loved seeing him live. He’s really great. Really, really funky.”

Grier says she met Moka Only while filming the slasher “Bones” in Vancouver with Snoop Dogg in 2001, and still keeps in touch with him to this day.

“He’s cute,” says Grier, who rose to fame via roles in 1970s blaxploitation films like “Foxy Brown” and “Coffy,” and solidified her legacy in Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 crime thriller “Jackie Brown.”

“He was at a club in Vancouver and I said, ‘Wow, I love your music.’ And I started naming songs off of his album. He said, ‘Hey, you want to have some coffee?’ We met up and talked about music. He wasn’t crazy or disrespectful.”

Grier is headed back to Canada to receive a career achievement award at the 12th annual Toronto Black Film Festival, which includes a 50th anniversary screening of “Foxy Brown” on Thursday.

Grier is often hailed as the first female action star for groundbreaking roles in which she played a femme fatale who took down bad guys. She suggests her characters’ tough, funny and seductive traits connected with audiences.

“It started with ‘Coffy’ — a nurse standing up to the male leaders of crime and deception,” says Grier, noting the 1973 film came out the same year as the James Bond blockbuster “Live and Let Die.”

“We had to develop an audience that understands the physicality of a woman, not being a tomboy, not trying to be a man, but being the best fighter that’s going to be around.It took some years to do that, just like you prepare people to listen to opera. Not everyone has the ear for opera or the aria or bluegrass or country or hip-hop at first.”

The actress says she’s been listening to a lot of modern hip-hop lately. She says she’s working on a script for a yet-to-be-announced Cardi B project but can’t divulge any details.

“You’ll still see me at the clubs listening to some awesome hip-hop and rap,” she says. 

“Whether it’s Cardi B or Ty Dolla $ign or Travis Scott or Future, they’re using real instruments again. They’re really playing the drums, the guitar. It’s not from a computer. They’re playing beats that are from real ethnic, to-the-core, bone marrow music. It has a humanity to it. I love the culture and where it’s going, how it’s bringing people together.”

She’s also a big fan of another Canadian rapper who’s a bit more popular than Moka Only: Drake.

“He grew up on me,” she laughs, referring to a 2010 interview with Drake by Nardwuar the Human Serviette shared widely online, in which the Canadian rapper said Grier was “really responsible for shaping my taste in women.” 

“I want to know what magazine he was looking at when he was thinking of me,” says Grier.

“Or he wasn’t telling the truth, but I don’t know him as someone who is not truthful, so it would be interesting to ask him. He’ll blush.”

She’d love to have the chance to ask Drake in person when she’s in Toronto.

“He should come to the film festival, if he’s not in a recording session,” she says.

The Venn diagram overlap between Grier, hip-hop and Canada doesn’t end there. 

Snoop Dogg made headlines in January for an appearance on “The Jennifer Hudson Show,” where he revealed his initial encounter with Grier while working on the Vancouver-shot “Bones” left him so weak in the knees that he fainted.

“His heart started racing and he became overheated and over-anxious at the airport lounge and when we got on the plane to Vancouver,” recounts Grier. 

“We started talking in the lounge, and he said, ‘Wait a minute. I gotta go to the men’s room.’ He goes into the men’s room and he faints. Security had to come in and get him and wipe him off. He told me he fainted, but I didn’t believe him.”

Grier says throughout filming in Vancouver, she took Snoop under her wing and imparted wisdom to the rapper — once he calmed down.

“I told him, ‘If you can’t look people in the eye, you can’t be a good actor.’ I gave him some elements that would make him successful as an actor, that would make him watchable and not waste people’s time by mocking acting, but really developing another career for himself. He said I inspired him and I made him a better actor and a better person.”

When she’s not listening to hip-hop, Grier is still keeping busy in the acting world. She says she’s currently fielding offers after starring in the zombie comedy “As We Know It” and horror prequel “Pet Sematary: Bloodlines” last year. 

“I’ve got a lot of scripts on my desk right now, and we’re looking to get back after the strike to put more ducats back in the coffers, if you will,” she says.

There is one gig she is certain about: Working for Moka Only.

“I told him, ‘I’ll go on tour with you. I’ll sing backup for you if you let me.’”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 14, 2024.

Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press