They told Sugar Sammy it would never work. The Montreal-born child of Indian immigrants had become a comedy star with his English routine, but he dreamed of a bilingual show that bridged Quebec's linguistic divide.

“When I started pitching the show to a lot of producers, people would say, ‘You're crazy. At most, if you really push, you'll sell out one show,' ” he recalled in a recent interview. “They try to give you the mathematical or demographic reason why it wouldn't work. I just went with my gut feeling. It was too strong.”

Four years and more than 360,000 tickets sold later, Sugar Sammy — real name Samir Khullar — has proven the skeptics wrong. As he prepares to leave for an extended engagement in Paris this fall, Khullar has not only killed at the Quebec box office, he is helping slay a sacred cow. Khullar's bilingual success coincides with the emergence of Dead Obies, a group of francophone rappers who are unafraid to blend English and French in their lyrics, even if it means they are shunned from Quebec awards shows and denied grants. They are part of a new generation scoffing at the notion that English is a virus infecting Quebec's francophone cultural scene.

“The supposed decay of our language — and consequently of our culture — has been grossly exaggerated by a few melancholy minds who refuse to admit that learning English enriches rather than enslaves,” writes Marc Cassivi, the author of a new book in praise of bilingualism.

Twice voted Quebec's most popular comedian at the industry's annual awards gala, Khullar has been embraced by a generation of Quebecers who see and hear themselves in his comedy. Similarly, Dead Obies, who come out of the French-speaking suburbs of Montreal's South Shore, appear to be winning their battle against the language purists who object to the group's French-English lyrical hybrid. In 2014, the group was thrust into the political arena when pundits interpreted their lyrics as a surrender to the dominant English majority. Le Devoir columnist Christian Rioux called it nothing less than a cultural suicide.

Dead Obies are back this month with a new release, Gesamtkunstwerk, and the only nod to the language hardliners is the decision to spurn both French and English in the title. The lyrics are 45 per cent English, and yet the group is getting celebrity treatment, feted on the Radio-Canada talk show Tout le monde en parle and the Télé-Québec variety show Belle et Bum. Jean-François Ruel, whose stage name is Yes McCan, said the group saw no reason to back down. “We had to fight so much for who we are in the last four or five years, so I'm ready to have it out with anybody,” he said. “We come from battle rap, so it's like, bring it!”

As Sugar Sammy prepared to wind down his successful Quebec run and the new Dead Obies album became a top seller on iTunes Canada, a rare defence of English by a sovereigntist writer arrived in Quebec bookstores. In Mauvaise Langue, Cassivi, a La Presse arts critic, attacks the “horsemen of the linguistic apocalypse” who see the English-laced work of Sugar Sammy, Dead Obies and filmmaker Xavier Dolan as evidence that Quebec is doomed. “It is high time in my view that we rethink our often unhealthy relationship with the English language,” Cassivi writes. “That we stop seeing it as the language of a treacherous enemy, of a contemptuous boss or of an invader to be overthrown.”

For Khullar, 40, the comedy show You're Gonna Rire began from the idea that 21st century Quebec was not accurately reflected on the province's stages and screens. “The reality of a lot of Montrealers is we're exposed to both languages on a daily basis,” he said.  “I woke up today, watched the news in French, read about sports in English and even spoke to my parents in Punjabi, spoke to my manager in French, spoke to one of my buddies helping out with my birthday party in English. I don't think about it. That's how I live. That's how a lot of Montrealers exist.”

At his shows, the anglophones laugh at the French jokes and the francophones laugh at the English jokes. “A lot of my material was organically writing itself in terms of all these differences between the two solitudes, the gap that's being bridged, but also some people trying to make sure that it doesn't get bridged,” he says. He famously took out ads in the Montreal metro saying that all he wanted for Christmas was a complaint to Quebec's language watchdog, spurring some to fret that he was ridiculing Quebec's sacred language law, Bill 101. Less funny was the 2014 death threat that necessitated a police sweep of the theatre where he was performing in Sherbrooke.

“I never write with one foot on the brake,” he said. “I always write to express what I want to express and we'll see if the audience likes it or not. There will always be a small percentage of people who are not going to be on board, but you can't let that stop you from being an artist.”

Khullar, who performs a sold-out all-French show Saturday in Toronto, rejects the accusation that he is somehow weakening the French language: “People said, ‘You're ruining Quebec. It's a danger to Quebec culture and to our values, and it's a danger to the French language.' I'm like, ‘Hey man, I'm bringing anglos to come watch a bilingual show. They're picking up French.' ” His TV show Ces gars-là has got some anglophones and allophones watching French television for the first time.

“I don't know, I feel like that's kind of a good thing,” he said. “I feel like it's helping the French language more than it's hurting it.”

Cassivi, 43, said his book has drawn a virulent reaction from what he calls “the strong nationalist fringe.” An unsigned article on the web site of the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste de MONTRÉAL called his writing “moralizing vomit” and accused him of displaying contempt for Quebec culture. Documentary maker Jean-Pierre Roy, incensed that Cassivi called one of his films “anglophobic,” crashed his book launch and challenged him to a debate on the state of French in Quebec.

In an interview, Cassivi said that the fact he declares his support for Quebec independence is particularly hard for his critics to swallow. “It's like I'm the enemy within, so I'm a traitor to the nation,” he said. The anger is concentrated among the older generation, “who are maybe realizing that they will never see the country they have dreamed of.” For most people of his generation and younger, language is no longer really an issue. “Maybe in another generation it will no longer be relevant to write a book like this,” he speculated.

In Mauvaise Langue, Cassivi mocks University of Ottawa language professor Jean Delisle for an article Delisle wrote complaining about the rampant English in Xavier Dolan's film Mommy. In an interview, Delisle said he expects the acceptance of English preached by Cassivi will go the same way as the joual slang Quebec authors incorporated into their work in the 1970s. 

“Nobody reads those novels any more,” he said. “So in a few years, the Dead Obies will really be dead. It's a fad.” 

The danger of English terms becoming fashionable among French-speakers is that over time the language becomes eroded, he said. “If it continues, if these anglicisms persist, the French words will be forgotten. That's a step toward the hybridization of the language.”

Ruel has no time for doomsayers nostalgic for the days when Quebec chansonniers were a driving force behind the nationalist project. He sees the Quebec cultural establishment's conservatism, which shuts Dead Obies out of grants and awards galas because they use too much English, as the biggest threat. 

“Some kids are starting to get bored with Quebec, and that's how you kill a culture,” he said. “If everything is safe and everything is whitewashed, then people will be bored.”

Instead of an attack on Quebec culture, why not view Dead Obies as saviours? “You can see the glass half full or half empty,” Ruel said.

“Is it English culture that is invading ours? Or is it French Quebecers who are weaving French into rap culture, and suddenly you have French rap that gets played in bars alongside Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West because it has that same feel and authenticity?”