INTERVIEW WITH SHAD: PART 2

This interview was conducted on Monday, April 6th, 2020 over Zoom with a large group of people from Solid State.

The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and significantly condensed for length. This is Part Two of two and the full audio is available here.

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SYED: What was your favourite episode from Hip-Hop Evolution? For me, Season 4 the master producers with Kanye, Pharell, that one was my favourite!

SHAD: That’s probably the one we’ve gotten the most feedback on which surprised us. People really loved that episode which was cool and I think it makes sense because those are sort of untold stories. You see the artist's face but you don’t necessarily know who was involved with making the song behind the scenes. So to get a sense of all the stuff that Timbaland and Missy and Pharrell have worked on and Kanye of course.

Even the song in the opening credits of Hip-Hop Evolution called “Hip-Hop” by Dead Prez, Kanye produced that particular version of that track, a lot of people don’t know that.

I would say my favourite one is in Season 2. It’s like a producers episode - but it focuses on producers from the 90s like DJ Premier and Pete Rock and Large Professor. Those guys really formed the sound that I listened to when I was a kid.

AMAL: Hi Shad, I have a question on something you said earlier. You said that when you get an opportunity, and even if you don’t have any experience, you should just go for it, and figure things out later. My question is a step before that. How do you get those opportunities, how do you put yourself out there so that people know to contact you for them? 

SHAD: Well, there’s no simple way to do it. But this goes back to the very first questions about keeping your options open - putting yourself in situations and putting yourself around the things you are interested in. Let's say you like radio. If you just are like you show up to your campus radio, and you go “I am going to volunteer” you put yourself in and around the things that you are interested in. Things happen kind of naturally. I think people tend to land where they should land when they do that.

The problem comes when you don’t open yourself up to different experiences and opportunities. They may not be paid opportunities to start but if you just kind of put yourself in these places that you are curious about, that you are interested in, a lot of times you kinda just end up falling in the right place, and into the right opportunities

Just go where your curiosity leads you and you’d be surprised what opportunities might open up. 

VANESSA: My first question is you already mentioned Kendrick Lamar, I was wondering if there were any other kinds of newer school rappers that you think are really talented or are some of your favorites. 

SHAD: So many. I hear people all the time now like that D-Smoke album is really dope, it’s a lot like Kendrick but it's really really good. That Saba album from a couple years ago is very special, he should have something new soon, that Earth Gang album was dope, in hip-Hop those are some of the first ones that come to mind.

VANESSA: And then my question is that Toronto and Canada can get really shadowed by the whole Drake presence. I was wondering if you had any local Canadian artists, rappers, that you would recommend or that you are impressed by?

SHAD: Haviah Mighty, she’s a great performer too and just a killer, killer MC. There’s another young guy Tobi in Toronto that I really like. Just John x Dom Dias have done a little bit of touring out that way, but if I had to pick two it would be Haviah Mighty and Tobi and they are both doing something different.

DENZEL: How would you charge for a feature? 

SHAD: To me it entirely depends. To be honest, I don't really charge for features. And I am very different from a lot of artists in that way. For me, it’s kinda like if I feel like I have something to bring to the song, and I have the time and I have the energy and I want to do it then I am going to do it.

I mean, I don’t often do features because I don’t often have the time or have the energy or whatever, but I don't often charge to be honest because it’s just always felt like nah if I want to be involved with the song, I just do it. 

ARWAA: Hi Shad I am Arwaa. I have a question. Going back to what you said earlier about how it’s important to stay connected to your audience, what would you say is the one time when you felt really engaged with your audience? 

SHAD: Well there’s nothing like being on stage and being able to really look at people in the eye and kind of sharing the moment. And a big thing that helps with that is actually when something goes wrong.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been at a concert where that’s happened. Some kind of technical malfunction or something and it just makes you as an artist have to stop doing your regular routine and actually just get down to the basics of entertaining and connecting with fans. So, that’s sometimes if I am in the midst of a long tour, I actually hope something goes wrong during a show because it just makes the connection be real so those are probably some of my favourite moments as far as connecting with a crowd. When the turntables stopped working, or something, and I had to think on my feet and actually just be there with people. 

ARISHA: Earlier when you were talking about failure, and learning from that, what’s one experience that has really stuck with you throughout your career?

SHAD: There was an early show that I had at the El Mo in Toronto, and it was a big show for me at that time, and it was sold out, and I wanted to really knock it out of the park so I had this band, and we practiced and we had all this stuff, and I remember after that show feeling like “oh man we didn’t do it.

We didn’t hit some of the moments I wanted us to hit in that show” and the thing I learned from that was like, sometimes it’s better to simplify and be able to achieve the simpler thing than not be able to execute the more complicated, better, thing. That was an important lesson. I have taken that with me throughout my career too, whether that comes to performing or interviewing, or whatever. Sometimes it’s better to kind of scale back some of your expectations and your plans, and kill it, then try to do something that’s a little bit outside of your ability. 

ADEN: I was wondering, throughout your career you’ve gotten so many awards, you've been nominated for many awards. What was your proudest or most unexpected accomplishment throughout your career? 

SHAD: I would say my proudest accomplishment is really just getting to continually make things. When I made my first album, I was so amazed that I made an album and I genuinely didn’t think I’d get to make another one because it was hard work and it was also a dream come true. And everyday I am just grateful that I get to make things. That's really the reward for me. The recognition in terms of awards and stuff helps me to continue to be able to make stuff. So that’s great! But really the thing that if I am honest with myself just the fact that I have persevered in creating. 

FATIMA: What do you think are some of the challenges facing the new school of hip-hop? 

SHAD: Well I would say the biggest challenge is being heard. Because there is so much music now. When I started, which doesn’t feel like that long ago, but when I started you were either on a major record label, which is not a lot of people, or you were someone like me that was independent and found a way to make some stuff independently. But all in all, there wasn’t like a lot of people.

Whereas now, it’s hard. There’s a lot of music out there, and there’s a lot of good music. And so, that’s probably the biggest challenge to a new artist. How do you get yourself heard? How do you get going? I don’t really know the answer to that for a new artist. I think you really have to have perseverance now. Because it might take a few projects to get heard, to get noticed, for people to really think of you as a player. So, I’d say that’s the biggest challenge. 

SARAH: I was just wondering, cause I noticed that you live in Toronto now, and you’ve also lived in Vancouver, and my family as well we used to live in Toronto and now we live here. So, I was just wondering, do you think that there’s a difference or more of an advantage of living in one place if you want to go big or get noticed for your work? 

SHAD: Well, there’s pros and cons. Most of the Canadian music industry is based in Toronto, so there’s more opportunities there to be noticed. But you can always make a trip to Toronto and make that happen. I grew up in London Ontario and I feel like I started my career kind of in Toronto but also, when I was starting out, I really cared about building an audience in London and Guelph and Kitchener Waterloo. There’s a thing about having the support where you are from that really makes a difference.

You don’t have to always be in Toronto, because then you can actually focus more on your craft and your work and it’s harder to do that when you are constantly around. So, what I recommend to people is don’t run to Toronto or LA or something when you are getting started, in fact it might be better to start exactly where you are, get the local support, focus on your craft, and then when it’s time to put that industry energy behind what you are doing, well then you can make your trips to LA, you can make your trips to Toronto.

ASLAM: I have a question about questions and I think as someone who has interviewed a bunch of people, I am always in these situations where there is someone really cool, and you want to really ask them everything. So how do you come up with a question? Particularly when you know that you’ve got limited time with someone? 

SHAD: A big thing for me is the specific question. It’s funny how that can be - you sit down with someone and you want to ask them everything! Let’s say Barack Obama was here in the Zoom chat. The question you’d want to ask is “How do we fix the world?” But it tends to be more helpful to just ask something small, something like “who was your best hire when you were president?” Or “who was the first person after Michelle that you talked to?” Something that’s going to yield a very specific answer but might open up the door to something.

ASLAM: So maybe I can jump on that and ask what’s the best question you’ve asked? 

SHAD: I can tell you the best question that was asked to me. Somebody said “what’s the most important thing you ever changed your mind about?” Which I thought was just a really great question. I don’t even really remember what I said! I think I was pretty stunned by the question, because it’s a beautiful question. And I still don’t know what I would say but I was just really stunned by that question. Because it sounds simple, but it’s a real window that gives you a sense of where they are coming from, you get so much about a person from that one question. 

MATT: Shad, in several different places, I’ve seen you talk about your parents, including tonight, and it was so charming when you put your mom’s poetry on an album. Can you tell us about your mom a little bit? 

SHAD: My parents have retired and they moved back to Rwanda about 10-12 years ago now. My mom was a pretty profound influence on me obviously, but also on my music. She actually doesn’t care that much for music but she is big into writing. She loves writing poetry, she always has. She loves drama, and used to write plays in high school, but she worked her entire career as a lab tech, she never did anything creative for a career, but what she did do was she really just normalized creative work for us. Which was a little bit unusual for a lot of immigrant households, but she just made it really normal to write, to read, to go to see a play, to even want to write a play, or, be involved with music.

She just made me feel very normal for caring that much about creative things. And she’s like super low-key but she is very very talented. Really the song started because of her poem which was so amazing. I heard her perform it at a memorial for the genocide in Rwanda, and it was just remarkable. A lot of people have remarked on how powerful it is, and how powerfully her poetry is, and that’s her fourth language!

MATT: Oftentimes it takes teenagers a while to recognize how cool their parents are. Was that true for you?

SHAD: Well, my mom has a sense of humour. That’s how I knew she was cool. Sometimes we just pull up to the McDonalds, and she would just pretend like she couldn’t speak a word of English to the poor kid at the counter, or at the bookstore she would do that too even though it’s a bookstore, it’s full of books in English.

I always knew my mom was funny, but yeah I think the older I got I came to recognize just how wise she is and how much I’ve benefited from her and her wisdom. I think that’s a thing that only time can teach you. I always respected my parents. Firstly, just their work ethic and just the sacrifices they made for us, I just think I always respected and appreciated that. As I’ve gotten older I've come to really appreciate how special they are too. 

FATUMA: How would you describe growing up in Canada as a Black person born in Africa? 

I would describe it as a bit of a challenging experience in some ways. I had a great childhood for sure. When you’re growing up, your strongest desire is to fit in and it can be tricky figuring out how and where to fit into a country that doesn’t have many examples for you. Especially around the time I was growing up, there weren’t many African immigrants or refugees in Canada yet, let alone people with my background occupying prominent places in the culture to serve as role models.

The general Canadian population didn’t know how to think of us and we didn’t know how to think of ourselves.

Images of Black people in the culture were mainly Black Americans. I connected naturally to those images but never completely because my story as an African and Rwandan specifically was different in some important ways.  And my story as a Black Canadian was different too. It’s confusing as a kid when the only images that look like you in the culture - and consequently people’s perception of you - doesn’t really square with your story.

There were no K’Naans or Issa Raes or The Weeknd. No Drake references to East African girls. No Trevor Noahs, Yaa Gyasis. No Barack Obamas! Stories that help you and others understand your specific cultural identity as African-Canadian a bit better. 

RIEM:  Do you think it is substantially different growing up Black now as opposed to when you were a kid?

I think it’s easier in some ways and harder in others. As I said earlier, I’m glad there are more examples now of the range of Black experiences out there so Black kids can see themselves more accurately reflected in the culture and others can see us too. It’s not great yet for sure, but it’s better.

I see Black kids being more free now than when I was growing up. When I was younger there was kind of one script for Black kids to follow and if you deviated from that you really risked being perceived as white-washed or just so fringe that you become invisible.

Now I see Black kids who are punks, who are queer, who are into books, and they have the confidence and language to express who they are and find community. It’s beautiful. At the same time, the career and financial prospects for kids now are tougher and Black kids starting out where we often do, we’re at an even greater disadvantage. We don’t inherit as much wealth; our networks are smaller and less powerful. These things matter more as far as building a stable life and career now because public education is worse due to school rankings and other superficial nonsense, tuition is more expensive, stable jobs are scarcer, and home ownership is virtually impossible. This affects a whole generation but disproportionately affects Black kids. 

REMAS: In your perspective as a black person would you change anything in the music industry?

I would change a lot! We still aren’t in nearly as many positions of power as we should be given our contributions as creators. It’s only gotten worse now that the power in the industry is mainly held by a tiny group of players, including a handful of tech companies, which is a space where we really don’t have enough of a presence. The other major shift that needs to happen is we need to preserve and celebrate the history of our contributions to music and cultural life. Our pioneers in Hip Hop, for example, should be celebrated and taken care of for creating the biggest selling music in the world. I think celebrating our history also benefits future generations. (Check out this article here btw about our history and the value of Black cultural work in Canada: https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/february-2020/why-canada-needs-a-national-policy-for-black-arts-culture-and-heritage/)