The Globe and Mail - Music: Interview: Shad Kabango
Monday, October 29, 2007
![MUSIC: INTERVIEW: SHAD KABANGO
Echoes of hip hop's heyday
For some of us, 1989 and 1990 was our late Sixties.
Hip-hop groups like the Jungle Brothers were as much about being transported to idyllic Soul-land as about taking it to the street. House music was cell-splitting into endless variants. David Byrne was resurrecting Brazilian Tropicalia, and a land bridge of jazz beats was forming between Brooklyn and Dingwall's, a tiny, influential club in the middle of a flea market in London's Camden Town. You had to stop and catch yourself in amazement.
Maybe you had to be there. But that's why it's so astonishing to hear Shad, a rapper who was only 7 or 8 at the time and growing up in London, Ont., channelling so effectively the atmosphere of that era in his new album The Old Prince, while barely sounding at all derivative. He doesn't even shy away from upbeat corniness, which was so much a part of the smiling vibe back then.
Born Shadrach Kabango of Rwandan parents, he'll admit there's a retro quality in what he's doing, like all good hip hop. And if pushed, he'll agree that there's some general link to other socially conscious artists such as Chicago-bred Common, whom Shad opened for recently in Toronto, or Toronto's K-OS, whom he routinely gets compared to. All portray a kind of pining in their music for a time before hip hop exploded commercially.
"In a broader sense, I can see some see similarities between what Common does and what I do, as compared to 50 Cent and a lot of the stuff coming out of the South. Maybe a little more about real life and a little more introspective."
As for the time now commonly dubbed hip hop's golden age, "I wasn't really around for that era," says Shad, who is now 25. "But that is what my music gets compared to a lot of the time ... I remember Midnight Marauders [A Tribe Called Quest's 1993 album, a late relic from that era]. That's when I was around 10. But for some reason, I was still drawn to it even then."
Speaking on the phone from Vancouver where he's studying part-time at Simon Fraser University for a master's in liberal studies, Shad seems reluctant to theorize or expound endlessly on his work, although he notes, "I do like the sound of samples and the nature of piecing stuff together. It's not perfect, a little bit messy. There's something about sampled sound that is classic hip hop."
And like classic hip hop, he comes very much from the underground. His first album When This Is Over was self-made and self-distributed, down to dropping off copies of the CDs himself at various Toronto record stores. The stores would then sell them on consignment. Now he's able to go the insider route, releasing his new album with Mississauga-based Black Box Recordings and distributing it through Universal.
But Shad remains a hip-hop outsider, receiving good word of mouth, while not being overtly commercial. As a result, he'll likely continue to draw indie audiences and older golden-age devotees as much as young rap fans. It's the only way for a hip-hop artists to survive at home.
"In Canada, at least, there's no way you can play for a straight-up hip-hop audience enough days in a year to be able to sustain yourself. And for me, I don't really care [who comes to the shows]. If people understand what I do and they like it, then that's great," he says.
And yet despite clever, homey lyrics such as having "new school looks more crazy than OCAD," referring to the Ontario College of Art and Design's crazy building designed by Will Alsop, or "folks with no OHIP, don't slip," Shad hasn't mastered the technique of flowing with a journalist trying to overconceptualize his work.
He hears the argument that hip hop has always been about connecting an idealized musical past (via samples) with a future that hasn't quite arrived. Or about how his music uncannily has a certain London (England) sound circa 1990. But in return, all I get is the telephone equivalent of appreciative nods.
Maybe those are just the connections a listener makes. But like the era Shad updates so uncannily, his music isn't pre-programmed to sound like the past. It's just happening now.
GUY DIXON
October 29, 2007
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