Shadrach Kabango is one frugal dude. In 2005, while still a student at Wilfrid Laurier University, he saw a golden opportunity in a hip-hop star search promoted by Kitchener-Waterloo radio station 91.5 The Beat. Performing with a hastily assembled band for the first time, he walked away with a cool $17,500 to put towards his debut recording. Rather than take time off from school, he recorded during his co-op term in Ottawa on evenings and weekends.

 

When buzz started to build for When This Is Over and interest in this hot new MC from London, Ont., was growing, Shad chose to complete his degree in commerce rather than throw himself fully into a rap career. And nowhere is his thrifty sensibility better conveyed than on “The Old Prince Still Lives at Home,” from his new album The Old Prince. His semi-serious anti-bling anthem cautions compulsive consumers that they're just a “penny safe from starving in the streets,” and hinges on the sweetly dorky gimmick of having the beats run out before his rhyme does, because, well, they cost too much.

 

It's probably not too far from reality, but Shad is still serious about the message. “People feel they don't have time to do anything about the bigger picture, they're too busy trying to buy the bigger thing, and it takes up their time and energy,” says the reflective 25-year-old from his temporary digs in Vancouver, BC. It's likely that he learned this life lesson well from his parents (they emigrated from Kenya while he was a child, though the family's origins are Rwandan). And it'll come as no surprise to anyone who's heard his lyrics or witnessed the genuine warmth of his live show that he's currently studying philosophy to better understand the present-day global predicament.

 

“Business wasn't something I was too interested in, but it was practical,” he says, and he explains that the big questions that preoccupy him in his studies are also the defining themes of the new album. “The main things I've been sorting through are, ‘What sort of person am I becoming?' and ‘Will I be able to be this person in this kind of world?'”

 

The album itself is loosely structured as a modern-day fairy tale, reflected in the cover art featuring Shad in 17th-century European garb. “This image of an old prince struck a chord, for some reason,” he explains. “This guy who's a fumbling character, who should be king, but he's just an old prince. It's this idea of us growing up and becoming the generation of people who are in control of the world and what happens. It's a daunting task.”

 

This faded fairy-tale idea recurs at various points throughout the album, woven together by the wise voices of a male and female narrator. They are, in fact, Shad's parents, and he's involved them before – most notably on his previous album, where he based the song “I'll Never Understand” on his mother Bernadette Kabango's poem about the Rwandan genocide. Though making the song didn't have a political goal, Shad reports that some fans were nonetheless moved to social action, and the man himself is clearly motivated by his parents' example (they retire later this month to pursue social projects in Rwanda).

 

“I wanted to put them on the album because they've been important to me as far as being grounded,” he says, and refers to a song from the new album, “Brother (Watching).” It's one of the best on the album, blending minor-key soul with keen observations gleaned from growing up black in white-bread London: the contradiction of living in suburban culture's “crazed infatuation with blackness” while simultaneously subtly excluding young black students for their difference.

 

“I remember talking with my mom about racism when I was really young, saying something like, ‘Mom, when I grow up, I'm gonna prove people wrong,” says Shad. “And I remember her saying, ‘No, you don't have to prove anything to anyone!' That always resonated so strongly, that idea that you don't exist to disprove stereotypes, you just exist to be you.”

 

Helen Spitzer