00:00:00:14 [Music]
00:00:11:18 What's up, yo!
00:00:13:02 This is I.E. This Cypher is going to feature
00:00:14:23 London, Ontario's Shad.
00:00:16:28 I never even wrote anything until,
00:00:18:28 you know, I was like 19 or 20,
00:00:21:00 before that in high school, it was just freestyling.
00:00:23:28 Plus, we're going to pay a visit with Kally's own
00:00:26:16 Eagle Nebula.
00:00:28:02 My own girl sent me some dope bad beats,
00:00:30:09 and said rap on that shit.
00:00:31:29 So we're going to wrap it all up with
00:00:33:20 live freestyle Cypher in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
00:00:36:18 ♪ Got to do a New York site to put my fresh pics.
00:00:39:08 ♪ After this I might check out the Nicks.
00:00:41:15 ♪ [Repping]
00:00:57:12 Welcome to the Big Apple, yo!
00:00:58:18 You've come to the right place if you're looking for some nice
00:01:01:12 hip-hop that represents from the streets.
00:01:03:11 We're here with Shad.
00:01:04:23 ♪ [Repping]
00:01:11:22 What goes on?
00:01:13:08 Ya, doing nothing man, you know,
00:01:15:00 what's bring you to NY today man?
00:01:17:16 CMJ Music Festival,
00:01:19:04 so we're playing right now across the street,
00:01:21:06 Arlene's Grocery. So we're hyped to do it man.
00:01:24:01 Take me back to the point where you
00:01:27:14 really started to see it starting out to bubble over man.
00:01:29:11 Okay.
00:01:30:13 First thing, I won this radio contest in Kitchener-Waterloo
00:01:34:02 that allowed me to record my first album.
00:01:36:13 Now, I heard your sister was the one that actually
00:01:39:01 applied for you.
00:01:40:28 You didn't even want to be in the contest.
00:01:43:00 I let her apply for me for my birthday,
00:01:45:08 because I was like I'm not going to remember to do it
00:01:47:08 and I'm going to be too lazy, whatever.
00:01:48:28 So she put it in, fortunately things worked out,
00:01:51:18 and so that was the point where I was able to make an album,
00:01:54:18 because that for me was like what I wanted to do.
00:01:56:27 So then we started playing some shows.
00:01:58:28 Mainly shows in London or...
00:01:59:28 Ya, mainly in like Ontario, kind of thing.
00:02:02:10 Got signed and put out the second album
00:02:04:23 with a little bit more support.
00:02:06:06 So that helped things to progress.
00:02:08:22 ♪ [Repping]
00:02:14:26 How important do you think London was
00:02:16:22 to get you on the map?
00:02:17:24 It's a smaller town,
00:02:18:20 so those people they support their own, right?
00:02:20:11 Even when I started doing some shows in Toronto,
00:02:23:08 be like London,
00:02:25:00 a lot of London people that are in Toronto would be there,
00:02:27:04 because they heard about me through their boy
00:02:29:05 or whatever in London, you know,
00:02:31:06 and they're proud of their own.
00:02:33:10 So let's talk about The Old Prince now.
00:02:35:02 I think it's dope by the way, dope, dope,
00:02:37:03 like enough respect.
00:02:38:22 It's a really good album, well put together. Thank you.
00:02:41:01 One thing I noticed, there was no collaborations.
00:02:43:02 I said to myself, okay, he's got to have a reason for this.
00:02:46:08 Ya, you know what, like, I think it comes down to
00:02:48:18 like my process, a lot of it is like
00:02:51:12 takes place inside of my head.
00:02:52:18 You know what I mean?
00:02:53:24 So like the songs tend to be very specific and very tailored
00:02:57:05 in a certain direction.
00:02:58:21 So there's artists that I love and I love what they do.
00:03:02:18 But it's like I see my songs laid out and I'm just like,
00:03:06:02 I don't know if I can fit them into any of these songs,
00:03:08:12 because they're so specific, you know.
00:03:10:18 I feel like if I was going to do a collaboration,
00:03:12:28 it would have to be like clean slate, you know.
00:03:14:28 Brand new. Brand new thing,
00:03:16:28 let's just come to it, both of us fresh.
00:03:19:23 ♪ [Repping]
00:03:33:04 Yo, I heard your own mother is a poet as well.
00:03:35:07 My mother writes poetry, yeah, just kind of in her spare time,
00:03:37:27 yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:03:40:02 And what... did I hear her in the album?
00:03:42:14 Yeah, she does a little narration, yeah.
00:03:47:22 I hope that my kids would be very responsible.
00:03:51:29 It's interesting, you know, like...
00:03:53:22 because it's not like a huge part of my mom's life,
00:03:55:23 but it's in her, you know.
00:03:57:27 And even the fact that English is like her third language
00:04:00:21 or whatever, fourth language, but she still...
00:04:03:03 she can create in that language.
00:04:05:02 I was born in Kenya.
00:04:06:22 My family is from Rwanda originally.
00:04:08:13 I grew up in London, Ontario.
00:04:10:18 Yeah, so my upbringing is a real kind of mash of cultures.
00:04:15:02 I mean to me, I knew nothing different growing up,
00:04:17:06 it's just how I grew up.
00:04:18:14 But that's the Canadian experience, you know.
00:04:21:10 You grow up with a lot of different cultural influences.
00:04:25:00 ♪ [Repping]
00:04:39:05 What about finding the actual music,
00:04:42:00 the beats behind your lyrics?
00:04:44:14 As a new artist coming up,
00:04:46:13 I find that's usually a roadblock,
00:04:48:28 how did you overcome that?
00:04:50:03 When beat maker see that you're serious, you know what I mean,
00:04:53:04 that helps, that breaks down a lot of...
00:04:54:28 all of a sudden you have too many people,
00:04:56:18 you know, talking to you.
00:04:58:04 Because there's few people out there that are really
00:05:00:28 working on something that's going to be out there
00:05:02:22 and it's going, you know what I mean?
00:05:04:02 So for me, like on the first album,
00:05:06:10 it was very, very difficult.
00:05:07:18 I mean, I had never put anything out,
00:05:09:22 but even producers that had never put anything out
00:05:11:28 either were reluctant to work with me, right?
00:05:14:02 So it was a lot easier the second time around.
00:05:17:02 So off The Old Prince, what's the track that
00:05:21:07 to this day you've got a press rewind on it,
00:05:24:22 what does it for you, man?
00:05:25:24 Probably like some of the deeper cuts probably,
00:05:27:28 because those ones probably took
00:05:29:12 a little bit more time and thought.
00:05:30:20 There's a track called,
00:05:31:28 I Heard You Had a Voice Like an Angel,
00:05:33:07 that took me like about a year to really nail down,
00:05:36:10 nail it down lyrically.
00:05:38:00 So that one is like, its special to me,
00:05:42:00 but, yeah, they all have kind of their place.
00:05:46:17 Up next on the Cypher.
00:05:48:10 [Music]
00:06:07:10 Yo, what up, what up, what up, this M1 right here,
00:06:10:22 information age out there, deadprez.com,
00:06:13:02 big M1 right here.
00:06:14:03 Already, sticky-icky, and you're watching Cypher.
00:06:16:02 And you're watching Cypher baby.
00:06:16:28 That's a complete circle, what are you doing?
00:06:20:12 [Music]