Sometimes I get down on the current state of hip-hop music, but whenever I really look, I realize that the problem is most of the time I’m too lazy to find the good shit. Like this; Shad is a Canadian rapper whose third album, TSOL, just came out in America last month even though it’s been out north of the border since the spring. If a blog site I follow wasn’t up on it, I doubt I’d ever have heard it. Back in the early 90s when I was in high school and A Tribe Called Quest was having crossover hits, records this good would have gotten on the radio, or at least MTV. Now MTV doesn’t show videos at all anymore, and the rap that gets played on the radio is all cheesy bullshit. Plus, there’s the built-in stereotype about Canadians making terrible music, and how it only ever gets famous up there because their government requires them to play it on the radio. But Shad is hardly Moxy Fruvous; this guy has real talent, and I defy you to listen to this song and judge otherwise. Now I just need to buy his whole record.
Sometimes I get down on the current state of hip-hop music, but whenever I really look, I realize that the problem is most of the time I’m too lazy to find the good shit. Like this; Shad is a Canadian rapper whose third album, TSOL, just came out in America last month even though it’s been out north of the border since the spring. If a blog site I follow wasn’t up on it, I doubt I’d ever have heard it. Back in the early 90s when I was in high school and A Tribe Called Quest was having crossover hits, records this good would have gotten on the radio, or at least MTV. Now MTV doesn’t show videos at all anymore, and the rap that gets played on the radio is all cheesy bullshit. Plus, there’s the built-in stereotype about Canadians making terrible music, and how it only ever gets famous up there because their government requires them to play it on the radio. But Shad is hardly Moxy Fruvous; this guy has real talent, and I defy you to listen to this song and judge otherwise. Now I just need to buy his whole record.
