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Polaris ’10 Shortlist: Shad TSOL
Will The Old Prince's third LP ascend the throne as Canada's best record of 2010?
I don’t have a gosh darn clue what’s going to happen in two weeks when the Grand Jury convenes at this year’s Polaris Gala to choose a winner. No one does. But what I wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall to hear the discussions about Shad‘s TSOL. I’ve talked about the abundance of possible game-changing winners on this year’s list, and if ever the Canadian hip-hop and rap scene had a clear shot at the Prize, TSOL is it. Popular theory suggests that Polaris is due to recognize a hip hop album, but that’s never going to be a consideration in this race. Besides, there’s a very compelling reason for TSOL to win this award in its own right. Shad has managed to do something that few (if any) of the other records on this year’s list has managed: he’s crossed the genre border and connected with music fans who don’t necessarily listen to hip hop.
I can count on one hand the number of hip hop and rap albums that have ever made an impression on me: Three Feet High and Rising by De La Soul, Check Your Head by Beastie Boys, and 808s and Heartbreak by Kanye West. That’s it. I have, do and will continue to listen to those albums in their entirety. Sure, you can say that they’re all anomalies in their given genre, that they don’t necessarily represent the hip hop and rap community, but the same argument can easily be made for Fucked Up’s The Chemistry of Common Life, and look what it ended up doing last year. It’s not a representative record for the hard core scene because it transcends the strictures of it’s genre and appeals to those who wouldn’t normally consider themselves fans. These “freaks of nature” records are often the ones that open the doors for people who wouldn’t necessarily choose rap or hard core to explore the genres.
You could make the argument that these records are “populist” and actively trying to bait mass appeal, but a real connection to new fans is not something you can engineer or plan for. Critics and music fans can see through that bullshit. Real connection starts with an artist having an understanding the kind of artist they are, and a willingness to be that person instead of a manufactured persona (*cough*Ga Ga*cough*). I knew that about Shad when I first heard “The Old Prince Still Lives at Home” from his sophomore record The Old Prince (a Polaris Prize shortlister in 2008). That song is one of the few times when hip hop rhymes seemed like they were written about me and for me: an Italian/Canadian kid who was desperate to get out into the real world and out from under his parents, only to realize that the real world was fucking expensive and crazy. On “Listen” he raps that “Music is a great way to heal/and a safe place to feel/Trapped in this fake world/a gateway to real” and that was the line that jumped out and connected me with TSOL. Shad is a music fan like me, a consumer of good songs regardless of style or popularity. I remember reading in a Globe & Mail interview earlier this summer that he’s an avid country music fan, which is not obvious from listening to the music he produces, but on some level, you get the sense that Shad is absorbing influence and experiences from many different sources and distilling it through his chosen medium. See? He’s like me. Rapping is his medium, blogging is mine. We’re both using music is one way to connect to others through shared experiences. To paraphrase the man himself, “Ya, I get it.”
Now I’m not comparing what I do here as being the equal to Shad’s rhymes and rhythms. Far from it. Same idea, different execution. What he does is artistry. Shad has opened a channel from which he is broadcasting to all of us on songs like “We Myself & I”, about his truth, the many facets of himself and his experience. It’s clear, it’s direct, but like it’s ambiguous acronym title, TSOL is open to interpretation by those who get the message. How much more “artistic merit” do you need? 09/06/10 >> go there
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