Canadian rapper Shad increases 'degree of difficulty' on new LP 'Flying Colours

TORONTO - Canadian rapper Shad wanted to drastically increase the "degree of difficulty" on his fourth album "Flying Colours," crafting a densely musical, intensely personal statement of serious ambition. And yet it's an off-the-cuff moment on the record's most familiar-sounding track that has fans chattering.

The boom-bap throwback "Stylin'" is vintage Shad, though the pointed lyric in particular is perhaps not: "I got fans that say, 'Oh hey Shad, I hate rap but I like you!' / Well I hate that but I like you / Or at least I like that you like me, so I won't spite you / It's not your fault that you're a white dude that likes white music I like too / Just don't be surprised by my IQ."

The 31-year-old is often held aloft as a nutritious alternative to that "other" rap, a likable everyman whose knotty (but never naughty) rhymes tend to avoid such well-worn rap tropes as violence or bank-account bragging.

But he's not always comfortable with his status as Canadian rap's cerebral saviour, especially when a compliment simultaneously implies an insult toward his hip-hop peers.

"It can be a source of frustration," he said during a recent interview on the patio of a Toronto cafe. "The truth is, what I do is pretty straight-ahead rap. It's not like Gym Class Heroes or something like that where there's this obvious crossover appeal.

"I think to a great extent it's been awesome and a pleasant surprise throughout my whole career," he adds of the support he's received. "Even outside of music, it's like a faith in humanity thing, where you're like: 'Oh cool, people can listen really open-mindedly. It's not what they normally listen to but they listen closely with an intent to empathize.'

"And then to some extent it's like, well, hopefully that will open your mind up to other music that I love, which has influenced me, and sometimes people are still closed off to that. And I think that's the frustration I was describing. I come from a tradition of people who do exactly this. I mean, I'm doing it in my own way, but it comes from a long tradition. I'm not really inventing it."

He is pushing it, though, or at the very least pushing himself. That was pretty much the entire point of the recently released "Flying Colours."

Not that ambition is a new feature to Shad's music. His 2005 debut "When This is Over" touched on Rwandan genocide (Shad was born in Kenya to Rwandan parents before moving to London, Ont.), his 2007 breakthrough "The Old Prince" included trenchant insights on race that caught Kanye West's attention, and 2010's "TSOL" earned the rapper a surprise Juno Award triumph over Drake and cemented his reputation as one of the most talented rappers the country has ever produced.

Still, he felt he had room to grow.

"There's a certain kind of hip hop that I had a level of comfort executing — some pretty straight-ahead boom-bap type of stuff. I can execute that. At this point, I have my head around that," said Shad, whose surname is Kabango. "I was like: I'm going to try something harder. And that was daunting.

"I wanted to be a little bit more creative, kind of pushing myself in terms of what a song could look like. In every way — lyrically, I wanted to push myself a little bit more too.... (I wanted) to do something that's a bit more musical, playing with the form of songs, and try to put people in a position where they're listening disoriented, in a good way."

He achieves that effect immediately on opener "Lost," an opalescent swirl of smeared keys, stressed-out strings and irregular fits of drumming, while his downcast rhymes float in and out of the lurching beauty "Dreams."

But even with the imaginative soundscapes, Shad's rhymes consistently steal the show. The relationship lament "He Say She Say" is built on plush synths, keys and mournful horns, but most memorable is Shad's seemingly self-excavating tale of a loving relationship brought to a premature end over the "he" half's inability to graduate to adulthood. On the jaunty "Fam Jam," he hails the dogged work ethic of fellow immigrants over a trebly guitar lick. The sprawling "Progress" covers religion, cultural malaise, economic demise and race.

In fact, he found himself writing about race more and in perhaps a different way than on prior records. On first single "Stylin'," he mocks the condescending attitude some have toward his heritage ("You're from Africa, right? That's amazing/ That's really great — fascinating") while "Fam Jam" laments the lack of value placed on foreign education. But really, incisive insights are woven into every patch of the album.

"I tried to do that too with the lyrics, to be really pointed and precise at times, other times to be a bit more abstract and just kind of let the images kind of flow. I don't think I tried to be more pointed about race in particular, but that's kind of what came out. There's a few lines that definitely I think stick with you on that topic, on this album more than any others."

While he's acknowledged that he's not always comfortable with the perception of him as the clever-and-cuddly alternative to mainstream rap, he was careful to make sure he didn't rebel against that image simply for the sake of it.

"I was fighting the instinct to do that to a great extent," he said. "I was like, you know what? I'm a nice person. I just have a high tolerance for other people. Why should I apologize for that?

"I think I was fighting my natural artist contrarian instinct to defy people in some way," he adds with a smile. "I'm like, I don't need to defy people. I don't need to apologize for being a nice person and pretend to be upset about things I'm not upset about."

For all its stark self-reflection, "Flying Colours" allows for moments of bold braggadocio, a hip-hop artform at which the diligently modest rapper has always paradoxically excelled. On "Lost" he raps "I just may be Jay-Z in my lifetime" and on the album-closing "Long Jaun" declares himself "the undisputed number one."

In fact, a recent CBC Music list of Canada's 25 greatest rappers positioned Shad at No. 2, behind only Maestro Fresh Wes and ahead of Toronto chart champion Drake. After his unlikely Juno triumph, it's the second time Shad's topped his high-profile peer.

"I always say: Drake beats me like 364 days a year. So I've got him twice now," says Shad, now based in Vancouver. "He does not have a perfect record against me."

But even as he humbly waves off such accolades, Shad's ambition is real.

"When you're (over) 30, you can't hide behind 'you know, I'm still getting there.' I should know what I'm doing now, you know what I mean? I should be good at this now.... There's no excuse for not being good now. This is my fourth (album). I'm 31. I've gotta be good at this if this is what I do."

When trying to map out a lofty flight route for his fourth album, he briefly considered pulling in more collaborators than usual, figuring a new approach could help. Then he realized: "My songs, they're pretty unique to me and don't leave a ton of room for other people."

So as he restlessly tries to hoist his music higher and higher, he realizes it's grounded and anchored by a character he can't change.

"When I sat down with the album, I was pleased with how I pushed things. But I was also like: this is the same," he says, laughing.

"I guess there's a thing that I do. And an essential character that's there that has always been the same, since the second I started rapping."