Balancing Act: An Interview With Shad

Popshifter: I showed my friend “I Heard You Had a Voice Like an Angel,” and he said it threw him off because you went all “Jack Johnson” at the end with the outro.

Shad: (laughs)

Popshifter: How do people react when you bust out the guitar?

Shad: I don’t know. With me, it’s hard to gauge. If people don’t like it, they’ll never say it to me—but I’ve never come across people who are too opposed to it. When I pull it out, I try to do it with some purpose or effect, and not for the sake of doing it. Generally people haven’t had too many qualms with it. I’ll pick it up for a couple songs in the set, and then I’ll put it down and do a couple songs where I can move around and interact.

Popshifter: How did you transition towards rap being your career?

Shad: It just sort of happened. I devoted more and more time into it, and the team around me built up and it became a more professional situation, where I have booking agents and so on and so forth. All that stuff just started to build naturally and as I put more music out, you get paid a bit better and then you can pay your rent off a bit . . . and it’s essentially then when you can call it a career.

So that’s really how it sort of evolved for me, and it’s been cool; the last year has been sort of figuring out, “Okay, this is my career. What am I supposed to do when it comes to making music now?” Do I do it because it’s my job? It can be kind of a head trip. It’s been cool sorting through that stuff and figuring out this is what I want to do, and now I can do it!

Popshifter: What does “TSOL” stand for?

Shad: For me, it’s like. . . it doesn’t stand for a thing; a friend said a phrase which I can’t really disclose, in my head, I don’t know why, I reduced it to T-S-O-L. I like how it sounds. I like how it feels. What it feels to me is that you don’t know how to express how you feel.

For me, it’s when your heart feels crumpled. Good or bad; or something you can’t express. T-S-O-L. It’s the last words that I say on the album. It just feels right.

Popshifter: On a lot of your songs, you’re almost expressing an insecurity dealing with women. How do you open yourself up?

Shad: For me, if it doesn’t feel a little bit uncomfortable, I feel like I’m not pushing myself. You kind of know what feels right; it’s like, “Yeah, I just hit on something. I’m going to put this down.” I feel like I expressed this in a way that will be relatable. Even a way that allows me to approach it—like some guys, if you can turn it into a bit of a joke . . . it can still be serious.

That’s part of the fun for me, for making music. It’s like trying to take a feeling and turning it into something tangible: a rhyme, or something . . . I try to push myself a little bit. I like to move into territory that’s a bit personal.

Popshifter: It lets us connect with YOU, you know?

Shad: I hope so. That’s what it’s about. I’d feel like I was really copping out if I wasn’t doing that. If I didn’t give people something where they didn’t get to know me a little bit. Why else listen to music, you know? If it’s not going to connect on a deeper level . . . if people feel like they don’t know you, or relate to what you’re saying, what’s the point?

Popshifter: I understand that there’s someone else doing your PR on your blog and Twitter; why don’t you manage that yourself?

Shad: It just feels weird for me. The cool thing about music now is that you can go about it in a way that makes sense. If you’re comfortable doing all that, and it’s great, but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. For me, it’s just a little weird. It’s not something that I would feel comfortable doing, discussing the latest happenings for me every day. I find it’s not that healthy for me to stay in that mindset. If I did take that on, I think it’d be better to keep my mind on other things as much as possible. It keeps me in the zone about not thinking about yourself all the time. It just makes you feel gross.

Popshifter: Thanks for your time, man. It’s been great.

Shad will be performing at the Wolfe Island Music Festival in Marysville ON on August 7. He will also be touring with K’naan and K-OS through September and October. For more, check out his website and MySpace page.

RELATED LINKS:

Shad, TSOL, Popshifter May/June 2010 issue

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