SHAD: Your Everything Man from hueTV on Vimeo.

Whether we like it or not, in the state it’s in, Hip Hop as a whole is a genre chock-full of labels. I’m not talking about the mobs of artists trying to start up their own record labels, I mean the labels defining rappers as rappers. You can fall into a number of categories – Gangster Rap, Conscious Rap, Boom Bap Rap, West Coast Rap, East Coast Rap, Underground Rap, Pop Rap whatever, whatever, whatever. But with the thousands of aspiring rappers wrestling it out in the industry just trying to get noticed, let alone jack that number 1 spot, it seems that only GOOD rap is being permitted entrance into the ring.

Shadrach Kabango is one of those good rappers who creates good music and he’s absolutely good with that. In this day and age, fans have an extremely short attention span and usually allow rappers a very tiny window to deliver a great hook, line and sinker – pun intended. Playing the field with Canadian roots puts him immediately against the odds but that doesn’t seem to bother him. He quite likes it up north, in fact he moved out to Vancouver just a couple years ago to record much of his 2010 album, T.S.O.L. (True Sounds of Liberty), of which he beat out a dude named Aubrey “Drake”
Graham to earn Rap Recording of the Year at the 2011 Junos. Living and touring a lot throughout Canada you’d think his fan base would be strictly regional but his last couple LPs continue to garner him a following that blurs hip hop lines.

Read the rest of SHAD: Your Everything Man at The Hue