Shad

Shad is one of Canada’s most revered rappers, a peerless wordsmith who embodies hip-hop’s power to entertain and educate. Since releasing his DIY debut in 2005, the Toronto-based MC has pushed his style of socially conscious yet infectiously playful hip-hop across five increasingly ambitious albums that have received widespread critical acclaim and coverage in outlets like Rolling Stone, Complex, The Ringer, Fader, NPR, and more. To date, Shad has racked up over 30 million streams, a Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year (for 2010’s TSOL), and four placements on Canada’s prestigious Polaris Music Prize shortlist, most recently for his 2018 concept-album opus, A Short Story About a War. His mission to inspire and inform goes beyond his own music: a former host of CBC Radio’s flagship arts and culture program q, Shad can currently be seen talking shop with the legends of rap on the Emmy/Peabody Award-winning Netflix Original docuseries, Hip-Hop Evolution. His most recent album, TAO, was released in October 2021 on Secret City Records. -- Stuart Berman