The Culture with Canadian Correspondent Shad

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Today is special.

First of all, what up, Welcome, We're gonna bring in the Canadian correspondent. Cannot wait for y'all to talk to my man Shad, who is now officially the greatest rapper out of Canada. Please do your googles on Shad if you like, do your googles Shad is. We got some music coming out. We've already done music together. But Shad is like a top tier artist hip hop evolution. His show on Netflix, go watch it. The guys won an egregious amount of Juno's, which are the Canadian Grammys. The

Now it's verifiably true. He was lying.

He was on that junk and he talked about it all the time. But on the application to get a gun. The man said, na, I ain't on nothing. Now, remember when we talked about what you won't do with Trump? How a defense one could make is like, bro, you ain't never lied on no application. That don't make it all right. I'm just saying to be fair imbalanced, who among us has not lied on some application. Now, this

Thirty fort them beats thirty for them.

Host.

That was not a federal case. That was a state case, the state of New York. So Trump's defense about this being a political thing with Joe Biden making sure it happened. Joe ain't got no jurisdiction over the New York courts. That's New York did that. And that was a trial by jury. The judge ain't even choose it.

Nigga. The jury did.

Twelve yo homies that y'all all agreed on when this case started talking about I can't get no fair nigga happened.

In New York. What do you want these people to do? Okay?

So yeah, anyway, thirty four and most that was a case brought by the state. The Joe Biden situation, where he does have some control over, is a federal case, and that case is against his son, and he ain't stopping that one, you know what I'm saying. But in that case, man, he probably gonna lose that I ain't gonna I ain't gonna hold you. But anyway, Trump with his thirty fold and felonies. Boy, now here's where it gets really interesting. Let's just say he get a conviction

He in his late seventies, mid seventies.

You know, probation community service is probably worse with somebody like a man like him. But like, if he gets that and then gets found guilty in Georgia and when he tries to get probation, they're no leniency. They're like, wait, you're a convicted felon. You already got probation in another state, or we gotta give you time cause you get leniency when you're a first time offender, but you already a feling because so, oh lord, this.

Might really whoa wait, it's stacking up on.

It, Bret.

Now Trump has.

Consistently dodged a freakish amount of bullets. Now, I don't know if he's out of his nine lives, but it's hard to make any particular call about what's going to happen with this man because he continues to defy gravity. But I tell you what, to try to get probation in another state when you already a feeling. If the criminal justice system worked the way I know it works, good luck, my gee.

What else?

Oh, Mexico got a el president TA They hired them a female. They had an elected day first and what was crazy was a female was their only option. It was two females running for president in Mexico. They don't shattered the glass in second half on your monkey, All my rappers on my true hip hop fans know that one right shattered that glass ceiling got them a female president. It's really America, that's knuckle dragon. Because Afghanistan, for God's sakes,

Now I don't know. I ain't over there. I know women be doing.

Dirt because girls is pepanes too, right, I know girls be doing the dirt too, So I don't know. But either way we'll see. That's a big deal. And lastly, we may or may not have a ceasefire deal. Now we done heard this before. And oh, Joe Senior, Joe Biden talking about then y'allhoo told me when everybody left that he really was trying to get this thing over with.

So to which Joe out here like, oh.

Then stand on business, that's what you believe, or just tell me this and let me say it, because you too scared that your whole government coalition will fall apart. Now I'm gonna talk to you about what it means to make a coalition in one of these hood politics episodes, because it kind of makes it make sense.

At the end.

But even if you don't know, that's a full situation. Essentially, if because the way that the Israeli government is set up, netn Yahoo only got on power only, he only got put on because he made a coalition with extremely right wing people that are like burn it all down. So if he falter a little bit, he out the game. He has to stay the course. But the course he's staying is chaos, and he knows chaos. So the man

Over there. We did an episode on this, but that's going on over there.

There might be a ceasefire deal first six week thing to which they exchange hostages, give everybody back on and they start removing troops, and then they finally talk about how they going clean all this up that they just destroyed. Like that's what they're trying to do. And maybe Hamas is down because the Moss was like, why ain't make a no deal with you? That's temporary, nigga, you just

Man.

Hopefully you know, hopefully this is a good sign, you feel me, and then these people can begin the generational trauma that they're going to experience.

Is not funny, but.

Maybe they could start the process of possibly existing with PTSD for the rest of their life. All right, let's talk to Chad. Welcome to Herd Politics with prop lessons from the Big Three. This is a bonus episode which ended up being lessons of the Big two, which some could argue Big one, but we won't get to that.

At this point. It seems as though.

After all the responses and had deep it's got we can't call anything right now. It's May sixth, the day after at least California is calling Cinco di Kendrick h So this is.

The day after that.

But we couldn't do this without tapping into our Canadian correspondent, the now new number one rapper in Canada.

This is so much shape, my man, Shad?

What's good?

Oh man? What of Shaddy? Is anybody ever call you Shaddy?

Yeah? Yeah, actually my family does.

Your family calls you shatty?

Yeah? Like my parents, my aunt? Yeah?

Okay is that off limits?

No?

No? I love it.

Okay, okay, let's make it sure. All right.

So obviously, as y'all know, we had to talk to Shad because as someone who is a Toronto resident, a bona fide Canadian, and a black man with a ton of accolades in the hip hop and music scene of Canada. So we're talking about this is a this is a very respected voice in his scene and out here.

So first of all, what up, Shad?

What about? Thank you for having me? Let's get into it.

Let's get into it all a waste of time? Okay.

So uh, at the end of probably the greatest weekend in hip hop history. You know, I already know you've been You've been fielding a lot of interviews. What have what have been the tenor of the interviews you've been You've been a fielding out here.

So I've done I've done a couple and I actually have one after this.

Oh my god.

Okay, so you know what I'm saying.

Listen, because this is, like you said, this is the biggest week in hip hop in my memory.

Yeah, this is. This is monumental. This is a two artists of their generation going at it. So a lot of to your question, the interviews I've done, I've done this one today will be for our public broadcaster, the CBC, which is the biggest news organization in Canada and so and so at this point it's national news like it is partly because Drake is our guy, yes, but also because just in music and entertainment and pop culture period, this is the biggest. This is the biggest thing in a long time.

Which is crazy, right, It's just it's it's this. It is officially international news.

Crazy crazy Like Jay and Naws was not.

I don't think they were doing a segment on the you know, six pm National News.

Yeah, in your version, in our version of like NPR, PBS, like Canada's version of that, that wasn't happening. No, Yeah, only when Dip said nim was on Bill O'Reilly being like, oh you mad bro.

So the tone of those interviews, a lot of it has been setting the table, so to speak, you know, like really explaining to a general Canadian audience what this is, yeah, between these two, but also what is battling in hip hop in general?

Yeah?

You know why? Why is it a thing? Why does it matter?

So a lot of it has been setting kind of setting the table some some basic fundamental understanding of what's happening.

So, yeah, that's good.

That's something that like I guess from from you and me perspective, who like we're like, what are you talking about Canada's King of the Doe?

Like what do you mean? You don't know? You know what I'm saying.

But that is a reality, like you know, sometimes we find ourselves too. Like when we were driving today or yesterday on purpose, I rolled down from where I live in East Lost to Long Beach to real ones. We had real ones yesterday, Uh, with my window down because I just wanted to see, let me just see, like it's is this does the city field the way I

Ground here, guys.

You know so, yes, you know so in his defense, now, obviously I would never ask you to like I would never ask you to to to be fraudulent to your soil. I would never ask you to do that. So I wouldn't. I'm not going this is not this conversation like this, you know for the listener.

I would never do.

That to Miami, Like I would never do that to you, you know, Like like if you ask me, like how I feel about like why somebody white ask me how I feel about OJ, I would be like, well, I ain't gonna say it on no recording but but I.

Know, I.

Know what I think Joe said, like.

You're spare, You're sparing me what you know, we all we all know.

Yes, we're yeah, yeah, yeah, we're sparing that.

But I think, so here's here's the conversation we want to ask, Like I want to like, obviously, we want to talk about politics, because that's what this show is about.

Yeah, that was the funniest part of the discourse to me. So far, we're seeing people online like I'm genuinely concerned for people's reading comprehension levels if they think that euphoria wasn't crazy, you know what I mean.

Yeah, So there, you know, there's that part of it.

Because when you talk about battles, you know, one of the things that's so interesting about it is the intricacy. Right, We're talking about two mcs going at it, and if you don't have the attention span or the willingness to engage deeply with what people are saying, then you're losing the beauty and the value of this whole exercise.

Right, This is what it's about.

It is about MC sparring with skill, and so if you're not willing to engage with that, then something is lost.

Now.

The other piece that there wasn't in a group text, to me is the social media aspect, where one piece of what somebody says can become the whole conversation.

And again, now we're no longer engaging with all of what.

Somebody said, right, So I feel like that's also happened to this battle, is it's been reduced a little bit to like two three lines or talking points, when really both of these guys went in and brought a whole lot of effort and a whole lot of lyrics. We got like six six minute songs on our hands to like parse through. So that's the other part to me, you know, in terms of attention span and general cognitive abilities, you know, being applied or not applied to.

You know what I'm saying, there's definitely like, uh, in my own in my own mind equating to like a magic and Bird, you know type situation, because part of uh, A big piece of California's disdain for Larry Bird was that he's so good, Like you get like he's an undeniably amazing basketball player, and it's like and that's part of why we hate him, you know what I'm saying, So like that, So in this but that as a basketball fan, you know, to to make a comparison, if

That's a perfect analogy.

That's a you can't actually have that strong feeling of hate without.

If the if they trash, yeah, if they trash yeah yeah.

So like no, it's like, you know, it's he's an amazing incredible hit maker. For the comparison here, I'm wondering it is has y'alls. We could say in America, our political discourse has evolved into the two to three minute meme and.

Clip. Is it the same up there?

It's the same up here. We're like a little bit Listen, this is how I explain it. In Canada, we like to think of ourselves as less of that culture, uh huh. But the truth is, if you were to zoom out to the whole globe, we're the closest to American culture of anywhere else.

Yeah.

So it's like they call it narcissism of small differences. It's like we define ourselves as so different, but the truth is we're like actually very similar, very very very similar, and something comfortably It's called narcissism of small differences.

It's a good one man.

Yeah.

So it's it explains sort of like Protestants and Catholics fighting, Right, You zoom out from that, and it's like almost laughable, Like these are the two most similar people obviously, yeah right, but if you were to ask them, they'd be like, none.

Of you're nothing like them. Yeah, we are nothing like them.

Bro, that's crazy, Like I've heard an interview, is it Dax Shepherd, I think where he was like, yeah, Pete Holmes's podcast. He was like, okay, so just keep zooming out. So you zoom out and your aliens looking at us and they're like, that's crazy. Those hairless monkeys when they make this sound, these other ones get angry and they make these explosions. I wonder what that sound is, Like, what is that sound that they make that makes the other ones make explosions? Like you know, when you che

So I do think we are we are the same culture, like by and large, you know what I mean, we are still we are social media culture. We're all that. We just have some other influences. So you know, if you look at say the political sphere for example, yeah, you know, we still we have the very similar discourse right left, the division all of that. But a little bit of a difference is in our politics we hate celebrity.

Yeah, okay, we hate celebrity.

That's good. Yeah, that's I wish we had that.

And I don't know exactly the difference is, but yeah, but as it relates to this beef. It's like, yeah, I think it's the same culture and there's this that's there's that same discourse going on about our.

People really engaging with the with the whole thing.

Because when this started, before this started, I was thinking, you know what, Drake's style really applies better to a battle like this, because when it comes to just a straight up battle, it's like Drake is so clever and witty, and he's got the flows and he has that songwriting gift of like those lines people are gonna remember, whereas Kendrick's gift seems more to be you know, as a recording artist, as a performer conceptually artistically. That was my

Yeah?

And and b He's got that very straightforward understandable.

Yeah, I mean he can make yeah, yeah, that was my thought.

I was like, Drake can make songs like these will be battle songs. I was like bar in my mind, I was like bar for Barr, Like it's because of way.

We think about him.

Seeing I was like, ah, nah man, like I think bar for I was thinking bar for Park Kendricks gonn mop the floor with him. But if we're going song for song, this might be different. You know what I mean, who's gonna give us something that we're gonna Who's gonna give us the ether? Who's gonna give us the anthem?

You know what I'm saying?

And me and you're right, Like I like as a fan of rap, like West Coast bias aside as a fan of rap, I was like, I did not the angles for which Kendrick took. This was like, okay, you you you went into another gear that I didn't know you had, you know, and didn't didn't didn't know it, didn't know yet. Yeah and and and and I think it was interesting to your point, like this being a

Do you know what I'm saying?

Like like that's how that's how how far apart it was right.

And we got this weekend, you know, by the end of it by Sunday night. A lot of the conversation online was like, Yo, I'm exhausted, Yo.

It's tired, Yeah, tired.

I was like, I don't know, like I'm tired. I can't keep up with the group text like I'm tired, yes, pray oh man, So I think live okay, So I don't have much more time with you, but so I want to really cut to the chase here as far as uh like when we say, like when Kendrick says, this is how the culture feels, and then so we have to be like, well, who or what is that that's been something that's been Who's the arbiter of it?

Who's in, who's out? You know? And then.

Which obviously is a is a bigger conversation about what we mean by blackness, you know, because that's been a very good to me, like an important thing at Reckoning if you will that we need to talk about just a hip hop and in black culture in period. Because obviously when when we say well, I don't want to end to the question already, but when we say culture, we mean a lot more than just rap. It's not

Is that what it's called? And somebody was like, hey, so what's what's the culture?

Yes? Wow, So this is a great question. I think like in the aftermath, when the dust settles, this is the stuff, this is the stuff that this battle has brought to light.

The people are going to be parking out right, Okay, So.

I'm going to try to answer your question speaking about Drake specifically, because he's such an interesting case. Okay, Yes, Drake in Canada before he signed Young Money and everything, he was getting checked about these exact same things within Canada.

Wow.

Okay, Right, Because.

Like you said, culture is not just skin color. It's a lot of things. Right, So the case of Drake. Yes, he's light skin. Yeah, came up in the acting teen drama world. So that's outside of the culture, that's outside of hip hop. He didn't come we didn't get to know him first in hip hop. We came to get to know him first in mainstream teen drama.

Okay. So that's outside. Then the neighborhood.

The neighborhood conversation was interesting to begin with in Canada because in I think his high school years at least, if not maybe a bit younger, he lived in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Canada. Now he lived there in the basement apartment or in some sort of apartment with his mother. But so it's like there's complications and nuances.

His father. So okay. So blackness in Canada.

Okay, Yeah, which we were ultimately going to get to. Yeah, like because that's super curious to me.

So then that's a whole other thing, right, So blackness in Canada, Okay.

We have in Canada descendants of Slavery mm hmm. That's a black population, and we have a lot of immigrants, okay. So there's there's little pockets all throughout Canada of people that came to Canada through the underground railroad in some place.

In some places like or or we're fought on the side.

Of the British in the Civil War and we're rewarded with land in Canada. So you have black people that are like six seven generations black Canadians. Okay, you have that. Then you have immigration from the Caribbean, which has flavored a lot of what we consider kind of the black Canadian identity. A lot of it is colored by that because that's a major thing. You have African immigration, like myself.

Right, Yeah, so.

Drake is none of those things exactly. Drake has a black American father who's deep in the culture and a white white Canadian mother Jewish mother.

Yeah.

So all of this to say from the culture standpoint, Drake was getting checked on this from Jump within Canada, within Canada, right, but.

He overcame that largely, you know what I'm saying.

Like because of years, you know, decade and a half of hits of work with all all sorts of artists that are deep in the caulture.

And then now Kendrick is calling into question.

That he's saying now but so okay, so you got accepted into the culture but did you get accepted into the culture.

Because you kind of paid your way.

And yeah, by.

Co sign and by ingratiating yourself and by using you know, it's the real nuances of cultural appropriation, right like, because of course culture, to me, cultures meant to be shared facts, cultures meant to be shared. The question is just in that sharing, in that exchange, what's the power dynamics, who's benefiting, who's getting shine, who's getting celebrated, all of those dynamics within that very natural exchange. So this is a long winded answer to your question.

No, it's perfect.

Like to try to.

Answer it through Drake, I think is the most helpful because Drake is just and I also don't do not believe in faulting people for just who they are and who they're born at you know what I'm saying, Like, that's not cool at all. But this battle does raise this question of what exactly is Drake's relationship to the culture? Is it?

And and.

Exactly what exactly is Drake's relationship to the culture.

Isn't fair if you if.

You were to take my guess, and again I'm trying to put my my local bias aside. I think Drake is first of first, almost a very good rapper period, so that you know, in terms of relationship for the culture, he respects it in the sense that he's good at it. Yes, he learned the crap and he became good. I think he has genuine.

Love for the culture.

But I think there is something to be investigated because he's become not just the biggest artist in.

The culture, but like too big to fail.

Yeah.

Yeah, And once you get to that status, I think it is only fair that we we ask we take a look at what is your relationship to the culture. Who is benefiting all of these things that are important to look at, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, so that's a very long winded answer.

No, it's great.

I think yeah, there's a lot.

Yeah, there's like there's these I think about, like you know, myself as an example, or just lahoods in general, Like in most in almost every black or brown neighborhood, there's a dirt, poor white family that lived across the street, you know, and know what, ever thinks twice about them, right, because they're just here, you know. And I think that there's a shared experience to where you learn norms that come with a shared experience.

You know what I'm saying. That to me is my best attempt at it.

Like I grew up black and Latino neighborhoods, there was a lot of Mexican, a lot of Filipinos, but I for me, it was like, because I had such proximity with them, I know which parts of these conversations I'm not a part of, like that like this is this is actually none of my business.

Like I feel connected to y'all.

I feel like I understand what you're saying, but I also understand that it would be disrespectful for me to move this way. And it's because I know you well

So I feel like those are.

The signs, you know, to make me be like these are those like grayish like kind of edges of like where it's not like a hard border, but these edges of nuance that makes me say, like you're right, I can't. I can't draw a bubble around what we mean by culture. But there are norms, there are understandings, you know that makes us say, hey, this, maybe I should keep my mouth shutting this. You know what I'm saying. I mean, I might have an opinion, but maybe I should keep

You know.

That's listen. I agree one hundred percent. It is not hard borders. It's a conversation to be had. Yeah, always with culture, just to make sure culture is being respected, just to make sure that people are benefiting equally, right, And so when someone gets to the level of Drake where they're that big and also now in the economics of the music industry kind of like too big to fail and such a massive out, sort of out of proportion piece of the whole pie. You got to have

Yes, one of the rightsier.

Within hip hop talk to me is.

Do you speak on things?

Yes, it's a matter of substance that matter to this ongoing struggle that we're in.

Mm hmm.

Do you speak to that?

Yeah?

Right, Yeah, Hawk is on people's Mount Rushmore because he obviously wasn't always speaking to that.

But at moments he didn't speak to Yes.

Jay wasn't always speaking to that, but at moments he was speaking to that, right, and so on down the list of the greatest of all time.

Right.

So again, I'm I'm a Toronto resident, I'm a Canadian guy, you know, so I understand our experience.

I understand our black experience.

I think Drake is a great practitioner of art form and I think they he is a person who genuinely loves hip hop.

I do too, yeah, deeply, but.

He hasn't done those things within the culture, like speaking to you know, what's going on. And then again, when you talk about culture, you also got to talk about the economics and the benefits and who gets the benefits. Yeah, and that's just open. That's just these things are just the open conversation. You got to have that conversation. Look at it, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, And the battle brings those things to life.

Yeah, in a way that like, uh yeah, the idea that like this battle wasn't just wasn't only I'm doper than you. It was you need to get help and you're and you know and and like and the other one was like the people around you don't trust you. You're you know, like you know, you like, where's your entertainment value? Like it's just such a bigger I was like, wow, you know that I would love to see and to bring it around the politics, and we're running out of

You know what I'm saying, because.

The idea of like really dissecting and saying what does this person stand for? And what we've been seeing here recently is like everybody's kind of over the like the TMZ of it all, like the gossip of it all. Like while I'm over the allegations and stuff like that, We'll let the fense figure that out. I'm interested in what type of man are you? What is your strategy, and how do you want to see our genre, our world, our culture, our people move forward? Like what is your desire for that?

I love that you brought it circle to that.

One thing I always bring up about battling is the first battle that I was in, And I've heard Kanye tell a very similar story. First battle I was in, I learned more than anything taught me about hip hop, about being a performer, about being an artist. Because what I realized that it all came down to, without going into the whole story, what I really realized it all came down to is it's not about my opponent. It's

What, Yeah, that's who do we believe in?

And yes, like it feels like battles do that more quickly and effectively and illuminate the issues, you know what I'm saying, better than political debates do. Like we have all these debates and it feels like the truth has never come into the surface.

Never ever.

It's just a whole bunch of yeah, so you, but you, but you. But when it comes to the surface, we can really make a decision.

We can really make a decision, and then battles it's like, nah, it just comes to the surface right away. Yes, we believe you, or we don't believe you. Yes, we like you or we don't like you. It's just facts.

It's just so yeah.

Man, man, thank you.

I know you got a hard out in two minutes, so I just want to say thank you for doing this. Our Canadian correspondent following him at shad K Music. Right, that's right, shad K Music. Please go peep the whole catalog. Peep Hip Hop Evolution. It's done right, like, no more of those.

It's done. It's done. But there's some there's some good stuff too about battles in that.

So okay, yeah, oh yeah, yeah there are yeah, So please go peep that. It's on Netflix. And thank you so much for your time. And this was probably one of the most succinct episodes we've ever had.

Thank you, my man.

All Right, all right, bro, all right, now, don't you hit stop on this pod.

You better listen to these credits. I need you to finish this thing so I can get the download numbers. Okay, so don't stop it yet, but listen.

This was recorded in East Lost Boil Heights by your boy Propaganda tap in with Me at prop Hip hop dot com. If you're in the Coldbrew coffee we got Terraform Coldbrew. You can go there dot com and use promo code hood get twenty percent off get yourself some coffee. This was mixed, edited, and mastered by your boy Matt Alsowski Killing the Beast Softly. Check out his website Matdowsowski dot com.

I'm'a spell it for you because I know.

M A T T O s O W s ki dot com Matdowsowski. He got more music and stuff like that on there, so gonna check out The heat Politics is a member of cool Zone Media, Executive produced by Sophie Lichterman, part of the iHeartMedia podcast network. Your theme music and scoring is also by the one and nobly mattow Sowski. Still killing the beats softly, So listen, don't let nobody lie to you. If you understand urban living, you understand politics. These people is not smarter than you.