Shad: The Future Is Wide Open

The celebrated hip-hop personality reminds listeners why he’s been around for more than two decades with Start Anew.

By Adriel Smiley

Photos by Justin Broadbent

Published on November 6, 2025

It’s the middle of the World Series playoffs in Toronto and Blue Jays fans are scattered across the street from The Rec Room Roadhouse. Inside, Shad is shooting basketballs into a moving hoop with the clock running down.

The celebrated rapper and former CBC radio personality casually strolls to a private area to sit down with RANGE. A true low-maintenance superstar, he arrives alone a few minutes before his publicist. Donning all-white Jordan 3s and a Laylow Brewery varsity jacket, he tops it off with a black Scratch Bastid cap. The casual fan may not recognize the branding on his pieces, but he wears them with the confidence of designer labels.

Some listeners may just be discovering Shad through Start Anew, his brand new LP which delivers a more polished take on the sound that first broke him in the early 2000s. The album closes out a loose trilogy and finds him returning to his roots.

Although his sound nods to the past, this record is far from a retread. Rather than rebooting what fans already loved, Shad is closing a chapter. “I didn’t set out to make a trilogy, but it just felt like I wanted to give my sense of things in the world in an album form, a third and final time.” he says.

Now seven albums deep, Shad’s music stands apart from the trends dominating hip-hop today. A single like “K.I.S.S.” gestures to a previous era while also pushing forward. It doesn’t sound like his last two projects either — A Short Story About a War and TAO — both of which leaned more experimental, existing just to the left of hip-hop, and sometimes beyond it entirely.

In tandem with his work as an educator and broadcaster, Shad has remained a constant presence in Canadian culture — whether hosting the Emmy Award–winning series Hip-Hop Evolution or CBC’s flagship arts and culture radio program Q. He’s been behind a mic for years, but there are still parts of his story left untold.

Known for balancing humour and heavy themes in his music, Shad says his next project will reveal more of his personal life. “I do feel like there’s something out of my system. The next album, I want it to be more personal. I’ve still never really talked about my kids, and you know what that’s been like, and that whole experience,” he says. “I’ve sort of put that off for a second because I felt like there’s something else I need to say about my sense of things when I look out at the world.”

He’s not yet sure what it will sound like — only that it will be something new.

The setting for our conversation naturally steers toward fame. True to form, Shad remains calm and reflective. For someone whose popularity continues to rise this far into his career, his perspective is grounded. “I always put it this way: when you work in music, the only thing worse than being famous is not being famous at all. They both come with tremendous downsides.”

He doesn’t reject fame entirely — authentic interactions still hold value. There’s a level of celebrity that can become isolating, preventing people from living freely, while a lack of recognition can make survival in the industry difficult. Shad, however, has found a rare and enviable middle ground. “The thing that I’ve really enjoyed in my career is if people come up to me. It’s usually a very organic kind of relationship with the music. People come up and they’re like, Yo, like, I love this song. Or, like, you know, I rock with your music, or, yo, I used to rock with this album,” he says. “It actually feels like a very natural interaction, it’s never felt strange because it’s really rooted in something.”

Shad has watched hip-hop evolve into a genre with room for elder statesmen. The so-called “Big 3” — Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and J. Cole — are all nearing or past 40. Meanwhile, veterans like Clipse and Freddie Gibbs continue to earn widespread acclaim in 2025.

As the landscape shifts, Shad keeps adapting. A 20-year career doesn’t happen without it. “You come out and people have a sense of you and a sense of who you essentially are as an artist. And that can really be tied to an era in life.”

He’s managed to transcend that expectation — growing alongside his audience and embracing change. With Start Anew, he’s closing one era while opening another. For Shad, success is no longer about metrics or visibility — it’s about the act of creation itself. “Success is finishing this album and putting it out. I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction from doing that and going through that exercise of making something, putting it out, and then feeling free to do the next thing, and feeling a bit lighter.”

Catch Shad live on tour in 2026, including Jan. 23 at Commonwealth in Calgary, AB (TICKETS)