Classified released Greatful on January 15, 2016 through Halflife Records and Universal Music Canada. This is a catalogue album, framed as catalogue: nothing here is new, and the record still matters because it is the fullest statement of the Enfield, Nova Scotia rapper-producer’s method, an album he produced himself, recorded at his own Halflife Studios, and filled with the heroes and neighbours who explain where he comes from.
By his own count it was his fifteenth album overall, and he treated it like a summit. In the album’s announcement he said: “This album feels like what I’ve been working towards my whole career. It took me longer than any other album, it’s more personal and I got to work with my heroes in hip-hop.” The tracklist below is the evidence for every part of that sentence. The official video for “Filthy,” his collaboration with DJ Premier, is embedded below.
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Sixteen Tracks, Sixty-Two Minutes, Produced By One Man
The album runs 16 tracks in 62 minutes and 22 seconds, as its reference listing shows: “Filthy” featuring DJ Premier, “No Pressure” featuring Snoop Dogg, “Beautiful Escape,” “Noah’s Arc” featuring Saukrates, “Heavy Head,” “Square,” “Having Kids Is Easy,” “Work Away” featuring David Myles, “Oh No,” “It’s Hard to Understand,” “Hoody and a Ballcap,” “Video Games” featuring Mike Boyd, “All My Life” featuring Ria Mae, “Grand Slam,” “Never Stop the Show” featuring Snak the Ripper and Slug of Atmosphere, and “Best of Me (Closing Ceremonies).” Classified is credited as the producer of the whole record, which means the Snoop Dogg single and the kitchen-table family songs passed through the same hands in the same Enfield studio.
The sequencing makes the album’s argument in order. It opens with its two biggest guest swings, Premier’s scratches on “Filthy” and Snoop on “No Pressure,” and then deliberately comes home: Saukrates, the Toronto foundation name, on “Noah’s Arc”; David Myles, his “Inner Ninja” partner, on “Work Away”; his brother Mike Boyd on “Video Games”; Ria Mae, a fellow Nova Scotian, on “All My Life.” The heroes and the home team are not separate lists on this record. They are the same tracklist.
Number Six In Canada, Number Sixty-Five For The Single
The album debuted at number six on the Canadian Albums Chart, and “No Pressure” peaked at number 65 on the Canadian Hot 100. Those are not blockbuster numbers, and the album is more interesting for what they prove: three years after the self-titled Classified album and “Inner Ninja” put him at number one in Canada, he could still open in the national top ten with a long, personal, self-produced record that refused to chase the single’s formula. “Filthy” was released as the second single and “Noah’s Arc” as the third, which tells you the campaign itself was aimed at rap listeners, not only at radio.
The middle of the album is where it earns the title, a word he spells his own way on purpose. “Having Kids Is Easy” is a father’s comedy record with real weight under it, “Heavy Head” and “It’s Hard to Understand” sit with doubt and other people’s pain, and “Hoody and a Ballcap” turns his own uniform into a statement about staying unpolished on principle. A rapper who had spent a decade being filed as the relatable one here shows the range that relatability was hiding: the everyman songs and the Premier record are written by the same person, at the same desk.
Why Greatful Is The Classified Record To Start With
New listeners usually arrive through “Inner Ninja,” and our reading of that song explains the philosophy in three minutes. Greatful is the long version. It holds his best guest list, his most personal writing and his full production control in one place, and it closes with a six-minute finale literally titled “Best of Me (Closing Ceremonies),” an artist laying out his own summary before anyone else could write it for him.
Heard now, Greatful holds up as the hinge between the chart peak of 2013 and the reflective later work that followed. Released on January 15, 2016, it remains the clearest proof in Canadian hip hop that a self-produced artist from a village in Nova Scotia could book Snoop Dogg and DJ Premier, debut in the national top ten, and make it all sound like one man working in his own studio, grateful on his own terms.
