Shad released TSOL on May 25, 2010, a 13 track album that won the Juno Award for Rap Recording of the Year. Sixteen years on, this deep dive returns to the record that made the Kenyan Canadian rapper from London, Ontario the standard for thoughtful Canadian hip hop.
Shad TSOL album tracklist and producers
TSOL runs 13 tracks in 40 minutes and 55 seconds on Black Box Recordings, with a United States release through Decon that October. The production bench is a map of Canadian hip hop at the time: DJ T Lo handles “Rose Garden,” featuring Lisa Lobsinger, and “Telephone”; Classified produces “A Good Name”; Rich Kidd produces “Listen”; Ric Notes produces “Keep Shining,” featuring Lady Londa. “Lucky 1’s” brings in Ian Kamau, Brendan Canning and Lobsinger, and “At the Same Time” features Justin Nozuka. The full credits are listed on the album’s reference page. The first single, “Yaa I Get It,” arrived in April 2010 with a video that month, and the album was supported by a cross Canada tour with Grand Analog in the west and D-Sisive in Ontario.
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The honours: Polaris, a Juno and a No. 24 debut
The album was shortlisted for the 2010 Polaris Music Prize and won Rap Recording of the Year at the 2011 Juno Awards, beating a field of mainstream Canadian rap releases with a record built on live instrumentation and dense writing. It peaked at No. 24 on the Canadian Albums Chart and holds a Metacritic score of 81 from 10 reviews. Exclaim! ranked it the No. 2 hip hop album of 2010, writing:
“Shad is the rare MC who conveys wisdom without being preachy. More than anything, he’s versatile, able to seamlessly switch from fierce, hilarious battle raps on ‘Yaa I Get It’ to heartfelt reflection over the contemplative piano and guitars of ‘At the Same Time’ without seeming contradictory.”
The long view has held up: Complex later named TSOL the 14th best Canadian album of the 2010s, a decade that started with this record.
Why TSOL still anchors Canadian hip hop
TSOL arrived between The Old Prince, Shad’s Polaris nominated 2007 album, and Flying Colours in 2013, and it is the centrepiece of the three. Songs like “Rose Garden,” built on a sample of a children’s record and a hook about growing up, and “We, Myself and I,” a three voice argument with himself, showed how far the writing could stretch without losing the battle rap foundation of “Yaa I Get It.” For readers searching the history of Canadian hip hop, this is one of the essential stops: a Juno winning, Polaris shortlisted album that never chased an American template, made by an artist who treated the album as a complete written work. That is exactly why it keeps its place in the catalogue.
