Concert 
Shad: London Music Hall
Photograph by Justin Broadbent
November 16, 2013 – There’s something magical about performing in your home city. There’s also something magical about listeПing to homegrown talent. Maybe it’s because we form a deeper connection with them, given that we’ve walked the same streets as them and eaten at the same greasy spoons. Shad himself must’ve felt this way as he proudly revealed on a cold Saturday night that kids from his grade 6 class were in the audience. And if his music indicates anything, it’s that Shad is all about remembering your roots. The dude was glad to finally be home.
The opeПing acts were decent. London-based hip hop group The Nicest spat stoner rap after stoner rap. Toronto rapper Casper the Ghost brought his TreeTop Entertainment cronies on stage and exchanged a couple of words. And We Are the City left the crowd drenched in glorious waves of dreamy, saccharine feedback. I’m also quite certain they left a number of people scratching their heads, what with their off-kilter drumming and math rock tendencies.
But Shad stole the show, as expected. He flashed his trademark smile and dove right into “Lost”, the opeПing track on his new album, Flying Colours. From there on, the crowd was his to command. If he wanted hands in the air, they appeared in seconds. If he wanted a chorus, the crowd gave him one. Even I’ll admit that I was rapping every word to “Stylin’”. Shad could simply do no wrong.
Most of Flying Colours ’ hits were delivered, but the real treat, however, was when he dug deep into his discography and brought out his old hits, the tracks that have chronicled his rise as a Canadian hip hop figure. I’m talking about “Rose Garden” and its iconic video, the humorous narrative in “The Old Prince Still Lives at Home”, and “I Get Down”, the song that probably started it all. Needless to say, the crowd went crazy.
Shad ended on an intimate note. His DJ and keyboardist left him halfway through “Epilogue: Long Jawn”, a lyrical mammoth of a track, leaving him to spit the remaiПing verses. It was a personal moment, a one-on-one for the audience with the man himself, the nicest guy in hip hop. We became more than friends that night; we became family. A real fam jam.