Today, rapper and hip-hop musician Shad released his seventh album in four years, Start Anew, via Secret City Records.
The album offers a smooth, easy-flowing collection of hip-hop tracks that is lyrically sharp, musically tight, and refreshingly grounded.
About the album by Shad:
“Every album, I’m trying to die/“The goal is ego death every time that I rhyme,” is one arresting line, among many others on Shad’s album Start Anew.
It’s taken from a track called “Happiness” and for Shad it crystallizes one of the main themes of the new project.
According to Shad, for a new beginning to emerge you have to be willing to discard the old way of doing things and genuinely challenge yourself to step outside of your comfort zone.
“I decided against calling the album fear of death—a phrase you hear throughout the record.
I just figured that’s not a very approachable title. But “Start Anew” to me represents the same idea – this fundamentally human thing of the difficulty we have embracing endings even though that’s often the only way to arrive at something new,”
Shad says. “The new start, that positive fresh new life is right there,” he says. “But it’s often on the other side of risk or even loss of some kind.”
On Start Anew, Shad’s first album in four years, he even incorporates his own studio experiments, sampling music from his own unreleased vaults which veer from house to psychedelic pop into the album’s sonic mix.
These refurbished and repurposed cutting room floor elements are woven into Start Anew’s throwback feel, evoking the playful soulfulness of Shad’s early releases. “I feel like my last couple of albums involved a lot of experimenting and a lot of pushing boundaries musically and for myself,” says Shad. “I didn’t want to do that on this album.
Musically, I felt like I want to make something this time that is kind of simple and easy on the ears and very listenable. At the same time, incorporating these studio experiments felt like a fun, interesting creative challenge.” Featuring longtime Shad producers like Ric Notes and his steadfast DJ TLO, this familiar sonic foundation allows Shad to advance the album’s thematic bent in an unapologetically direct manner. Or, as one of Start Anew’s most immediate tracks asserts, ““K.I.S.S.” (Keep It Simple, Stupid).
Clearly, seven albums deep and 20 years into his career he’s already got an enviable career to look back on. “I don’t know if it’s my last will and testament, but it does feel like the end of something,” says Shad “I think there’s some of that in the album too. I think you can hear some of that.”
Whatever the future holds, Start Anew is the latest compelling evidence of Shad’s own commitment to taking chances, his own ongoing hip-hop evolution, if you will.
“I feel like these last three albums have been less personal and a little bit more philosophical, and thinking about the world, versus my earlier albums that have been me telling my story,” says Shad. “These [albums] have felt more like me exploring my sense of things out there so they feel they feel less personal. Maybe [a more personal album], that’s the next chapter.”
Start Anew gets: 📷📷📷📷📷📷📷📷/10.
Shad – Start Anew [Streaming]
