I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SHAD-“The Old Prince Still Lives at Home”(2007).

Canadian rapper.  Oxymoron?  Not at all.  I had heard about Shad from CBC Radio 3.  The single, “Yaa I Get It” is fantastic.  And I have ordered his new CD TSOL based on it.  (No idea what TSOL stands for).

CBC Radio 3 contains a whole bunch of tracks from his first two discs.  His music is kind of slow and loping, but it’s his lyrics that are really fantastic.  He’s clever, funny and very thoughtful.  “Yaa I Get It” has this opening couplet: “Maybe I’m not big, coz I don’t blog or twitter, heh, not that I’m bitter.”  Or this amusing couplet from “I Don’t Like to”  “I don’t really like to start verses with I you  know, but… iTunes eyepatch, I’m in the same boat where the pirates be”

This earlier album sounds a bit more R&B to me, but there’s a few really great tracks on it.  “The Old Prince Still Lives at Home” reminds me of the Fresh Prince’s style (a comical look at the waste of time that is the dentist).  But he takes it a step further when, midway through the song the music stops.  Shad explains that he couldn’t afford the whole beat.  And they just “have to vibe with it” until the end.

It’s a bit gimmicky, but he’s right, the track is really strong.

[READ: July 4, 2010] “Dayward”

The photo opposite this story is of a terrifying Rottweiler bearing its fangs.  I mention this because it is so striking (the other stories mostly had drawings to accompany them.  This photo is also scarily appropriate for the story, which is about two young slaves escaping from their master.  The kicker is that slavery has already been outlawed, but who says the masters have to let them go peacefully?

When Lazarus told his mistress that he and his sister were going to reunite with their family in New Orleans, she told them that they would have half a day’s start and then she’d release the dogs on them.  Evidently she wasn’t joking.

As the story opens, Lazarus and his sister Mary Celeste (who is deaf) are fleeing a dog that no doubt looks just like the one in the photo.  It’s a harrowing story, made even more harrowing by the fact that Mary Celeste a) can’t hear him when he calls and b) is now calling out to him, right when he is trying to keep quiet.

Lazarus was treed by the dog.  Desperate, he flashes back to a story that Egg, the old blind slave, told them about surviving a dog attack. But can Lazarus really do it?   It is unimaginably dangerous, but it could be his only hope.

Holy cow, this story was gripping and scary.  The ending was anticlimactic, but how could it not be after the excitement of the beginning?  But it also rang very true (not that I know anything about slaves, but the personal interaction rang true).  It was a great story.

There’s a Q&A with ZZ Packer here.