Toronto rapper Shad’s brand-new album TAO is out now, via Secret City Records / Remote Control Records. To celebrate the release week, Shad shares the video for ‘Black Averageness‘. The rapper explains the concept behind the song: “’Black Averageness’ is a just fun celebration of our beautifully imperfect selves in a society that still struggles to see our humanity. As vital as it is to elevate Black Excellence and to address the harsh realities that we disproportionately experience, I think it’s also helpful to affirm our inherent dignity as ordinary human beings and to create more space for us to enjoy life with all its inevitable ups and downs, successes and failures. As usual, I think I say it best in the music: “I’m a man—why would I want to be a GOAT? I just want to see us cope. We’re either stars or we’re broke… I’m like nope: I have every right to be like a B or a C with a durag on while I ski.”
TAO is about deep connection, wholeness, and the various threats to it. TAO refers to the Chinese philosophy of naturalism and is an acronym drawn from CS Lewis’ highly prescient 1943 book, The Abolition Of Man, that discusses The Tao. The TAO acronym is also found in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, another very influential book for Shad during his writing process. “The books were written something like 70 years apart but totally connect on the topic of preserving our humanness against certain threatening ideologies and technologies,” he explains. “Each song on the album focuses on a different part (or parts) of our humanity that we’ve been losing touch with.”
Purchase / Download Shad – TAO
