The Londoner is the only Hip-Hop artist up for this year's Polaris Prize

Hip-hop artist Shadrach Kabango, better known simply as Shad, has been busy this year.

Since the release of The Old Prince in October of 2007, he has toured the country several times, started work on a Liberal Arts Master's degree at Simon Fraser University and spent time in Calgary for the 2008 Junos, for which he was nominated.

And the year isn't over yet. Aside from yet more touring (which will take him to Fanshawe College on Friday, September 19), Shad will be also be present at the Polaris Music Prize gala in Toronto later this month. It's a celebration of the music arts, with a $20,000 prize awarded to the best Canadian album of the last year, based on artistic merit alone. Media personalities, from George Stroumboulopoulos to Mary Dickie of Elle magazine will all get to cast their votes.

But what makes Shad's nomination particularly interesting is that he's the only rapper on the shortlist. Alongside the likes of The Weakerthans and Caribou, his album does seem a little out of place, but that's par for the course, when considering the size of Canada's hip-hop scene.

That's no worry for him though — Shad tends to work in a different way from others. For instance, when I asked him how he remains motivated to tour, write, record and attend university all at once, he laughed.

“I have my own explanation, but I don't think anybody believes me,” Shad said over the phone. “I'm very lazy by nature and that scares me into doing things... because I would be content to do absolutely nothing.”

But Shad's determination has carved him in an interesting niche in the Canadian industry - one filled with both benefits and drawbacks.

“[The market] is not as saturated as it is in the States... but there aren't as many places to play,” he explained. “Either way, at the end of the day, [Canada] is all I know... this is where I grew up, and this is where I started making music.”

In fact, Shad got his start right here in London, the city he calls home (despite ongoing university studies in British Columbia). He learned to rap at an early age, and was soon writing verses that explored the daily life of a young adult in the city.

Now, after years of steady refinement, Shad has turned those poignant observations into a set list of widely varying songs. Sometimes humourous, like “The Old Prince Still Lives at Home,” which details his own frugality. The sometimes serious “Brother (Watching)” also comes to mind, which exposes the subtle abuses minorities are subjected to in predominantly white and affluent cities.

The thematic variation is sometimes so drastic that one could see The Old Prince as slightly scatterbrained, but Shad looks at his songs more like manifestations of his personality.

“They're all parts of who I am and I think they're parts of who everybody is,” he said. “Everyone has those more serious states going on in their mind, and we all like to jump around once in a while too. So I try to put as many different sides as I can translate into music and hopefully it'll connect with people.”

But despite these variations, one common thread that ties the album together is its concept. The name, The Old Prince, comes from a fairytale-esque story of Shad's own invention about a prince who, by all means should become king, but has grown old, having never succeeded the throne.

This, Shad said, refers to the ideas of expectation and fate.

“[The Old Prince] sort of describes everybody a little bit,” he said. “For me, it's a story about the human condition in general... about looking to reach that place and that purpose in life and sometimes we don't quite get there... In as much as that's true, I felt like it related to myself as well.”

Shad has been touring behind The Old Prince for nearly a year now, and soon he'll be taking his music to the international stage. But until then, he's content performing at a familiar place — The Out Back Shack on September 19.