February 16th, 2024
Kickin' It With Chad Shabazz
Chad Shabazz (CS) has served as an innovative artist in Boston for nearly 20 years, taking his diverse music style to many different venues. Here, he talks with the President of SNAKE Magazine, Kevin Small Jr. (KSJ) as they uncover the passion behind the microphone and more.
KSJ: WHERE ARE YOU FROM?
CS: I am from the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts but born in Boston.
KSJ: WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO BECOME A MUSICIAN?
CS: It kind of always been in my blood to be honest with you coming from a musical family. My mom used to sing with her sisters and my sister used to sing in Capella groups. I have an older brother who does music as well. My mom would play Sade, The Pointer Sisters to Donny Halfway. Music was always around us. My brother would play a lot of music from the New Jack Swing era, Bobby Brown so either I was going to find music or music was going to find me.
KSJ: WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT BEING A MUSICIAN?
CS: It varies. For instance, when I get an instrumental from a producer sometimes the beat tells me what to write. Or the producer may self-title the beat and I just write of that and I can already bounce off of it or vice versa. I can hear something and I look at the instrumentals, instrumentation as songs within themselves, they tell their own stories and sometimes I connect with those stories and then I just articulate it more verbally. This is my base process - hearing an instrumental and whatever it is telling me, that’s what I try to convey to the listener. I am also a very spiritual person and the universe may just hit you with something as if it was a divine intervention sending a message through you. We are vessels that communicate to the general public sometimes to give messages to other sources. As for the mixtape that I am working on now, I am telling more of the health issues that I have been going through the last few years so this is more of an intentional process.
KSJ: NAME SOME OF THE MORE FAMOUS RAPPERS AND SINGERS THAT WOULD BE A DREAM TO WORK WITH?
CS: I like Logic and the message that he sends. I know he is not like everybody’s cup of tea but who he is as a person, I relate to a lot as far as just the nerdy side, the message side, his humility and versatility. More back in the day would be Talib Kweli, his spirituality and listening to him in high school has taught me a lot. On the R&B side, it’s the Jon B’s, the Maxwell’s, groups like Jodeci, TLC. Chris Brown is like a young OG in music now. If I could ever collaborate with an artist today, it would be Chris Brown. Jhene Aiko, H.E.R., and a unit called Purity Ring in which the woman in the band has such a very airy voice and melodic.
KSJ: THERE IS A BIT OF A RIVALRY BETWEEN TWO A-LIST FEMALE RAPPERS IN NICKI MINAJ AND CARDI B. WHO WOULD YOU RATHER BE ON A SONG WITH AND ARE THERE OTHER LADY RAPPERS THAT STAND OUT TO YOU?
CS: I like Nicki Minaj’s music a lot but at first when she came out the theatrics threw me off, you know. She also has great versatility. I may not like a lot of the pop stuff but once I got into her albums, her story, she also does R&B and she sings as well. So out of the two, I would prefer Nicki Minaj over Cardi B. I like Cardi B’s stuff, too but I don’t lean into it as much as I do with Nicki’s stuff. On some more hip-hop like bars type stuff, I like Rapsody. She is dope just on an MC level.
KSJ: WHO ARE YOUR BIGGEST INSPIRATIONS IN YOUR LIFE RIGHT NOW?
CS: My number one has always been my mom. She just tried to give her best substance, you know as a woman to a young male and she did it with all of us. What I really admire about my mom is her ability and willingness to explain things from a very young age, from when I was six years old, and to help us be aware and mindful of the world around us. She always taught me to be a thinker and to not take anything at face value. Her lessons really prepared me to operate in the world and taught me to think beyond the walls of my experiences which led to me reading a lot about history and foreign affairs therefore getting a lot of inspiration from books. Bruce Lee, my high school football coach who was the first black male that put energy into me creating correlations between being successful on the football field and doing well in school so I could understand. My dance teacher, who is in the hospital now and someone by the name of Shallow who taught me how to pop as I have been doing the underground battling scene for a while and how to save money. Those two were black male figures I never really had and they helped bring the best of me in the other areas.