When Shad messed up the first line of his performance during this year’s Dawson City Music Festival, John From Dawson relaxed a little. Looking back on the event now though, he suspects that even the flub was the practiced move of a pro—designed to take the pressure off himself and fellow Yukoner Jeremy Parkin.
Both John and Parkin, along with John’s producer NiTPIK, appeared with Shad as part of the Hip Hip Block Party, a DCMF event sponsored by the Yukon Arts Centre and Lotteries Yukon.
Going into the festival, John was familiar with Shad’s career but didn’t know what to expect of the rapper as a person when he and Parkin grabbed dinner with Shad at Bonton restaurant before the performance.
“The coolest part about talking with him was never once did he talk to me like he was a bigger artist,” says John. “He talked to me like I was on the same level as him the whole time, whereas I was trying to pretend that I was.”
John says they chatted about growing up in smaller places and, even though Shad’s smaller place is London, Ontario, population 400,000+, there were parallels between their experiences.
“It’s tough getting into hip hop in the Yukon because not many are doing it and you have to go it alone,” says John. Shad kind of did the same thing in London. That hometown connection is one thing that stood out to Shad about John.
“John has a very positive, generous spirit, and a solid instinct for entertaining,” Shad says. “Very winning qualities. I also like that he’s proud to represent where he’s from, that’s very authentic and very hip-hop.”
It may be one of the reasons Shad asked John to take the lead on their shared set, though Shad also admits to some stress of his own before the event.
“It’s always a bit nerve-wracking but I’ve found that if you start with a basic structure and if someone agrees to handle hosting duties, you can all figure out the rest from there,” he says of the evening, which was built on beats from Parkin and NiTPIK. “In this case, John stepped up to host, and in terms of structure, we decided to start with each of us performing a song and then the rest would be a mix of freestyles over Jeremy and NiTPIK’s beats and also me hopping on a couple of John’s songs.”
“From my perspective I was holding on for dear life,” John says of trying to keep up with someone he calls “the top lyricist in Canada.” He says it was amazing to watch the way Shad considered each word he put out to the crowd during the performance.
“He would get the crowd to cheer just by the words he put together. I have to be like ‘how we feeling?’ to get them to cheer,” John says, laughing. “I learned so much from watching him … the excitement he puts out without having to be chaotic. When he was doing his own set, you could just feel how much he loved doing it without him having to tell you or overact.”
He was amazing. Rapping with someone with 14 years more experience would have been 100 times harder if he wasn’t who he is. He made it so easy.”
John also had nothing but praise for Parkin, who he says read the night like a book, keeping beats at the perfect speed and dropping little sound bites during the awkward moments.
Shad agrees.
“Jeremy has a kind of quiet confidence that I think a lot of the best artists have,” he says. “Clocked that right away. He’s calm and curious about other people but he’s also very ready to share his ideas too. He’s extremely dope.”
Parkin laughs at this, saying he felt like he was flying by the seat of his pants during the set.
“I mean, I have a bag of tricks,” he says. “And I feel like it’s good to have your bag of tricks handy when you’re going into something where you don’t know the scene. So I just started pulling rabbits out of hats.”
Parkin had played with Shad before, when Shad was in Whitehorse in 2018 and Parkin’s band, Local Boy, opened for him.
He says this block party felt like a return to form for him. When he was starting out at the age of 18, he played beats as part of Splintered Craft, a youth music and workshop studio in Whitehorse. Doing it now, when he feels like he has more footing in his own style, felt new but familiar. He says it was exciting to see where the night went because he had no expectations going in.
Neither did John, though he went into it with more than standard performance butterflies. In the end, he wouldn’t have worried if he’d known what Shad would be like.
“He was amazing,” John says. “Rapping with someone with 14 years more experience would have been 100 times harder if he wasn’t who he is. He made it so easy.”
“The block party was a celebration of creativity, community, and connection. It was a highlight of the festival, with their mesmerizing and unforgettable performances,” says Michele Emslie, programming director at the Yukon Arts Centre.
“This event was our continued commitment to bringing high-quality programming into the communities,” she adds.
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