EverythingOShaun Discusses "Almost Everything" EP & Canada's Impact On Hip-Hop

Toronto-native and rising artist EverythingOShaun has been gaining a name for himself over the past couple of years, creating more buzz for himself with his second EP Almost Everything released in August 2017.  The project is his foray in to realm as an artist to be on the lookout for.

Featured on Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal, the project features six tracks displaying his versatility within the realm of Hip-Hop and R&B, one being his single "Closing In." The artist took a moment with Urban Influencer contributor Malachi Thornton to share more about his craft and the impact Toronto has on the music world.

So where are you now?

I'm in a city called Brampton which is a little outside of Toronto.

So you're from Brampton right? Is that where you grew up?

I was born in Toronto, but I spent my important years in Brampton here.

How long you been at this?

That's a tricky one. Me and my brother actually been doing music since forever, man, ever since I was 4 and five years old we been into music. Piano lessons, all that type of sh*t you know, but you wanna talk about when we started to get really serious with the rap sh** and putting together the company, you can probably start from 2011. Last year was actually the first time we put out an official project, so some people start from there.

Did you grow up around the industry at all?

No, not at all man [laughs]! My mother is Jamaican, and my father is Nigerian, so both of those countries have a heavy influence in music anyway but, it's crazy, we just grew up loving music. Like my father is a music man, but he just plays anything and everything whether classical, reggae or African music. People we grew up with saw and heard our talent and we would always be in talent shows or rapping on the block or whatever. I just couldn't get away from it, you know, it's one of those things we've been playing with for such a long time, it was time to take it seriously.

Who do you look up to as an artist?

I get inspiration from everywhere, man. Of course, there's the people like Jay-Z (who's my favorite rapper), and there's the Pacs and Biggies and even Drake. Sade, Whitney Houston, and Brandy who are other greats of other genres. I feel the same way when I hear a crazy bar as I do when I hear a crazy melody...I'm just like holy sh**[laughs].

Being an artist out of Canada, how much do you attribute your success to the impact that Drake has had on Hip-Hop?

It's true. I mean maybe a lot of people don't want to admit it, but if it weren't for him blowing up the way he did, most of that side of the border wouldn't pay much attention to what we're doing over here. We've always been doing it too, when Kardinal (Kardinal Official) got with Akon and Convict Music, the whole city was lit. We just needed someone to blow that sh** up; now everyone feels like it's possible.

You now have Canada along with Atlanta and New York as frontrunners in Hip-Hop. How do you feel about being one of the artists who contribute to that now?

You know people don't want to admit that, though. I pay attention to the stuff on YouTube and what people are discussing in hip-hop and they still really haven't acknowledged just how much sh** is coming from this side of the border. Man, if you look at it, a lot of the producers are Canadian producers, man.

Do you think Canada could adopt the more community mindset? Much like how Atlanta goes about creating with other artists.

We 1000% percent could [laughs], if we included each other I think the major spots in the states like New York and L.A. would recognize Toronto more. We don't big each other up enough. Hip-Hop is the number one genre in the world, and most of the time when I hear hip-hop out here it's on college radio. Like, you hear Kendrick on mainstream radio when it's like Maroon 5 and Kendrick. A lot of these people only find out someone is bubbling once they start bubbling stateside...I mean I may have heard Tory Lanez a couple of times out here, in New York, he's always on the radio.

Listening to the last EP "Almost Everything" you've got some songs on there that sound really different. For example, the last track on the EP "Fruits" stood out. Talk about how you go about putting your projects together creatively.

My main producer is my brother, right, and that's Xpress. He knows a lot of what I want to do, sometimes he'll pick something that I didn't even think of, or sometimes I'll be looking for something, and he'll know what I'm talking about without me having to even say it. Majority of that song was SLWJMZ though; he's another producer bubbling out here. He got sh** with Freddie Gibbs and he's making some noise stateside, so I had to get with him.

 
Where did the title "Almost Everything" come from?

The project kind of came about because we were working on a project that got delayed because of paperwork and people involved. My and my brother weren't going to wait because that's what we usually do. We told ourselves we're not going to wait this time so we got in the studio with a bag of beats and we put it together ourselves and said it's not everything, but it's "almost everything, " and it was monumental for us. It was the first time regarding not waiting on someone or having a scapegoat and someone to blame because we waited. I was going to take things into my own hands and make what we have and master it, and hopefully, that energy translates over into other projects working with other people.

Right, because the first EP "Until Now" was about a year ago right?

Yeah and we dealt with that kind of sh** so we're like nah, we're not going to do that again. We're always evolving and learning from mistakes so we can keep expanding and do sh** anyways, especially when people are putting together dope sh**.

You did SXSW two years ago, how was that experience being received stateside for the first time?

It was another learning experience. So we went there, and it was amazing and I mean it was just a bunch of songs first time out to that kind of area, and it was crazy since no one knew us from sh** [laughs]. The only problem we had at the time was we didn't have anything in terms of content for them after the fact. Yeah, we got a bunch of followers on Instagram, but we lacked the music to give them.

Got any new projects you're working on, since "Almost Everything" meant you had more left in the kitchen?

Yeah, we still got some other stuff cooking, as a matter of fact, we're in production to shoot more videos for these records. I'm shooting a couple this Sunday, and we got some stuff booked for November. We got some shows coming up and plan on doing some stuff stateside.