The more he continues to promote this (1, 2, 3, 4, videos,) the more it’s sounding like a b-r-i-c-k to me… Read the rest of this entry »

Latest visual off Not 4 Sale featuring The Pussycat Dolls Rihanna Keri Hilson

Previously Posted – “Bring The Fire Out” – Review Of Kardinal Offishall’s Not 4 Sale | Kardinal Offishall – “Set It Off” Video | Kardinal Offishall – “Burnt” Video | TSS Presents Smoking Sessions With Kardinal Offishall

Kardinal Offishall’s long journey to the release of Not 4 Sale exemplifies the battles and compromises an artist faces when confronted by major labels. After years of underground buzz, and having to suffer the collapse of his record label, Canada’s best rapper found a home on a major with Konvict records. While the album’s title implies Kardinal isn’t letting money influence him, skeptics would note that no one has made Hip-Hop more of a cottage industry than Akon’s gang. The battle then, is the artist’s ideas versus the label’s bottom-line. Which will exert the greater influence over this album? Read the rest of this entry »

Kardi seems to be gettin a (well-deserved) budget & a lot of official buzz surrounding his upcoming album, Not 4 Sale. Here’s the video for “Set It Off” featuring The Clipse. The song is oven-hot.

Previously Posted — Kardinal Offishall Feat. Clipse – “Set It Off” (Audio) | Kardinal Offishall – “Burnt” Video

K.O.’s continuously bringing the heat this year. Maybe his album should be called Invincible Summer…

Kardinal Offishall Feat. Clipse – Set It Off

Not 4 Sale in stores August 5th.

Previously Posted — Kardinal Offishall “Burnt” Video | TSS Presents Smoking Sessions With Kardinal Offishall | Offishall Business

Street video for “Burnt” coming off Kardi’s upcoming album, Not 4 Sale.

Previously Posted — TSS Presents Smoking Sessions With Kardinal Offishall | Offishall Business…

If you’ve ever heard a Kardinal Offishall song, you know what to expect: Hyper-energetic, ‘Cheahs’ bursting in the background, and an effortless blending of Hip-Hop, Dancehall, Reggae and whatever other genres are kicking around in the man’s head at the time. Born to Jamaican parents in the multicultural cauldron of Toronto, he’s been more-or-less wearing the Canadian Hip-Hop crown for the last few years – but that’s all set to change. With a new album, Not 4 Sale, coming out on Akon’s Konvict Muzik label later this year, he won’t be Canada’s secret much longer.

TSS Crew’s Matthew Mundy caught up with Kardinal to talk about, well, everything: from why ATLiens is better than Aquemini to pigeonholing rappers to poverty to his favorite emcees and albums. Cheah.

TSS: Hey how you doing?

Kardinal Offishall: Matt what’s happening family?

TSS: Not much what’s happening?

Kardinal Offishall: Good. I’m very very very good.

TSS: Where you at right now?

Kardinal Offishall: I’m just landing back in Toronto to debut the new video for ‘Dangerous’ in Canada and then we’re going back to Canada in a day and a half.

TSS: Nice, nice. I checked out that video, it’s good. So you got the new album coming out, how do you feel right now?

Kardinal Offishall: Man, everything is crazy. This is, I think, the first time in my career that every single thing that thus far we’ve tried to execute has been executed 250 percent. So I feel really dope, you know what I mean? Because everybody’s on board, not just our camp but the label’s on board, and people are really loving the record, and as far as the album goes we have a really crazy album so it’s really good. We’ll be able to definitely send some tidal waves around the world with this joint.

TSS: That’s amazing. So what features are we going to see on the album? I mean Akon’s obviously on “Dangerous.”

Kardinal Offishall: Yeah, you know, the album definitely focuses on me but any collaborations I did were with people that I kind of had a relationship with, not just reached out to whoever’s the hot shit at the time. Obviously beside Akon and T-Pain, I did a record called “Digital Motown” with J*Davey out of L.A. If you’re not familiar they’re a crazy Hip-Hop-RnB-Punk crazy band. They’re definitely a break from the norm. That’s produced by Jake One out of the Bay Area, you know, he produces for everybody, from 50, G-Unit, you know. So Jake laced me.

Obviously, our homegirl Estelle, she’s part of our Black Jays International family. I did a joint for her album that’s out now, the “Magnificent” joint that’s produced by Mark Ronson, and she got on a joint on my album, a song produced by Akon called “Do Me a Favor,” which… It’s a dope track. For me it’s one of my favorite tracks because I just really sat back and turned off all the so-called limelights and all that crazy stuff and wrote it from the perspective of just what it was like to feel the pain of being an everyday dude and struggling and stuff. That was a real dope joint that we did with Estelle that evokes a lot of feeling. Aside from that we did a joint with my family The Clipse, we did a joint called “Set It Off,” which was dope because we hadn’t officially did a song since we did the “Grindin’” remix. So the joint “Set It Off” is absolutely energetic, fire-filled and bananas, know what I mean? And then we even recorded with the Pussycat Dolls too.

The dope thing about my album is we stayed outside of the box on almost every single song we did. We pushed the limits and pushed creativity and I think we raised the bar, because right about now there’s just a lot of the same sentiment that I keep hearing about, about how music is losing its creativity, music is losing its edge, this that and the next thing. I wanted to try and lead by example and come out with a crazy album that people can appreciate for many years to come, so we definitely worked hard at this album, to make something that’s not only commercially viable but something that piques the interest of even the most hard artistic critic.

TSS: For sure. And it sounds like a ton of people from countries all over the world on that. Is it going to have an international flavor?

Kardinal Offishall: You know what, I don’t mean this in an egotistical way, but it’s going to have a Kardinal flavor. We even have producers that are from different parts of the world on the album. Obviously we have American producers, we have producers from Toronto, I also got an up and coming dude from the UK that’s producing on it. It’s real hot. The thing about it is that there is a consistency throughout the album, there’s an energy and a fire that’s a common denominator throughout the album. We’re definitely going to have a Kardinal energetic feel to it, you know what I mean? You’re not going to be able to be like, ‘Ah, this sounds like it was produced by the dude from the UK,’ or, ‘I heard he did a song with a dude from Toronto, so that must be this song.’ It’s not like that at all.

TSS: For sure. Your Do the Right Thing mixtape that you released a while ago was an absolute beast; I’ve been listening to that a ton.

Kardinal Offishall: Respect. And as a shameless plug, we’re about to do a new mixtape right now, we’re just finishing it this week called Weapons of Mass Eruption. That’s another mixtape by me and Clinton Sparks.

TSS: Awesome. Well, Do the Right Thing was ridiculous, and I’m from the Toronto area as well, and I forwarded “Good Ol’ Days” to all my friends…

Kardinal Offishall: Word, word (laughing). I like that, that lets me know who you are because only a certain type of dude will really appreciate that song.

TSS: Yeah man, especially the ball hockey/Toronto Maple Leafs part (laughing).

Kardinal Offishall: (Laughing) Yes sir.

TSS: How does being from Toronto influence your music? Read the rest of this entry »