ing at them , like , ‘ Okay , it ’ s kinda not a new song ,’” he chuckles . It ’ s similar in his mind to when his hero-turned-friend Dave Chappelle used the unreleased track “ Reaching Through the Darkness ” during the end credits to his 2017 Netflix special , Equanimity .
“ The thing is , it ’ s hundreds of millions of impressions through TikTok , through streaming , and all this other stuff that ’ s happened with me doing nothing except raising my eyebrows ,” Offishall notes . “ I say my life is enchanted because I don ’ t take any of these blessings for granted . There ’ s not a day where I wake up and I ’ m just like , ‘ yeah , I should be doing what I ’ m doing and doing it with the people that I ’ m doing it with .’ Nah , it ’ s not a small thing when one of the greatest comedians on the planet in Chappelle is not just a friend , but says he wants to use your song at the end of one of his Netflix specials that will live forever . That ’ s massive , because the thing is , we look back at Eddie Murphy comedy specials , or Richard Pryor or [ George ] Carlin , Andrew Dice Clay , or people from that era , people are forever going to look back at these Chappelle series and be like , ‘ Man , he is incredible .’ But then when those end credits play and it ’ s my song , nobody can take that away from you .”
What ’ s interesting is that those hundreds of millions of impressions via TikTok and Netflix , when viewed from the office rather than the studio , can mean something else entirely . For the artist , viral TikTok videos and high-profile Netflix placements mean influence , cultural cache , coolness , etc . For the A & R executive , that is all data for marketing and career planning . That double-sided view of the numbers – the analytics – is not lost on Offishall . He gets animated talking about it , largely because he has concerns about the overreliance on analytics by A & R departments .
“ We live in a time with music where a lot of the industry is heavy on analytics — less on gut , a lot more on analytics . I think it ’ s interesting to me , because relying on analytics means you ’ re relying on the past , because analytics are something that happened already . Analytics are not something that can tell you the future ,” he says . “ When you look at it at its core , that ’ s what it is . You ’ re seeing a trend , or part of a trend , that has passed already . So , now it ’ s up to you to guess ; is that something that ’ s going to be sustainable , or is it going to fizzle next week or next month ?”
Knowing Offishall is a sports fan , I draw that obvious comparison . These days , every team in every major sport uses advanced analytics . And yes , teams rely on past data to identify past trends , but , I point out , they do this to better predict the future . But Offishall is saying the same process can ’ t apply to music ? That what was popular before , and the path songs / artists took to popularity , doesn ’ t help predict future popularity ?
“ Nah , because if you think about basketball or whatever , when you ’ re talking about analytics and percentages , they ’ re all shooting at one basket ,” he responds . “ So , when you think about the breakdown of it , it ’ s like , ‘ Okay , if a thousand guys go to that one basket , this is usually what happens .’ You go through the analytics and break it down to get field goal percentages , threepoint percentages , whatever , and here ’ s what ’ s most likely to happen . But you have hundreds of guys shooting at the same goal . In music , the equivalent would be 100 different nets , with a million different people shooting at the same time , from a million different places , in a million different courts , and trying to gather analytics from that and then make that apply to a singular artist !”
As well , he emphasizes , if he and other A & R executives ignored their guts and only signed artists who fit known moulds , then where would that leave music – or at least the labels ? Pretty stale .
“ When you think about Public Enemy and their Afrocentric , radically-political views , we didn ’ t really have somebody that embodied that , at that time . You think about Drake , and the fact that he was able to tap into emotions . Typically , within hip-hop it was super masculine , testosterone-driven , and we all know the positives and the negatives . But when he came along , he brought something brand new that the game did not offer , at least in a real big way , before him . Same with Kanye and everybody else that kind of cuts through , they ’ re doing stuff that analytics never would have been able to predict ,” he continues . “ So , I ’ m saying , if we depended on analytics , maybe we wouldn ’ t have seen J . Cole , we wouldn ’ t have seen a Drake , we wouldn ’ t have seen a Kendrick [ Lamar ], we wouldn ’ t have seen a lot of our favourite artists in hip-hop today .”
That brings up another of his concerns . That 10 years ago , the most acclaimed
KARDI ’ S LPs
EYE & I , 1997 ( CAPITOL HILL MUSIC )
QUEST FOR FIRE : FIRESTARTER , VOL . 1 , 2001 ( MCA RECORDS )
FIRE AND GLORY , 2005 ( EMI / VIRGIN )
NOT 4 SALE , 2008 ( KON LIVE / GEFFEN )
KARDI GRAS , VOL . 1 : THE CLASH , 2015 ( BLACK STONE COLLEAGUES / UNIVERSAL CANADA )
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