Hip-Hop Wired: You’ve gotten a lot of success independently, even though you’ve gone the major label route. Whats the best advice you can give somebody trying to follow your pattern?
Classified: The best thing I can tell them is to get out there and get on the road. There are a million independent acts out there that are doing it and are successful. I think the thing that separate the millions of guys you see on Twitter and on the internet are the ones that actually perform live. Just work on your live show and make sure you meet people face to face, there is still a lot of value in that. Just get out there and meet the people.
Hip-Hop Wired: What can we expect from your upcoming project?
Classified: I’m proud of the whole thing. It’s basically thirteen tracks with no interludes or nothing like that. It was me in the studio for seven months producing my own beats and writing the rhymes on there. I got a joint on there with Kardinal Offishall. Also have a joint with Kuniva from D-12 and Raekwon that i’m excited about. It’s my first ever self-titled album so I’m very excited about that and it’ll be out January 29th.
Hip-Hop Wired: It seems like a lot of the Canadian music scene all run in the same circles, like it is very tight knit. Is that a safe assumption?
Classified: Kind of. It’s moreso even in Toronto scene, there’s the east coast scene and the west coast scene. I feel like I known or worked with anybody who tried to do something on teh east coast. At the same time, guys like in Toronto guys like Drake, 40, Boi-1da they all work together. It’s more kind of broke up that way, but at the same time there is only so many rappers going out to the Juno Awards which are like the Canadian Grammys. So I’ll go there and I’ll see a Drake or Kardinal, maybe a Maestro Fresh, so it’s still a small circle that way, only because so few of us have really blown up on that national level.
