Since the 2012 release of his debut solo album Dope Sick, Madchild (Shane Bunting) has refused to rest.
Following near-constant touring this past year, the Vancouver-based emcee released his sophomore album, Lawn Mower Man, earlier this month.
He performs Aug. 28th at Lotus Nightclub.
After many years of success with Swollen Members, Madchild branched out creatively to become a solo artist and was rewarded with the highest chart position of his career as Dope Sick debuted at number three on the Canadian Billboard Top 200 and #7 on the U.S. Heatseekers chart.
He wasted no time taking to the road on a sold-out Canadian tour alongside Tech N9ne, which he followed-up with a 40-date headlining tour across the country performing to packed venues.
He also capped off the year with a Juno Award nomination for Dope Sick in the category of ‘Rap Recording of the Year’, as well as nomination for ‘Hip-Hop Video of the Year’ at the 2013 Much Music Video Awards.
Creating music has been, in many ways, a source of healing for Bunting.
With Dope Sick, Bunting chose to be an open book about his past addiction experiences and is grateful to a tight circle of family and friends – and the powerful impact of music – for his recovery. The turning point came one day when his left arm was numb and his lips turned blue as his body finally gave up from three years of opiate abuse. He was rushed to emergency. After he stabilized, the painful truth surfaced about the grip that addiction had on him at the time, and what it had cost him.
Bunting opted to remove himself from temptation by hunkering down in his home studio secluded from the outside world. For the next 10 months, he wrote and recorded Dope Sick.
Looking back, his love for music surfaced early on.
“I love music. A lot of guys really like sports. I could just never understand it. It would be such a great way to socialize with new people I’ve met, but for some reason I just can’t get into it. Something in my brain doesn’t click to make it exciting for me to watch.”
Enter the charms of music. It proved a source of strength during his younger years as well. Pursuing music as a career didn’t really occur to him until early adulthood.
Along came the formation of Swollen Members, which was founded in the mid-1990s by Bunting, Prevail (Kiley Hendriks) and Moka Only (Daniel Denton).
A critically-acclaimed debut CD, Balance, was released in 1999.
Next up, the group released Bad Dreams in 2001 and Monsters in the Closet in 2002. Their next project, Heavy, was released in 2003. Their latest project, Dagger Mouth, hit shelves in 2011.
-Weber
