Monday is Juno award nominee night at CN Centre with Hedley and opening acts Classified and Karl Wolf.
Hedley received four Juno nominations in the 2012 race for single of the year, fan choice, group of the year and pop album of the year.
Classified gets the nod for rap artist of the year, while Wolf gets recognized in the R&B/Soul recording of the year category. MYNAMEISKAY is also appearing. She's so new she hasn't even released an album yet, so no Juno nom for her.
East Coast MC Classified, born Luke Boyd, performs for about half an hour before Hedley takes the stage and he knows it's not really his usual audience but the big rooms hold appeal.
"It's really kind of crazy when you think we'll be in front of five to 20,000 people a night," said Classified. "I've toured Canada many times but it's more the club scene, doing maybe 1,000 people a night type thing. So to be able to go out on this tour and being a different genre from Hedley, it's going to be interesting because a lot of their fans might not know my music. So we'll be hitting a whole new crowd and gonna have a lot of new people hearing it."
Classified said he finds inspiration for the message he wants to get across in his music from going through life -- like most artists.
"I write about what I love and what I don't like and give my opinions on things," said Classified. "For an overall message I talk about the good and the bad and paint both sides of the picture of whatever I'm talking about. I don't try to make one thing seem exciting without saying the bad stuff too. I just try to show the balance of life." Sounds like a new song title.
Classified has a new single coming out next month called The Hangover, featuring Jim Cuddy from Blue Rodeo.
Classified's sold more than 70,000 records, won four East Coast Music awards, nominated for 10. Self-Explanatory, released in 2009 features Juno-nominated hits Anybody Listening and Oh, Canada. After releasing his music independently and touring for a decade, he found himself sharing the stage with Justin Bieber and Drake. Now his Handshakes and Middle Fingers album is up for the rap album of the year Juno.
"Making my albums, I always talk on more joking stuff and kinda poke fun at myself but then I try to have a song that people say touches them," said Classified. "A couple of albums ago I had a track called All About You that seemed to touch a lot of people. They hit me up and said the song helped them get through lot of hard things in life and when you hear people talk about music like that, you wanna make sure you have a couple of songs on every record where you really are helping them through dark times."
Classified has a new single coming out next month called The Hangover, featuring Jim Cuddy from Blue Rodeo and he's pretty excited about that, too.
"Check us out on stage with Hedley in the big stadiums, we're living the dream."
Tickets are at all Ticketmaster outlets.
