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Fans of rap and hip-hop will be flocking to the Hollywood Theatre in Vancouver on Saturday night to watch and listen to Shad.
The Juno Award-winner from Toronto — who’s also a former host of CBC’s show Q — will be kicking off his 20th Anniversary / Start Anew Tour in front of a sold-out crowd.
But, before Shad takes the stage, rapper and producer Francis Arevalo from East Vancouver will perform.
“This is so meaningful for me,” said Arevalo. “I’m kind of celebrating 20 years of being a fan of his music.”
In advance of the show, Arevelo chatted with Stephen Quinn of CBC’s The Early Edition about landing the gig, getting back into performing and overcoming the challenge of a bipolar disorder diagnosis.
LISTEN | Opening for a Juno winner:
The Early Edition7:10An East Vancouver rapper will hype up the crowd for Shad’s concert
Rapper and poet Francis Arevalo, a second-generation Filipino artist born and raised in Vancouver, is the opener for Canadian rapper Shad’s first 2026 tour stop. He tells us about what the opportunity means to him and his creative process.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you get this opportunity?
I mean, I feel like it’s a long time coming, many years in the making. But a friend of mine reached out on my behalf to Hollywood Theatre to see if they had any openers yet [for Shad]. And fortunately no one was selected just yet. So we put a little pitch deck together and submitted our names, and a couple weeks later we were chosen.
Have you met Shad?
Yeah, we’ve actually crossed paths a few times. We met I think in 2008 for the first time after his Vans Warped Tour festival show. I think we’re like distantly connected, but it’s nice to be influenced by him and his music.
Francis Arevalo put a pitch together in his bid to be the opening act for Juno Award-winner Shad at Vancouver’s Hollywood Theatre. (Jon Chiang)
Beyond that chance meeting, what have you taken away from his work?
I think it’s keeping humanity in my craft, in my creative expression and how I navigate the music industry. I think I’ve always held true to my beliefs that I should stay true to myself. And I think he’s a beacon for how to do that in the music industry.
I think what I gather from him is … like gathering life experiences, synthesizing them into insights that at first we can learn from, for ourselves, you know, and hopefully we can offer to the people around us so that they can get some value from it as well.
What kind of opportunities are you getting to perform and to showcase your stuff?
I mean, most recently, I kind of took a bet on myself and threw a show at a local arts venue and made it free. And I just wanted my fans and my community to come celebrate this kind of return or comeback to being an artist first and foremost. And it [was] also in celebration of an album that I’ve got coming out later this year.
And when you say coming back to be an artist first, was there an interruption?
Oh, yeah, there have been many interruptions. I think I’ve worn a few different hats in the music industry.
I entered music as an artist, but then I ended up working on grant programs. I managed a couple artists, I produced for a few years and I just realized that I think my creative expression as an artist, first and foremost, is what I kept going back to.
And you have beat a number of personal challenges as well.
Yeah, in 2015 I experienced my first symptoms of bipolar disorder. And you know, between mania and psychosis and depression, it was a lot at one time.
It felt like a big plot twist on my life, and after a year and a half of recovery and coming back to myself after that time, I kind of woke up one day and was like, ‘What’s the thing that I will get up for every single day?’ And it was music. And I just didn’t know what form it would take. But here we are, 10 years later.