Since he stopped popping Oxys and snorting lines, Mad Childs tongue has become dagger sharp.
You cant fuck with me... Honestly, people have no idea how crazy lyrically I am right now, says the excitable, heavily tattooed rapper.
Sporting a black T and baseball cap, jeans and Adidas sneakers, he cracks a Red Bull, lights a smoke and sits down on a leather sofa inside his Main Street loft, his pitbull Jekyl laying beside him.
Ill play you a couple songs just to prove it to you, he says, holding up his iPhone and selecting from his playlist. Im impressing myself.
Dope sick, Im a small green goblin from hell/You want even have to follow my words my rap slap you in the face like a volleyball serve.
His head bobs as he mouths the lyrics.
I just recorded it. Everything I do here. A song a day. This is just one of them ... Ill play you another verse.
Im not trying to be like, he says, the sentence trailing off, an MC has got to be confident but Im really, really smashing heads right now.
Mad Child (real name Shane Bunting), is rhyming against time. Four and half years of my life was wasted, he says of his drug addiction.
But hes been clean for 10 months. One of the most recent additions to the inky narrative that covers his body is a grey dove on his neck with a scroll that reads freedom.
This is the one I got off the drugs... Freedom, flying away from it all: drugs, the lifestyle... everything; I was living a bad lifestyle, bros.
Hes now back with Swollen Members, the Vancouver-based hip-hop crew that he formed in 1996 with Kiley Hendriks (aka Prevail) and Daniel Denton (aka Moka Only) and the group, which now includes Rob the Viking, has just released a new album, Dagger Mouth.
I was totally sober for a couple of years when we were pushing Swollen Members in the beginning driven, focused. And thats exactly what Im like now, 10 years later.
A few remnants of the bands glory days are evident inside Buntings loft: a shelf lined with music award hardware, framed album covers and some expensive custom art hanging on his walls from back from when I had money.
But most of the bling, the luxury cars, the real estate, are gone.
Not only did I lose three million dollars, but Im in debt, he says about the price of his drug addiction.
Success came fast and furious for Bunting, who grew up in North Van as a weed-dealing teen who obsessively wrote rhymes at his grandmas apartment when he wasnt working at Subway or lifting weights at the community centre gym.
After Swollen Members debut album Balance (1999), Bunting quickly earned a rep as a badass word-slinger and crowd-pummelling onstage hurricane. As a businessman, he was equally fierce.
More albums, more videos, more Junos, more Cristal followed.
Fame, he admits, affected his brain. I used to be an asshole definitely. We didnt know how to handle the success at the beginning. We were drunk, half-cocked all the time, showing up for every show giving people the finger, thinking life was joke.
But by 2006, the finger was pointed back at them. People had had enough of us I had had enough of us. I didnt want to see seven videos in a row on Much Music, fucking all these awards, doing shows in front of 20,000-30,000 people. It went from everyone waving to people giving you the middle finger when I was driving around on the street. They had had enough. I had had enough. I was done.
Thats when the alpha emcee began a career and relationship-sabotaging party lifestyle. At times during his drug addiction first to OxyContin (a prescription medication with a morphine-type high) then, later, cocaine he was spending $500 a day on dope. I didnt do drugs when Swollen Members was successful. Keep that in mind. I started doing drugs after the wave of success.
Bunting remembers doing a show a few years ago and looking into the mirror at the back of the club at somebody he didnt recognize. Hed gained 50 pounds, his skin was pale, his lips purple. He looked like a dope zombie.
I went home that night and fucking bawled my eyes out, you know what I mean? You just become a completely different person.
In Dagger Mouth, in the track Devil, he puts it like this: My names Shane and I like pills and doing cocaine/Shane found new friends that feel that same/But Shane gotta find another way to deal with pain/Shane gotta find another way to deal with shame/Shane gotta find another way to deal with Shane.
Determined to kick the habit that had him by the throat, he detoxed in a spare bedroom at his moms place. Pain isnt even a word to describe what youre going through when you do dope for four and half years every day and then you quit cold turkey. Its just a pure hell.
Bunting discusses his addiction unflinchingly and never in a self-pitying tone. I talk about this shit for one reason only and thats to share information.
During his recovery, Bunting needed a new vice, so he forced himself to become addicted to writing again.
And Im not talking about recording a verse in a day now. I write and record a full song, beginning to end, in a day I could never do that before.
Hes changed his phone number and admits he doesnt leave his loft often.
Im driven to become the best MC Ive ever been in my life. I want to go down in history as one of the top-tier MCs.
Still, he acknowledges the scorched earth hes left behind: Drugs damaged his music, his band, his label (Battle Axe Records), his health and perhaps, most importantly his relationships.
Coming back I have something to prove. Not only to myself but to everybody. I want to make mom proud again; I want to make my family proud again because they stood beside me; I want to make my group happy that they stood beside me. I got a lot to fucking prove right now.
So far, the comeback looks on track.
Dagger Mouth is the number one rap album in Canada. Sold 6,000 CDs our first week, says Bunting, who is taking nothing for granted this time around.
Not long ago, if he was single, news like that would have to led to steak and lobster dinner, expensive drinks, a trip to Brandis Show Lounge with his crew and then later, maybe a mansion party.
These days Mad Child is satisfied with a celebratory Red Bull and a smoke, and then its back to writing rhymes.
Hes got to make up for wasted time.
