Kardinal Offishall released Firestarter Vol. 2: Everyday, Sometimes on Sept. 25 through his Black Stone Colleagues label. The 10-track record is his sixth solo studio album and his first full solo release in more than a decade, with Kardinal producing eight of its songs.
Kardinal describes his original ambition as representing Toronto, Jamaica and his culture on the biggest platform he could reach. Firestarter Vol. 2 widens that network through a guest list that includes Black Thought, Stove God Cooks, T-Pain, Konshens, Glenn Lewis, Buju Banton, Idris Elba, NESTA, Melanie Fiona, Cipha Sounds and BJ The Chicago Kid.
Quest for Fire: Firestarter, Vol. 1 arrived in 2001 as Kardinal's first album for MCA and his first major-label attempt to take a distinctly Toronto sound outside Canada. “BaKardi Slang,” produced by Solitair, became his first single to reach a Billboard chart, but its significance at home went beyond the chart position. The record was explicitly about Toronto vocabulary, Caribbean influence and a city that was still fighting to have its own rap identity recognized internationally.
Kardinal was already thinking beyond a single album when he made it. In a 2001 interview, he described Firestarter as a series in which each volume would represent a different stage of his life, with Quest for Fire capturing where he was at the time. Twenty-five years later, that original idea gives the title Firestarter Vol. 2 considerably more context than a conventional anniversary sequel.