By: Jeremy House 

Rock Eden: Could you tell readers a little about what Belated Entertainment is? How it got started, when it got started, how it’s grown over the years, where the name came from, etc.  
3.D:  Belated serves as a promotional platform for local hip hop/r&b artists – by promoting their music, live shows, and music videos through this one company known as Belated Entertainment. Our roster currently consists of Har_Soul, Adam Jenkins, Nosey and myself (3.D). Belated also serves as a clothing brand, as we offer various types of branded merchandise – from toques & hats to hoodies and baseball tees – for both male and female.  

Har_Soul: Before Belated officially started, myself and 3.D were mutual friends from a young age. We were both interested in hip hop and started experimenting with our own sounds. We linked up one day out of nowhere and just said like “let’s try this out together” type thing. We first started off back in November of 2015. We would get together a couple nights of the week and go over some ideas and creative things we could do with music. We started doing small local shows, which surprisingly managed to bring out decently sized crowds – given we had no actual content out at the time. We were just performing stuff we had been messing with throughout the weeks prior, spitting verses over different instrumentals and whatnot. At this point Belated Entertainment had not yet existed.  

3.D: The Belated title actually stems from a PARTYNEXTDOOR lyric: “…young & belated”. The fact that we are young applies to us no doubt, but the idea of being ‘belated’ is something that really stood out to me. This whole movement has been a long time coming and, although it’s happening quickly, I consider it as something that we should have done long ago. I officially labeled the brand in early January of this year (2016). So yeah, we’ve actually only been established as Belated Entertainment for 6 months now. We have since recruited Adam Jenkins, as well as Nosey and this is where we are today. In such a short period of time, we’ve done numerous shows, with various other artists/bands/promoters etc. We were grateful enough to have the opportunity to open for Royce Da 5’9 at his show in St. John’s as well. That was a cool experience for sure. 

RE: What’s been the inspiration behind Belated? What made you want to get involved with music?  
3.D: I’ve always had a passion and interest for music from an early age. My pop was a crazy drummer in some local band way back. My family is pretty sports oriented, but he was always pushing me to pursue music. I was put into rap music at a young age as well - everything from Eminem, Nas, Dr. Dre, and now onto more recent stuff such as J. Cole & Kendrick Lamar. I would have to say my main musical influence at this point though is definitely the new wave R&B type rap you hear coming from Toronto, particularly. I’m big into artists such as Drake, PARTYNEXTDOOR, and Bryson Tiller. Producers such as Murda Beatz and Metro Boomin are also inspiring to me. The sounds they create definitely reflect on my work as a producer for sure.  

Top Dawg Entertainment is probably the biggest inspiration for Belated from a business aspect. Everything they do is so efficient and effective. I try to model our marketing tactics, merchandise, and just general professionalism after theirs. I’ve always believed that people will only take you seriously if you, yourself, do. It’s shaped up pretty well so far.  

RE: Tell us a bit about the music video "69 Bitches". Where it was filmed, the creative process behind making the video, any inspirations, things like that.  
Adam Jenkins: The video was actually shot/edited/released all in the matter of 5 days. It was definitely efficient, and we really owe it to Mike Simms for that. We filmed at a few unique, rather new locations around the city. We had a list of places in mind but narrowed them down based on their popularity and their urban aesthetic. We wanted to pull off something that hadn’t been done here before – something people haven’t seen. Although it’s not necessarily a complicated video, our goal was to try to bring out that kind of “Toronto” vibe. We had a positive response in return; I’m happy with the way it turned out for sure. Right now, we’re really working on putting out more visuals by the end of the summer. 

Har_Soul: I actually also have a video in the works right now; it’s for a single I released a little while back. It’s titled “Where’s Your Soul”, produced by 3.D – Jenkins also has a verse on there. Mike filmed this one for us too. We chose a pretty unique location for this one, and the footage turned out amazing. I’m excited for people to see. 
*Har_Soul's new video has since been released and can be viewed below.

RE: What does the future hold for Belated? What projects are on the horizon? 
3.D: We released Adam’s debut project Showcase in May; we spent a lot of time promoting that in the weeks leading up to & following its release. Right now we’re sort of repeating that same process in a sense, as we’re focusing on the release of Har_Soul’s debut tape. It’s set to release sometime in late August, and we’re all pretty hyped about it. It’s been in the works for quite some time now and is currently in the final stage of mixing/mastering. We plan on releasing more info over the next couple of weeks. I produced a few tracks on there. Nosey and I are also working together and focusing on putting out more instrumentals publicly. We’ve been putting in a lot of work as of late, trying to perfect our sound – we have some cool stuff in the works. Hopefully, we can elaborate on that a little more sometime soon. 

Nosey: We’re trying to continue the growth of the brand collectively no doubt. Right now our main focus is on Har_Soul’s tape. Production wise, myself and 3.D are working late nights to get our sound to where it needs to be. We plan on eventually trying to shop our beats around to other artists in the hip hop/rap community, outside of Canada in particular. We have some crazy stuff in the works right now. We’re excited for people to hear. 

RI: How can interested people find out more about Belated? Can those same people purchase items from your clothing line? 
3.D: We rely heavily on social media as our main methods of promotion for our sounds, visuals, as well as our clothing. Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (@belated.entertainment) are where fans can keep up to date regularly with all things Belated. Our SoundCloud and YouTube pages are where fans can find our latest sounds and visuals. We also have a website; www.belated-entertainment.com. Any info relating to clothing, music, and events can be found there.