Background
On July 2, 2007, the single "Graveyard Shift", featuring Akon, was premiered on Sirius Satellite Radio's Hip-Hop Nation channel. It was originally the album's first single. In March 2008, the first single "Dangerous", also featuring Akon, was released. It proved to be Kardinal's most successful single, peaking at number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In June 2008, Kardinal released the mixtape, Limited Time Only, which had snippets of five songs that would appear on the album. One of those songs, "Burnt", featuring Lindo P, was accompanied by a music video in late June. On July 15, "Burnt" and "Set It Off" featuring Clipse, were released on iTunes; In August, a music video was released for "Set It Off". The song "Numba 1 (Tide Is High)", featuring Rihanna, is a cover of the reggae song "The Tide Is High". The version featuring Keri Hilson is the album's fourth single. A music video was released for the song "Nina", though it was not released as a single.
Kardinal's idea for the album title was from a custom-made T-shirt which read "Not 4 Sale" and had a bar code on it. Kardinal explained why he chose Not 4 Sale as the title:
My idea was something provocative — that went beyond gender, went beyond race, went beyond what type of music you're into. And people would literally stop me on the street, telling me how dope the shirt was, how similarly they felt. The concept grew in my head based on that reaction. There's energy you can't buy — the essence of people that can't be bought or bottled, and lives within them. That's how I feel about myself — I can't be bought.Read more about this topic: Set It Off (Kardinal Offishall Song)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)