Published: Monday - August 11, 2008
Words by Anne van de Sande
Homeboy Sandman (Photo: via MySpace)
Although his name pops up on flyers and banners for big events like the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival or small scale underground showcases at The Knitting Factory, some might not be familiar with the sound of Homeboy Sandman. The New York rapper describes himself as an MC with flows so dope that you'd listen to him even if his lyrics were completely whack, and lyrics so dope you'd listen to him even if his flows were completely whack.
"I grew up right across the street from Queens Center Mall, so access to premium gal was abundant. I grew up right across Queens Blvd. from Hoffman Park where Kenny Anderson, Speedy Claxton and a lot of the Queens greats used to play and still play every summer," he says. "Hip-hop was obviously everywhere. Public schools grossly overcrowded with homies and homettes. I love Queens to death."
And Queens loves Sandman, who could have easily chose a different career with an ivy league diploma from U-Penn, yet pursued a career in what he loves to do most: make music. "Cats talk about how I got an ivy league diploma a lot, and how I'm a rapper anyway. I don't really see the connection. Hip-hop is what I love. It's what I love to do. I love to rock stages, rock crowds, make dope records, be where dope records are being played. There's not much else I'm really into." he explains, emphasizing on the fact that people should do what they love to do, whether they've got a degree or not. "I think that academic education is an excellent endeavor for whoever hasn't found their true calling in life. But once you find your true calling, none of that other stuff matters. You'd better drop everything else and go full force or you're not gonna make it. And I've still got endless career opportunities. Everyone does. If I decided tomorrow that I wanted to become an astronaut, then I'd do that. People can do whatever they want, as long as they're willing to work."
Ever seen "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure?" Remember Wyld Stallyons? How they changed the entire planet with their music? It made people cooler -- where all everyone did was spread love and party all the time. That's where Sandman wants us to go with his music. On the smaller scale, he's doing things with hip-hop that people have never done, hoping to create new sub-genres that will flourish for years to come.
Although fellow musicians often tend to promote their new album by bad mouthing their previous material, Sandman is still happy with his first album Nourishment. "It was my first album and it represents faithfully where I was at that point in my career. My upcoming album, Actual Factual Pteradactyl, will be different, but that's just natural progression, and that's never gonna stop." The only thing he forgot on his first album, is crediting God -- who he feels co-authors his songs -- in the track listings. "There's two tracks in particular where he [God] just wrote the entire joints himself and only allowed me to get involved in the smallest capacity -- 'Everyday Love' and 'Comrade Punski.' Those are amongst the most impressive songs I've ever heard anywhere, so they're very near and dear to me," he says when asking of his favorite songs from the album. "Other than that, 'Kain News' was the first song on the album that I wrote, so it's special to me for that. It really gave me the confidence to say 'I'm can make an incredible album.' 'Extreme Measures' and 'VerbalSoulClapMania' are what always gave me the capability to blow away crowds that had never heard of me, so I love them to death too."
Your ear likes Homeboy Sandman's sound before you know why. His musical flow is an instrument. "It'd sound dope even if I was just making noises and I wasn't even saying words. Then you throw wordplay in there the likes of which the world has never seen. It's pretty dangerous," the rapper explains. The words "dope" and "musical" are the only two consistent keywords in Homeboy Sandman's music, who often explores musical boundaries to give each song an unique touch or to create a sub-genre. Sometimes he writes with his right hand and sometimes he writes with his left. Sometimes he writes with my feet. Metaphorically speaking. He might have a lot of fun writing songs, but takes every word in his lyrics very seriously. He's 100 percent conscious and meticulous about every single word and every single syllable. Being a conscious rapper feeding from autobiographical, personal and social-political subjects, it's hard to go against what the industry machine is spewing out. "Conscious, intelligent thought is purposefully censored in black music as a means to create that illusion that it is uncool. Common had the number one album -- not hip-hop album, but album -- in America and you didn't hear him get one spin on Hot 97 or Power 105," he says. "It would give them the awareness that the shit that's being forced down their throat is garbage designed specifically to make them despicable, weak, people, who will be easily manipulated, and who will pump out as much money as possible before they wind up in jail where they can be legally enslaved. It's right there in the constitution."
In one of his blogs, Sandman compares the hip-hop industry to healthy food and fast food. His own hip-hop eating pattern seems to be about nothing but healthy old school and underground food. "I listen to old school here and there, but the truth is if you're in the know about the underground you find that there's more than enough brand spanking new nourishment out there to listen to. But even if you don't know about the 8th W1s and the Fresh Dailys and P.CASSOs and the Tanya Morgans and the Silent Knights, you can still get fat off Andre 3000 and Kanye, and, wow, it is becoming harder and harder to name nice cats that everybody knows. As far as fast food, I'm never tempted to eat it. It's gross. It's disgusting. I can't understand how anybody with constant access to good food would ever mess with it," he explains. "All this stuff is here, the musical fast food, the edible fast food, because they don't care about us, and they want to keep us unhealthy and weak. I don't want to be sick."
His healthy eating pattern secures that Sandman is always in a good condition. Not only is he always energetic on stage, he also has an excellent way of interacting with the audience. When asking how he developed his live skills, the rapper states he's just confident in his music. "I know my ish is dope. I don't have to go up there with a crowd participation strategy, or any prepared banter. I could say whatever I want. Do whatever I want. 'Cause soon as I start rapping, everybody's gonna recognize that I ain't nothing like your average, so I feel really free on stage," Sandman says with confidence. Plus, I'm just being myself. Sadly enough, too often we don't get that in hip hop. Homeboy Sandman dresses the same for shows as he does for the grocery store."
The guerrilla marketing strategies he had to pull when he scheduled his first shows -- when he called up all of his family members, friends and associates two months upfront, obliging them to attend -- are long gone. His live reputation got him shows with Louis Logic and Keith Murray among others, and he recently performed at the respectable Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival. "That was amazing. I never rocked before so many people in my life. Sharing the stage with Krs-ONE, DJ Premier, Buckshot, it was euphoria. The response has been incredible. It was definitely a performance and an achievement that I can see myself one day looking back on as a turning point."
It's clear that Homeboy Sandman has a strong opinion on state of hip-hop music and the media's influence; something he also elaborates about on "Airwave Air Raid," a track from the upcoming album Actual Factual Pteradactyl. The album's promotional tracks "ITunes Song" and "Lightning Bolt, Lightning Rod" are already leaked all over the net and show that the listener can expect new flows, new vocab, new concepts and more future. Before the album will fly to an eardrum near you, Sandman has released the There Is No Spoon Mixtape, which is available for free on his official website, HomeboySandman.com.
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