Sadat X shared his thoughts on the current state of Hip Hop recently.
“This game right here is a, ‘What have you done lately’ game,” the Brand Nubian artist said in an interview with BrilliantMindPro1. “This ain’t the type of thing where you can take a five-year break or a four-year break and try to come back as you was. I’ve seen that with certain artists that’s taken breaks. I love Shyne, but I think the break that he took like that, that kind of hurt him. That killed his momentum. Then he couldn’t come back over here, so that kind of jammed him. Dudes that get caught in that long break like that, it hurts. It’s a ‘What have you done for me right now’ type of thing.”
The Wild Cowboys-emcee said that the music industry is making decisions based on “eye candy,” rather than lyrical skill and advises artists to not let stubbornness and pride interfere with being relevant.
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“You gotta be willing to change because the times change,” the Bronx, New York native said. “Sometimes your stubbornness and your pride will allow you to go under if you’re not aware of it.
“A lot of dudes got lazy,” Sadat X continued. “A lot of dudes got families. They made kids. They ate and got fat. To be in this game and do what you wanna do, you gotta be in shape. You gotta have the appearance, also. Granted, it’s a couple, but you don’t really see too many fat, nasty, out of shape motherfuckers doing shit like that because that’s not good eye candy. Everything is about eye candy right now and the appearance, as opposed to sometimes going on the skill. Like I said, you ain’t really gotta rhyme too good no more. You just gotta fit the suit. They’ll tell you first, ‘I like the way you look. We’ll make you rhyme. Don’t worry about the rhyme. We’ll get you some rhymes.’ Just stay with the game and be current, that’s all.”
Sadat X Explains How New York Emcees “Out-Flied” Themselves
Sadat X also commented on New York Hip Hop specifically, and said that the region’s dialect can make it difficult for those outside of the East Coast to connect with the music.
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“It’s taken now for dudes from to New York to realize that these other dudes don’t give a fuck about you,” he said. “We had it so long in New York and these other dudes tried to bogart. I say this from touring the country and going across the United States: When you listen to the way that people from New York speak, we speak in a way that’s unique to us…whereas, if you take a good look at the rest of the country as far as talking and linguistics, you could have somebody in Florida that sounds damn near similar to somebody in Louisiana who sounds somewhat similar to Houston who sounds somewhat similar to [Los Angeles].
“I got this from my cousin,” he continued. “My cousin lived in the [Bay Area], and he was like, ‘Yeah, y’all can rhyme and fast and everything—flip the words and everything—but you need to slow it down so I can understand it.’ So them slowed-down records is the same shit that was slowed down in LA. So I think that we kind of tried to out-fly ourselves. And then when we out-flied ourselves, when we seen what the style was, we started dickriding the other styles.
“I love the South,” he added. “But I wouldn’t wanna rhyme like them. Let them do them.”
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In the conversation, Sadat X also discusses the first time he met Tupac Shakur, as well as recording with The Notorious B.I.G. The full interview is available below.
Sadat X began his career as part of Brand Nubian with Grand Puba, DJ Alamo, DJ Sincere and Lord Jamar. The group’s critically acclaimed debut album, One For All, was released on December 4, 1990 and received five mics in The Source.
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