The story of Homeboy Sandman’s rise throughout Hip Hop’s alternative scene to a successful home at Stones Throw couldn’t be any more inspiring. And, he did it by lyrically being his socially agitated self. That special blend of wit, anger and poignant wordplay made him one of the most underrated emcees of this era. However, like many artists, time has allowed him to rethink and reassess certain ideological positions he’s held over the years. Taking time to sit with HipHopDX at the Stones Throw office, he was fairly open about how much his attitude has changed overtime and how his latest project, Kindness for Weakness reflects that. The Good Sun also explains his close relationship to Peanut Butter Wolf and advice given to him for his sixth solo studio album.
”Talking (Bleep)” Video Inspired By The Transporter
HipHopdX: The video for “Talking (Bleep)” is hilarious. Where’d the concept for the video treatment come from?
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Homeboy Sandman: I was going back and forth with Jay Brown who did it. We just went back and forth a lot. We had a bunch of ideas and nothing was hitting super perfect. One of me and my father’s favorite movies is The Transporter with Jason Statham though the most recent one has a new dude in it which is very fly. We were kind of thinking of different things that were a little too literal and I don’t want to do a video that’s pretty much whatever is happening in the song. I want to be creative and have a metaphor. I guess that whole video is inspired by The Transporter. It’s just action sequences about surviving against shit talkers and having showdowns against different shit talkers.
DX: The joint itself is dope on its own. One of the more memorable lines on it was the one about The Huffington Post asking you about rap beef instead of the link between media and the prison industrial complex.
Homeboy Sandman: That was just a bunch of things on my mind at the time of me writing that. Everything in that song is based on real interactions and occurrences I’ve had with people. One of the cool things about the song and video coming out is that a good amount of people have checked out that article that I’m referencing in that. It ended up coming up on RapRehab.com. Shouts out to them. And a couple of other people as well helped me get the word out. That was cool.
DX: From your position, what’s the modern state of journalism?
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Homeboy Sandman: Journalists are probably like any other profession. The other day for the premier for that video, someone said that Edan was doing the whole album. Wouldn’t have taken too long to find out that it was inaccurate. I got a line in another joint where I say “internet journalism is what you’re going to find, everyone who can’t get paid for it does it online, most of the ones who get paid online suck too” it’s a swear word after that. There are great Hip Hop journalists out there. Justin Hunte, I’ve known from his The Company Man. As the consumption of different media becomes more frantic and every second, I think there’s not enough time to be on one’s Ps and Qs sometimes. So there’s a lot of inaccuracies that don’t get sorted out. I’m kind of use to it now. I’m happy when you guys bring out the cameras cause the words that I say will really appear as I say them. My favorite journalism are cats that get really in-depth and really love the music or whatever they’re talking about and ask insightful questions. I guess I don’t know too much about journalism. I guess I know more about Hip Hop journalism and the people who interact with me. I definitely have ill interviews sometime and some, I’ve answered every single question that’s been asked 40 something times so it gets kind of dull.
DX: Where does “Talking (Bleep)” fit into what you’re doing for Kindness for Weakness?
Homeboy Sandman: “Talking (Bleep)” is kind-of in the middle of what I’m doing on Kindness or Weakness or what I’m going for. I feel like one of the things I’ve had to deal with personally that I’ve had to deal with is the didactic edge that I’ve had on some of my tunes. I want to be expressive and talk about what I believe and feel always, but I definitely feel like I’ve had a form of judgementalism and I guess close-mindedness. So, that’s what I’m trying to be mindful of on this record. At the same time, things are getting me kind of heated and I want to yell out about certain things. One thing that I’m trying to do in terms of Kindness for Weakness is that I want to say certain things about me without me regarding them as a statement about society. I want to be able to do something without being registered as you should do it too. I think I’m responsible for some of that feedback when people read things that way. This joint are the things that anger me. These are the things that grind my gears as the dude from Family Guy would say. The album is looking to be very personal about societal stuff. I don’t know if that’s a misnomer, but my observations and all of that. I want to let people know what I think they should do instead of telling them to do it.
”Peanut Butter Wolf Understands Me As An Artist”
DX: How did you even manage to put together a project like Kindness for Weakness in the midst of touring with Aesop Rock and the free Lice project you did with him?
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Homeboy Sandman: This project, I started writing these songs like, I guess, before or during that tour cause it’s been about a year-and-a-half process of doing it. Like I shared before, I create a whole bunch of different songs and the salvage ones will be on the album. What I’ve done is create mad songs and try to make an album out of them. This time, I created songs that I knew weren’t going to be on the album. Me and Peanut Butter Wolf worked on this together more than any other project I’ve done. I really got a lot of trust in Peanut Butter Wolf. More-so than any other record, he’s got his fingerprints all over this as far as songs like “Speak Truth” which was his idea to get guys on the hook for that. The sequencing of the record, interludes, length of the interludes and where they are. Just a lot of creative and sonic inputs that was different from the arc. A lot of times, I micromanaged my career and tried to do everything on my own. Having the resources in the great minds of Stones Throw have really made me more opened to take input from them. That’s the really cool thing about this process and going back and forth with Paul White about interludes and playing the flute. I still recorded the brunt of it at Amplifonix Studios in Queens, but I recorded in Large Pro’s studio in Queens. This album is more of a collaborative effort. I’ve always had a bunch of producers on my LPs, but this has more input than any other album as far as listening to other people’s ideas.
If he [Peanut Butter Wolf] heard a record that was his favorite record and nobody would ever buy it besides him, he would sign it to Stones Throw.
DX: Hip Hop knows who Peanut Butter Wolf is. What is he to you in terms of your relationship with Stones Throw?
Homeboy Sandman: First of all, Wolf understands me as an artist. I think being an artist himself who has produced and deejayed so much. It’s fortunate to have the label head kind of be an artistic advocate, particularly for someone like me who likes to think outside the box. Then, he’s also like a big brother figure or elder figure who’s been involved in so much legendary music. He really knows a lot and can give a lot of guidance and counsel. I can definitely hit Wolf up from matters that are directly about music to matters that are not really directly involved about music. It can be about the life of an artist. He’ll share a lot of that with me. He has a lot of great things to say to me about that. I guess he’s someone I consider like a wise man or shaman. I call him a space cadet sometimes because he lives in another world. Art lives in his brain and all around him. He’s all heart who loves music. My boy Wolf, if he heard a record that was his favorite record and nobody would ever buy it besides him, he would sign it to Stones Throw. If he heard a record that he knew everybody in the world would buy, but it liked it, he would never sign him. That’s the type of cat I want to roll with.
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DX: In Hip Hop, Stones Throw has a very special place in the culture.
Homeboy Sandman: I think that’s because of Wolf. At the forefront of his thinking, this is a business that wants to do well. At the forefront of his thinking is shit that’s fly and different. You look at the Hip Hop cats that have gone through Stones Throw from the MCs to producers, it’s people bringing new flavor Samiyam is bringing new flavor and Knxwledge is bringing new flavor. They’re trying to keep up with the tradition in the way that Doom and Dilla brought new flavor.
Touring With Aesop Rock Gave Him A Moment Of Clarity Regarding Cultural Appropriation
DX: Speaking of Knxledge, one of my favorite tracks from Hallways was “Problems.” What was the end-goal for Kindness for Weakness compared to the last project?
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Homeboy Sandman: When I’m putting an LP together, I’m always someone who changes a lot. I’m always looking to evolve and grow. What every LP is intended for me is to be a realistic snapshot of a version of me. This is regardless of wherever I am in my life. Over the year-and-a-half in working on Kindness for Weakness, I changed, but I found a center of life. Hallways and Kindness for Weakness are vastly different joints, even the flows. I felt like Hallways had more frantic flows and didn’t have any hooks on them. It was a lot of mass confusion in the bars. I always try to have the bars be ill. This one has a lot more digestible flows on it. In Hallways, I didn’t have kindness for weakness. I’m beating myself up and beating others up on that record. What I’m doing is wack, what you’re doing is wack and what we’re doing is wack. I’m just in a different place from that now. Hallways was the pinnacle of the anger I’ve had in the past that I wanted to let out but be artistic about it.
DX: It seems as if you had a moment of clarity. When did that happen and what led you to that place you’re in now?
Homeboy Sandman: There have been a couple of conversations that have happened. You talk about that Aesop Rock tour. There are two moments of clarity that I can talk about. One was on the Aesop tour and there have been a lot of conversations going on about cultural appropriation and people doing this and that. On that Aesop tour, I got to know him outside of being familiar with his music. Giving the genius he is, he was never the brunt of those cultural appropriation conversations. There were some conversations that I had in person with people that would make him the subject of some of those conversations given he was white. It just impressed itself on me how crazy some of the things I use to think were. I might have fallen into a camp thinking it was cultural appropriation just because he was white. That was crazy and I don’t think that anymore. If people think that, that’s what they’re free to think. Also, the flipside of that conversation are people of color who are not making good music. Why isn’t that considered cultural appropriation? Having cultural appropriation conversations kind of brought me into clarity. Some of those things, I use to think in black and white. I don’t do that anymore. I feel differently from that. Let me try to think about why I felt that way and what was going on with some of that stuff. Also, an article that I wrote a couple of years back. I wrote an article that was in response to some of society’s responses to manifestations of racism that have gone on and what I felt everyone should do. That was a moment of clarity for me as well. Only because of what I realized was that everyone is their own person doing their own thing. It’s for me to be me. It’s not for me to be mad at other people for not being me. It’s not for me to tell people what to do. Everybody has a different life that I can’t understand. Like, I’ve always been comfortable saying they don’t understand me, but I gotta be comfortable saying I don’t understand them either. That’s cool. That’s alright. There’s been more, but it’s been a time of clarity and re-looking at everything I’ve learned or re-looking at a lot of positions I’ve held. Just trying to see what’s important. I would love to be able to snap my fingers and have the world be different, but God made us and I don’t think God makes mistakes.
DX: In America, everyone is so angry. However, you seem a lot calmer than years past.
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Homeboy Sandman: It’s crazy because I feel like I was ahead of the anger curve. I use to be crazy angry and that’s how I was. I was very vehement and I wasn’t that type of person where I couldn’t go out and chill somewhere. I’m not eating here or talking to you. Shutting down all types of relationships and opportunities to collect whatever is enriching about a situation. I was being really judgemental about things. I guess the interesting thing is that I would be 24/7. Some of the stuff I was spewing wouldn’t even be me in a bad mood. Some of that stuff, I would be on my 24/7 stuff with. I’m not saying stuff isn’t important anymore, but I’m not mad. I’m happy. There are a lot of things to be happy about and I’m happy about that.
DX: Some would say that you’ve been a workhorse throughout your career in terms of output. How do you release so much stuff of quality?
Homeboy Sandman: For one, I’m blessed to have my music reach people who love shit that’s fly or similar taste. I’m in control of what happens to me in a way because God is in control of everything. As long as I don’t put out wack shit, I’ll be able to do what I want forever unless everyone who likes dope shit is killed off or something like that. There might be a genocide of some people who are into hot shit. I wouldn’t be surprised if that did happen with all the crazy stuff that’s happening. That hasn’t happened yet so first and foremost, holding myself to a high standard. I talk about it in “Talking (Bleep):” I don’t make the same record twice, I’m way too nice.” Looking to evolve all the time, but keeping myself to a standard from the production to the flows to the subject matter. Having a lot more cooks in the kitchen with this album. These are just to make sure that I continue to satisfy the fan in me so that my fans will be satisfied because I love to do what I want to do. I love being able to make art and make that be the wind beneath my wings to sustain my life. That, for me, is based on the support that appreciates the time I put into it. If I half-assed it, I’d fall right off. Just like Andre 3000’s verse on “Rosa Parks.” If I come out with some wack shit, who knows what will happen in my life. So, I got to keep my shit tight.
