words Sven Carlsson // images Jakop Nazaretyan

Deliberating over the music industry and his place within it from his parents’ balcony in Queens, New York, Homeboy Sandman is an ideal interviewee. The former high school teacher, law school student, addict and Lenox Lounge-bartender intrigues listeners over beats and journalists over phone lines. Uncompromising yet humble, Homeboy Sandman has something to say, whether that be on his love for the great city that is his hometown, or cracking open a coconut and devouring its energy like he would a weaker emcee.

Releasing an album spells hectic times for an independent artist, and Sandman’s case is no different. Spending 10 hours a day on his laptop and the remainder of it spreading the word about the release of his third album The Good Sun, the New York transit system provides him with the only refuge for the passion upon which everything is based; writing songs.

”I always wrote things on the train because there is no cell phone service down there,” says Homeboy Sandman while doing what he does when the mobile signal allows, self-promotion.

”The above-ground train’s a little different because the phone gets service there. But in the underground subways, where the T-Mobile signal won’t penetrate, that’s where I get my work done. In the catacomb of New York City.”

Beatnik: You’ve talked about building a solid base for your support in New York. How have you made your personal connections?

”Personal connections with people are invavluable. Even with people I haven’t had a chance to meet, like other artists, I feel like I know them already.

”Support means a lot to me too. If I don’t have a show one night, I want to be at somebody else’s show, showing that support for other artists, in music or whatever. Those are the connections that last.

”It’s easy to go from the foundation of being visible everywhere to real relationships with people. I think it’s more difficult to go from being visible everywehre to real relationships. ”

B: You’re a New York City native. What are the best and worst things about being an artist in New York?

Some of the great things about being an artis in New York is that everything’s here. Things start here. You won’t need to go far to find ears that will get you nationwide. Those resources are available to upcoming artists in New York.

“Some people think there’s a whole lot of deceit and treachery in New York, and I recognize that, but I even see that as a postitive because if you can deal with that, you’re good. Once you deal with the vultures of New York, you can master most training grounds.

B: So the downsides are just challenges?

Yeah, they’re just challenges and lessons.

B: How does your approach to emceeing compare to your approach to studying law?

”Chris Rock tells a joke about the difference between a job and a career. At your job, you’re looking at your watch every five minutes and cant wait to get out of there. With your career, there’s not enough time in the day. You’re constantly working, can’t wait to get to work, and when you go to bed, if you do, you realize that you didn’t even get to most of the stuff you need to do.

”Making music is unlike anything I’ve ever done. I devote myself to this 100%. Everything I do, from the way I think, the way I eat to the way I live is geared towards making me the most potent artist that I can be. I didn’t have a real passion for any of the other things I was doing.

”That passion really gives me the strength to endure a lot of sacrifices that come with being an independent artist.”

B: You’ve mentioned that you were an addict at one point.

”Before I started rhyming I actually used to do a whole lot of artificial, emotional enahncement; drugs and alcohol. I would even rhyme somtimes, but I knew it was artificial because I didn’t feel confident doing it when I was sober. That was a low point in my life, because I wasn’t nurturing my talent at all.

”The beginning of my career was when I put all of that stuff aside. For six years I was thinking ’man, if only I could really do this. If only I could rhyme like this, then I would be an MC.’”

B: So you could pursure many things without your total commitment but not your music?

”Absolutely. Not only that it requires discpline, sharpness and focus, but also the fact that I don’t want to be dependent on anything. I don’t want to have to drink coffee when I wake up in the morning. I must be able to bust a rhyme at any time. It just needs to be my mind and me.”

B: On that note, what do you do to keep sharp?

”In the past couple of years I’ve gone from eating pretty much anything to becoming a vegetarian, then becoming a vegan and then becoming a raw, organic vegan for a year. I finished that diet in March.

”[At that point,] I felt like I had come somewhere with the way I was eating, my body was so clean that I was really prepared to see how I react to different food. Now, I can really read how my body and my mind responds to things.

”I’m looking forward to now being able to catch the best of both worlds. I won’t ever go back to eating Dorito’s or things that have nothing going on but flavour, but I could enjoy getting some protein out of some chicken. I’ve always been real extremist, and it seems that moderation could be this final frontier for me.”

B: So what do you eat after a show?

”I always carry a lot of apples on me, bananas. Water, fresh squeezed juices, carbonated water. I love coconuts! Young coconuts, you know the green, shaved ones? I pop it open, drink the juice out of that and eat the inside and I’m ready to go!”

B: The Good Sun seems to be a coherent album. What is the component that ties it together?

”Thematically, I’m thinking about the album as if it’s morning time. It’s about turning a corner, a new day. Every song and every lyric deals with how things are and where they should go. Not only sitting there complaining, but also shedding light on how we can make things better. Optimism ties the whole album together.”

B: Name a song that is not on the new album where you felt your flow was particularly sharp.

”I would say ’Parallel Perpendicular’ (a track recorded over el Michels Affair’s ’Slide Show’ from their 2005 album Sounding Out the City).”

”I’m gaining more and more confidence as an emcee, and I’m always changing up my flow because it’s an instrument. If the beat sounds different, my flow will be different. I’ve always said my style is rhymes so fresh that the song would be crazy with no melody and melody so fresh that the song would be crazy even if I had no rhymes.

”When I heard ’Slide Show’, I said ”I’m going to rock this as if I were a violin or a cello or something like that.” It was challening to work on the song but it was a great process. I’d say this track is all about flow.

”Flow is a cadence that has your vocals sound good even if you didn’t have any words. That’s the kind of cadence you want to have. Then you’’ll pu tthe words in there to add to it and make a song unbelievable.”

B: You’re uncompromising as a person; extremist, as you just mentioned. Does that put you at odds with people?

“It makes me friends that are not about compromising, and it makes me enemies with people that do want to compromise. Which is cool, the people that understand the way I carry myself and what I do are able to appreciate what I’m doing for what it is.

“I find that for the most part, being uncompromising and conssitent is something people respond to psotiviely. The people that respond to it negatively, for one reason or another, are upset by confidence. I don’t knwo if this spawns from jealousy or a lack of confidence, I don’t try to theorize too much on it.”

B: Your track ’Gun Control’ deals with the glorification and promotion of violence in hip-hop. At what point did you get so appalled by that aspect of this industry?

Listen to the answer:

Homeboy Sandman on the state of commercial hip-hop

“I grew up listening to Mobb Deep. I grew up listening to this music without thinking too much about the fact that I wanted to be tough; I wanted to be aggressive because these guys were aggressive. I wanted to be misogynistic because these guys were misogynistic.

“One of the big turning points for me was when I was a high school teacher. I was 24 years old, dealing with kids that were 14 to 18. So there wasn’t even a huge gap between my age and theirs, and I was still growing and developing as a person, as I am now. I remember walking into class every day and the way these kids interact with each other makes it so obvious that inner city kids are not trying to be like their parents, they’re not trying to be like their teachers, they’re not trying to be firemen. They want to be rappers. They are learning from rappers. That is the leading influence on so many young people’s lives. Hip-hop culutre as it’s presented by the mass media is making our culture this crepid, terrible thing, because we’ve surrendered our culture to these people that just want to get money out of us. And there’s a million ways to get money out of us.

“It goes beyond ’oh, if you can sell a record and sell a car at the same time, or a chain at the same time’… If you can also add some money into the prison industrial system then that’s huge business. There’s all types of money to be made. People talk about ’oh, this is just what sells, people don’t want to hear positive stuff.’ Which is of course garbage, the greatest selling album of all time is Thriller – music about love. Motown was selling records like crazy, Stevie Wonder sells records every day!

“Good music is always going to sell, you know? Bad music sells becuase if you go to the supermarket and all they’re selling is oranges, oranges are going to sell!

”Hip-hop is the most censored music of all time. People say ’how could you say hip-hop is censored? You look at a hip-hop video and there’s a dude standing over a girl he just raped with a gun pointed at her!’ That’s all that comes out! The other stuff is censored.

”This is the difference. You listen to NWA on the radio and you might hear a song that I, personally, am not going to rock with. But after that you’d hear a De La Soul record, after that a Wu-Tang record, after that a Jeru the Damaja record… it was variety! There were options. There was a wide range.

”Options are what give people a choice to become whatever it is they want to be. When Common came out with Finding Forever, he had the #1 album in the country! He got no spins on Hot97 and Power 105. These are the two hip-hop stations in New York City, the birthplace of hip-hop. There’s never been more obvious evidence that it’s not about talent, it’s not even about what sells, it’s about presenting an image of negativity.

”Hip-hop has become more about what you’re saying than how you’re saying it. Hip-hop is about how you say things. You can rap about cutting your grass if you’re a fresh MC!

”I was talking to my boy about it and we were comparing hip-hop to visual art. The picture that is being put accross in hip-hop is a picture of a dead baby – something despicable. But, there will be an artist that can paint a dead baby with such magic that you will have to recognize the artisitc merit there. But what we have now in hip-hop is a bunch of stick-figures of dead babies, and that is corny.”

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*The song in the audio clip is Oddisee – ‘The Warm Up’ ft. Homeboy Sandman. It can be found on Oddisee’s Odd Winter.

Pre-order The Good Sun at Amazon

Download ‘Yea, But I Can Rhyme Though’ from The Good Sun here

Homeboy Sandman’s Website