When Homeboy Sandman is in Los Angeles, like he was for this exclusive interview, he loves nothing more than to walk around and take in the sights. Whether it's on his grocery run, to ease his mind, or to listen to his next records up for release, the Queens rapper lives fully in the present. That goes for when he goes up to his home state, too, and the result is someone who, rather than just being hyper-aware of his surroundings, is hyper-aware of himself. You can hear that through H.S.' lyrics: raw, honest, vulnerable, and wholly removed from compromise or pulled punches in his messaging.
In this new sit-down, Homeboy Sandman talked about his growth and path as a titan of underground lyricism in New York and beyond. He went over some of his favorite 2023 media, holiday meals for the season, and his various albums and mixtapes that he dropped this year. The 43-year-old is nothing if not prolific, creative, and passionate about what he believes in and what he stands for, so he had a lot to say during our conversation. Furthermore, he even spoke deeply about his everyday life; you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who more vividly describes why certain types of people annoy him.
Jokes aside, Homeboy Sandman has a lot to be proud of, and a whole lot more coming down the pipe. Perhaps the most salient idea or emotion throughout this exchange is the hope in new hip-hop, in an era in which a 50th anniversary celebration coincides with more division and segmentation than ever. It's never been an easy path, and it's only going to get harder from here. But he's too aware of the problems and promises permeating rap to do anything but act upon them.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
HNHH: As you know, HotNewHipHop is doing an advent calendar series where we're putting out a new piece of content, such as interviews and lists, every day leading up to Christmas. You already kind of had the leg up on us on that idea with your 2023 project, 12 Days of Christmas and Día de Los Reyes, for which you dropped one of the thirteen tracks off the album every day leading up to its full release on "Día De Los Reyes" (January 6). How did that album come up for you conceptually? What inspired you to put it out with that release schedule, and with a title and a concept that calls back to your Puerto Rican and Dominican heritage?
Homeboy Sandman: I remember I was in the gym working out. I had some music in my headphones, and I had recently linked up with Luke Warmth, who's the art director for Dirty Looks [his record label]. It's been so fun to link up with him and be able to get creative, you know? Ever since getting up with him, I've been trying to think up what can we drop. What are good reasons to drop? I'm always creating joints, you know what I mean? Like, we did two joints yesterday and two joints the day before that. It was really that that last jam, the "Dia De Los Reyes" that I wrote, that I was like, "I want to put this out, man!" They won't have no hooks, it'd just be like, verses. I was like, I'm gonna just drop one of them.
The thing about it was, you know, I've heard all throughout making music that the holidays is a time that people stay away from as far as drops. People are distracted with family celebration and cooling out. It's not a conventional holiday album. I mean, none of the songs are about the holidays, but it just felt to me like a cool idea, you know? I grew up loving music and I still love music, and when I was growing up, my favorite crew was The Roots. When I think about, "Should I drop this or shouldn't I drop this," I think if The Roots would have dropped a holiday record out of nowhere, would I have loved that? Yeah, I would have loved that, you know what I mean? So cats that's rocking with me like I was rocking with The Roots or whoever it was I was rocking with, my favorite rappers, the more the better. It was really a celebratory gift for those who want to check for it.
For sure, and thank you for the gift! You were talking about how you're always looking to drop stuff. How do you think that process of looking for those windows has changed for you over the years, not just with the shifting industry and release methods, but also as you've grown as an artist?
I think that it's gotten a lot more intuitive. I used to be a lot more opportunistic in the sense of waiting for the right time, you know? Like, I put out three independent records before I was ever rocking with labels or anything like that. But there was a big gap in between my second one and the next one. Well, for me, it's a big gap, it's two years. I was like, "I'm gonna wait for certain things to fall into place before I drop and I'm gonna get everything oriented and situated these ways." And that's not to say I don't think about that stuff now. Rich came out August 4, and we definitely was waiting up to secure the right digital distro and the right physical distro. There were things we was waiting to shore up, but it definitely ain't the same as how it's been. Obviously, putting things out on Dirty Looks, I don't have to take into consideration the release dates of other artists, at least not yet. Or the considerations that come with being on a label that has a roster, you know what I'm saying? Even though Dirty Looks is going to have the greatest roster ever assembled when it's all said and done.
You know, l put out a jam today called "Banned in the USA." I wrote that jam last week. But I was like, "Yo, I love this jam. I don't want this sitting here." I'm gonna put out I Can't Sell These Either November 17 and I'm just gonna add it to that. I put out the "Therapy" Truth Hurts remix, and I had written that the week before. Jams come out and I don't want to sit on these, you know? Rich 2 is going to come out soon, you know, and Rich 3 is going to come out soon after that. I'm being proactive now rather than reactive, you know what I mean? I'm gonna put the jams out there, thank God for cats that want to check for it, but I'ma have things reacting to me rather than me reacting to things, you know?
Yeah, and I think that definitely comes across. Before getting into your career, I do want to be a little bit topical, since we're doing a 2023 retrospective and it's the holiday season. I wanted to bring up your chorus of "Harina de maiz, plátano maduro" on your song "Día de Los Reyes." That's not always a holiday food, but do you have a favorite holiday food around this season that you're looking forward to chow down on?
For me, I've been just eating mad fruits and veggies. You know, growing up, there was a lot of turkey and ham. Puerto Ricans big with the pernil, you know what I'm saying? But I don't partake in that much anymore. My grandmother, Abuelita Lucy makes amazing arroz con gandules which are always great to get involved in. The stuff that I came up eating– my mother makes macaroni and cheese and fried chicken that at times can be super on point. I love my mom. Sometimes she nails it, other times she falls a bit short, but it's been a while since I had any of that. These are the things I used to look forward to. My pops is nice with the fish, you know? But I'm just looking forward to my broccoli and my spinach and my kale and my watermelon and my oranges, so that's what I'm looking forward to right now that got me feeling good.
That's awesome. What music was heaviest in your rotation from this year? Either something that came out this year or something you were just listening to a lot. Did you have any other media obsessions, like a great book or a TV show you indulged in?
Well, there was a couple of things that really left a big impression on me this year. Obviously, Aesop Rock got that Integrated Tech Solutions, and he's a brilliant genius and the best in the world. Whenever he drops, it's a holiday season, you know? My boy Mandella Eskia put out this [album] called BABA, which is really fly, another 2023 joint. Tanya Morgan had a joint called "Don't Look Up" which was fly, Napoleon da Legend and J Scienide had an album called Goat vs Sheep that was really fly. Black Thought– I brought up The Roots earlier– that record that he did with El Michels Affair, Glorious Game, was very fly. I also did my first headlining show in Montreal in 2023, and got up with a cat named Milla Thyme, who just put out a joint called "More Bounce" that I think is fly. So those are some joints that dropped in 2023. But just as impactful as those, if not more, the two records that have really wowed me and really knocked my socks off in 2023, neither of them is from 2023.
One is from 2022 and the other is from 2021. The 2022 one is by Spit Gemz– you familiar with Spit Gemz? Spit Gemz is extraordinary. He put out a record in 2022 called Home School. It's short, it's like an EP, you know? But he got a rhyme… "Blasphemous, worshipping Baphomet, selling sex and violence to babies inside they bassinet, your big homie's a doofus, he's not a Silverback, and you're a Judas but Satan's gon' want his silver back." Amazing lines of truth! And the thing about Spit Gemz is he's been rhyming for a while. Watching him progress as far as the insights that he has is… The tracks are all amazing. It's just some of the best rhyming that I've heard, and some of the most insightful. And then Shad, who I just put out this song with "Ignorant S**t." I've been a Shad fan for a long time, but had never got to his 2021 record TAO. It's amazing. I mean, it blew me away and I'm so grateful to have connected with him. He's got a line on there… "I'm battle-tested but was never that aggressive, even as an adolescent I would rather have a message, but damn I'm fly…" You know, amazing lines. Go peep that, he got a joint on there called "God" that's got amazing lines.
So the Spit Gemz and the Shad really blew my mind, but them other joints also blew my mind on the music tip, you know? On the movie tip, I like sci-fi a lot. There was this joint called The Artifice Girl that was an independent sci-fi that was really hitting. Another joint called Robots, it was like a comedy with the girl from Divergent. It was hitting. Then I saw this joing called Maggie Moore(s) with Tina Fey and the cat from Mad Men that I thought was pretty fly. Of course, The Equalizer 3. I really like The Equalizer series. Denzels get down with his, or Robert McCall, I think his name is. He reads, he's polite, he shows mad love, but he'll shut it down if it need to get shut down. He eats right, he looks out for his peoples, you know, that's my character. That's a character I like. Three movies that I've seen that wasn't 2023 that wowed me was The Pledge with Jack Nicholson. That movie is crazy! I love that movie, like, I could talk about that movie all day. I seen Death to Smoochy, which is a fly movie. You know, very much about Homeboy Sandman, but in a different arena.
I got the rhyme that hasn't come out but… "Like Gucci on Christ, understand that Homeboy Sand is Smoochy on ice." And then I saw this joint called Daybreakers with Ethan Hawke. Slamming. Symbolism was crazy, loved it. Oh, you know what? Just what I'm seeing around me picking up? Cats been using the greyscale, you up on the greyscale on your phone? I've been seeing people switch to the grayscale in order to be less addicted to their phones. I've been liking how I've been seeing more dissent in mainstream media. When I say dissent, I just mean deviating from the popular narrative. Somebody sent me a link to a New York Times article about how mask mandates made no difference. 2022 or 2021, for sharing that link,, somebody would have tried to assassinate. You know, it's less about people's views or opinions or how they feel. I get excited about seeing different perspectives come up in popular media, you know what I mean?
Still now, we can make a lot of improvement. There's been a lot of censorship that's real crazy. There's been a lot of open censorship, which is Instagram and YouTube just coming out saying, 'If you don't see things our way, we're taking you off.' And it's kind of embarrassing how many people are cool with that, but that's a whole 'nother story. I've been happy to see a little bit more variety in mainstream media, even though myself, I don't really partake in mainstream media a great deal. But I know many people do, you know. But my number one thing that I've been seeing and popping off a lot: I'm a plant-based eater. The veganism, the plant-based eating is becoming more and more easy to find options. It's becoming more prevalent. [My love] sent me a link the other day that was talking about how in Denmark, they're gonna be the first country to try to implement a full plant-based overhaul. All throughout the educational system, all throughout the whole country. It's setting an ill precedent, so that's something that has really helped the frequency in my own life as an individual, so I'm happy to see that picking up steam as well.
I'm glad you brought up that transgression in the media. In your music, you come across as not just personal and open-hearted, but also as transgressive. What for you is the most rewarding thing about being so uncompromised in your music and putting bits of yourself within that for people to connect with and to share?
For me, being honest and being authentic generates all the magic in my life, you know? Makes everything about my world go better: my relationships go better, my creativity, which are works in progress for me, because I need to be honest with myself. It's a continuing work in progress. But seeking and striving for authenticity and honesty with myself and others, all the abundance in my life is tied into that. And it's so amazing how God just hits me with this abundance, like, I'm just going from making music to eating good food back and forth. It's a really idyllic state. But that all comes from keeping it real, that's what it all comes from, you know what I mean?
I want to get rid of all the toxicity that comes with being afraid of being different, or being afraid of whatever's going on inside me. Llike, I connect with people for real. I put out a jam earlier today. And I've been building with people that I've never met before. We build because they know where I'm at, because I tell them. They could share with me and we could share insights with one another, learn from one another. There's all different types of people doing all different types of things in this world. I'm trying to be an artist, I'm trying to express reality through my filter, through my artistry. So a prerequisite for that is keeping it real, you know?
I'm a bit of a newer listener. I started listening to you when you put out "Talking Bleep" in 2016. That was a record where you basically go over certain types of people that annoy you. With the context of 2023 in mind, if you were to rewrite that song today, are there any other types of people that you would work into that song that you've found since then?
I actually try to walk a fine line between– I don't even know if it's a fine line, maybe I'm just doing a very bad job. You know, between being judgmental and being expressive. The first thing that came to my mind when you asked me that, in the past few years, I definitely would have had– and I've written a lot in different songs, but just haven't made a whole song. I would have had a verse about the term antivax. I would have had a verse about the word wars, the word wars are crazy. If a woman wants to decide if she's gonna have a baby or not, she don't get called anti–birth, you know what I'm saying? She gets called pro–choice. If a person wants to decide if they want to take a shot or not, they are called antivax, which is all the framing. It's another pro-choice thing.
And I've talked about the word wars a lot. Me and my boy, we working on this "Amateurs" record. You nice with it. The word amateur comes from the word "amour," which is to love. What it actually means is people that do it for the love, that's what "amateur" means. And it's only in this sick, crazy, twisted society, with things are regarded as meaningful or valuable because they're tied to the generation of revenue, that that has gotten so twisted out of shape. And it's like, "Oh, amateurs is not– no, we doing it for the love out here." I wouldn't have written a verse about that, that's just a new insight that my boy put me on to, but I definitely would have had some word wars lyrics in there.
Oh: AI. Come on, B! Cats got so impatient waiting for AI to actually exist, you want to call every computer program AI. Artificial intelligence, it's meant a specific thing my whole life, your whole life. It's been popularized in sci-fis. When there's artificial sentience going on, boom, then we fit AI in and everybody knows. They got the thing in Matrix: mankind marveled in their own magnificence as they gave birth to AI, whatever, right? I think it's amazing. I think all the ChatGPT stuff is cool. all the filters, put somebody's face in, make them look like they was Napoleon or whatever it is. This is all very cool, I'm not saying this isn't cool, this is awesome. I think computers are great. But if you're going to call this stuff AI, you might as well call a calculator AI. I mean, you might as well call an assembly line in Detroit in 1950 AI, you know I mean?
Computers imitate, it's amazing the imitation that computers can do now. It's amazing if you can have a computer that you can have a conversation, because it went and read every single conversation in the world and now it can make up a conversation based on every other conversation. But as long as it's still making up a conversation based on every other conversation, stop calling the thing AI. It's just a computer program. It's just a computer advancement, it's a tech advancement, it's a tech update. We're conditioned to associate the prevalence of AI with a major technological breakthrough, a major evolutionary breakthrough. So now everybody's saying "AI" to each other, pretending that AI is here! So that would have definitely been another verse in "Talking Bleep." I would have had to go off on all the people saying "AI," you know what I mean?
You started off in the underground, putting out tapes before signing to any labels and being on radio stations from college ones to the biggest in New York. How do you think that the new tastemakers in the culture– be they publications, people on social media, et cetera– how do you think that they're adapting to putting other people on? Especially people like yourself that have more transgressive content and aren't falling into mainstream media. How do you think that they're adapting to the algorithms, and to recommendations you're getting off of a playlist generated by Spotify rather than a radio host?
I'll give the best answer to that I can, but I'm a little further removed from even keeping a close eye on much of that stuff. Earlier in my career, it was very important to me to try to generate a certain degree of momentum, you know what I mean? Not only am I going to be making jams, but the dissemination of these jams and getting them into the right hands. At some point, I had a certain degree of exposure and reach that I was able to focus on the production. I still seek to get my music to every single person in the world, still strive to be a household name. I still want to be the Bill and Ted of real life, change the world with tunes, you know? When I was coming up, I was like, "Alright, this is the stations I got to try to get on. Blogs is big, you know, when I go to South By Southwest, I'm gonna try to link up with ESKAY and say peace," et cetera.
These days, I don't really even know what's going on as much. I do know that the playlisting is something that people talk about a lot. My manager Darien is, and I mentioned that in the jam today, I do know that cats are going to these…, if the question was how are people doing, I would like to say that just as much as ever, and maybe more than ever because they have more tools, it appears to me that people that love good music are sharing good music, so everything is great. It's a great time to be making great music because all you got to do is give it to one person that loves great music, and they will give it to somebody else. They're gonna have all types of ways to give it to somebody else, so that's great.
You're talking about tastemakers and you're talking about trends. Lauryn Hill was the biggest artist, had the greatest record, was amazing. I like it when when the best art correlates, there's two different wavelengths. One is what's trending, the other's what's actually fly. And I like it when they intersect. That's not to say they don't intersect, they intersect a lot. There's a lot of world-famous household names that are some of the most amazing artists that have ever lived, you know. That isn't what's primarily pushed to most people right now, the best art. So there's a bit of a valley. The records that are most readily accessible to people are not at all the most creative records, not at all the most enriching records, you know what I'm saying? To that, I would have to say that the people that are sending the trends for most people are doing a terrible job.
But their job is not to give the best records out. That's why I got the rhyme that say, "It's not about sales, people; they don't want artists, they want salespeople." They'll tell you what your culture is. So they're not out here trying to get you the best records. They're trying to make sure you buy as much stuff before you end up in jail, they're doing a great job spreading that, getting to you what they want to get to you. In that song, I mentioned RapCaviar. The vast majority of the rap on RapCaviar, you could write raps probably better than just based off this conversation. There's some talent on there, a sprinkling of talent in there, but there's a lot of trash on it.
I actually went on there to find out what were the playlists I was supposed to shout out on that jam. So they're good at spreading trash, and they got all these ways of spreading trash, but we got all these ways of spreading good stuff. And big shout out to you for being involved in it. If you love rap records, you want to listen to the best rap records whether they the biggest or not, you know? You was talking about the the algorithmic everything. I think that's a pretty cool thing, if you pull Homeboy Sandman into the Spotify, I've discovered artists based off listening to artists that I like. So I think that's another cool advantage.
You're also as prolific of a collaborator as you are a solo artist, working with artists as big as Aesop Rock, Quelle Chris, and so on and so forth. Rich just came out, your collaborative project with Mono En Stereo, and I wanted to ask you if you could recall some of your favorite memories while working on that.
First of all, Mono is my guy, man, that's my dude. We've been rocking for so long. I get to make records with so many talented producers [and artists], but there's something about me and Mono that has always been there from day one. It's just a warmth that's always been there. When I was writing "Fine," before my lady and I moved in together, she lived in Queens, I lived in Brooklyn. In the summertime, I don't like taking the train. So I take these long walks. A lot of writing, I do while I'm walking, you know? So I took a five hour, 13-mile walk to get from Brooklyn to [Queens]. And it was a beautiful day. I had that beat, and Mono En Stereo, his real name is Rich. Rich has a lot of meanings. Much of it is about the richnesss, it's about true richness, but his name is also Rich, and that's not a coincidence. So I had that beat and I loved it, and I was like, "We got to do something with this."
It was on that walk that I found the entry point to it. Once I find that entry point, boom, we're off, but sometimes it takes a little while to just find that access point. So that's a real beautiful memory for me. Taking a five-hour walk in the beautiful sun as that song kind of unraveled in my head. Seeing all the things in New York, all types of different neighborhoods. So that's the first one that comes to mind. I had been in a long relationship that had ended. I was really grateful for kind of the levity that writing "Then We Broke Up" was able to ground me in. Breaking up is hard to do. As far as thinking about good memories associated with that album, it's easy to say "look on the bright side," you know what I mean? A lot of the time for me, when I'm trying to short circuit habit or short circuit negativity, it takes a lot of repetitiveness and redundancy. We're gonna change our attitude about this. I just feel that like being grounded in a record, which is something that I have to write and really brings my creative process into, it was really so helpful for me at that time.
I can't wait for Rich 2 and 3, like you mentioned. I also wanted to talk about one of your other recent projects, which was with the Oakstop Alliance in Oakland. You teamed up with a nonprofit, you worked with around 20 local artists, and made a really great compilation of it, Royalty Summit. There is such a myth around the hip-hop group or collective. Particularly when working with the Oakstop Alliance, what is one myth about that group dynamic that you found to be true, and another one that wasn't?
It is challenging to work with others, you know, I find that to be true. Even though I do collaborate a lot, I'm a solo artist. When it comes down to it, I want for everybody to love everything. So if I don't feel right about a thing, I can't sign off on it because somebody else does. If somebody else doesn't feel great about something I feel great about, that's been more challenging for me, but in the end, I gotta remind myself, "Hey, I'd be the same way." I fly solo, but I got love for all my collaborators. A lot of the turmoil that come with needing to have a bunch of cooks in the kitchen, that's something that I could definitely relate to.
I think that, "This cat, he took this jam," I think that's a real thing. I'm not going to speak on any jams that I've taken, but I did a jam with Kurious Jorge and J–Live called "Enough." And I love Kurious, that's my boy, we rock all the time. I didn't mention his record Monkey Man that came out in 2023. But J-Live took that joint. It's funny because we actually did "Enough 2," "More Than Enough," which is not out yet. And J took that one too, man. Always keeps taking the freaking record you know, what are you gonna do? But these guys are the best rappers in the world. Ain't no shame in it. I still feel I would never ever go to rewrite a verse. You know what I mean? If your verse is not good enough, then it ain't good enough. You should rewrite before you even hear the other verses.
As far as working with Oakstop, it was just fun. There wasn't a whole lot of that competitive spirit, I think we were really blessed to have such a wide variety of eclectic talent in there. Like, this cat Mike Sneed, so amazing. His style was so brand new. It's so melodic. Like, I love his energy. What a fascinating talent. I wasn't familiar with a lot of these artists, but then through Oakstop, through Damon Johnson, who's the head of Oakstop Alliance, he shared with me different things and I said this is fly. Being able to mix those energies of a dude who's just an established legend with a cat who's just so hungry. Putting out beautiful energy.
The artists that were all in the room, they were all very unique people already on their own. There was a degree of curation before we all got together inside a room. Damon did also seek to cultivate an environment of creativity and unique artists. That was a great time, man. We got so much done in three days. I can't remember everybody who was on it. It was a great room. It wasn't any competitiveness. It was people that were excited to be there, that were excited to shine. I love the energy of cats looking to get on, you know what I mean? It remind me that it's great energy for me to be around.
Maybe the myth about rewriting verses is something we can take off the board, then. I have a bit of a weirder question, but you're just such a great and versatile lyricist. Let's split lyricism into five categories: message, rhyme scheme, flow, punchlines, and character. Obviously, this is going to shift from song to song, but could you rank those from lowest to highest based on what you try to focus on or showcase in your writing?
For me, message is super important. I can't flip no style not saying something. A lot of cats will come out and they'll flip a style and they'll say something so stupid, because it sounds fly. And I'll be like, "Why did you say that?" They'd be like, "You know I don't even really feel that way, but it just sounds so fly." That don't sound fly to me, you know what I mean? Message is key to me. Punchlines, I guess it determines how you define punchline. Is it the conventional, like, the bar ends in the thing that made the previous bar witty, or is it just saying something that wasn't expected?
When Lupe Fiasco talks about Aesop Rock, and he talks about his punchlines, he has a thing about his punchlines being just one word, because nobody would ever used that word except for Aesop. And I think that's a great point, because this cat made a word of punchline. It was Lupe that had that insight, which resonates with me, you know what I mean? From that definition of punchlines, which is just saying something that was unexpected, that's very, very important to me. I don't want dull rhymes. I do not want for my next line to be able to be predicted. I do not want that. My original slogan when I first came out is you know, "Homeboy Sandman, flow so crazy, you'd love him even if he couldn't rhyme, and rhymes so crazy, you'd love him even if he had no flow." I definitely tried to keep the flow in mind at all times.
I want to talk real quick about I Can't Sell These Either, a sequel to your critically acclaimed Bandcamp tape that is one of many independent releases you've put out. Was there anything different for you this time around in terms of messaging or process when writing this sequel in comparison to the first one? How do you think that these installments fit in your overall discography?
These are mixtapes, so they're a little different from albums to me, you know what I mean? I talk about "funny business," it's a term I've come up with. On I Can't Sell These, there's a couple of tracks that are funny business tracks. Funny business means that I make these tracks and I love them, but the music business is so funny that these tracks haven't come out, so I'm gonna put them out on this mixtape. Some of those can be old, and there were tracks between I Can't Sell These and I Can't Sell These Either that, in the timespan between the two, have fallen into the category of funny business. So now, they're eligible for the second one. I wrote them at a different time. The single that have been coming out [I wrote soon before they came out], and the next single that's going to come out, I wrote also this year.
The driving force behind putting out both of them, like, the concept for both of them is, if I hear something that need to be rapped on, I'm rapping on it, and that still continues to this day. I'm gonna always have jams that I just felt I had to rap on them and they not really conventionally mine or whatever. I find some way to disseminate them if I could find a reasonable way. But I think that the driving force for this one is similar to the driving force for the other. I have 10, 15 new jams that I've written that I just wrote just because I was moved to write them, you know what I mean? I had to do it because I love rhyming.
Right now I'm writing a rhyme, I don't even want to let the cat out the bag. There's this jam that I used to love so much but it's a lesser known jam, but the beat was so stupid. Finally found the instrumental the other day, been writing to it. Once I got those 10 to 15 new ones that I really want to share, then I'm like, "Okay, what else do I have that that also satisfies this work that I can't sell, but I would like to share?" That's kind of the difference between the two and the similarity.
"Banned in the USA" has one of the hardest like single covers, I've seen in a long time. You mentioned that 2 Live Crew was banned for being too explicit, and now you're being "banned" for not being explicit enough. I wanted to bring up like a specific line: "Cue Instagram to cultivate a whole generation of kids that’s never moved to read about the movie Birth of a Nation." It's one of many bars that you have about identity and exploitation within hip-hop on the song. Can you break down some solutions to these big issues that you have seen proposed or that you've proposed yourself? Whether it's for the industry or for the culture at large. Is there such a thing as a good and bad solution to it or are we all working towards the same goal?
I think that's a great question. Before I answer it, I want to let people know that I definitely have solutions that work, that will work, that are guaranteed to work, and that we could all begin to get involved in today. I would like to share some of those, but before I say that, I would like to let people know that these are not easy. When I talk to people about solutions, they don't always really want solutions. What they want is easy solutions. I can't really think of any of those. I was talking to somebody the other day, and there are certain things in our society that are so horrific and despicable that we have a no tolerance policy. We have a no tolerance policy with pedophilia, as we should. That's a nightmare. It shouldn't be promoted, passed around, it ain't cool. We ain't gonna act like it's cool.
"Killing n***as, I kill n***as," that's a nightmare, you know? "B***hes ain't s**t," that's a nightmare. The misogyny, the money worship, the violence, just the degradation is a nightmare. It's nightmarish stuff. It's only because it is commonplace that people are like, "Whatever." Racism is a nightmare. If I was back in New York, it wouldn't even be up to me if I was hearing "kill a n***a, kill a n***a, kill a n***a, kill a n***a" walking down the street, blasting through the window. Why I got to hear that? That's racism, that's terrible, you know? When you're at the gym, and the gym is playing "n***a, n***a, n***a" records, what's going on here? Who's choosing this jam? They're gonna look at you like you're crazy. You're the only person that this jam bothers. But that's okay. Because it's not an easy solution to get out of a car if they're playing terrible music, to leave a club or leave a party if they're playing terrible music. It's not an easy solution. But it is a meaningful and necessary thing to do to protect.
Children are impressionable– we're still impressionable and we're adults! It is so ridiculous for people to act like kids are going to be looking up to drugs, guns. Kids are just trying to figure out what to do. It is such a lie. So we need to stop lying to ourselves, and that's a challenge, right? You need to check yourself every day. That's a challenge. We could do it. Mega Ran just put out a kid's record, he's the artist that I told you about. Him and his wife started fostering a child, and realized that they don't want to play the same music in front of a child that they listen to on their own. When people start having children, they're like, "Yo, I can't play this stuff for them." It takes that sometimes in order to be the breakthrough, you know what I mean?
So we all do know that there's toxicity of frequency that we're absorbing, and that is affecting our life. My relationships was terrible for years because I had all this subconscious "b***hes ain't s***t, f**k b***hes as much as you can," the opposite of love, you know? I'm talking about things that are hard, and calling ourselves out on self-deception is hard. But they all fall in the umbrella of a zero tolerance policy. Do you care enough about your kids in your community? Do you care enough about yourself and your behavior and your activity, whether or not you could feel good living a life of integrity to have a zero tolerance policy about hateful things? Because if you can, then you could shut this down yourself. Because that's what I'm doing, and you could do it, too.
I was recently watching an interview of yours with "The Boom Bap Chat" on Everybodys Hip Hop. To them, you mentioned how your growth had basically led you to reevaluate a lot of the content matter behind Mobb Deep and other classic hip-hop artists that you grew up listening to. How is the way that hip-hop is moving forward in 2023 impacting not just its current legacy, but the legacy of artists that have come before it and artists that already made their mark on the culture?
That's a good question. I split things into two different categories. I'm seeing stuff in my records right now that I probably will be like, "That's ridiculous, I shouldn't say that no more" in a couple of years, you know what I mean? That's why I try to toe the line between being judgmental because I know that I am steeped in fault and I'm an evolutionary. I'm evolving myself. You bring up Mobb Deep, or you bring up anybody. I brought up Mobb Deep, I grew up listening to Mobb Deep. I wasn't out there robbing cats or nothing like that, but it's like, "Yo, it's cool, this lifestyle." Like, M.O.P., "Ante Up." This "we're enemies "lifestyle, and like, "Yo, I'm ready, whoever's coming out, I'm gonna take out."
That infiltrated my psyche, it infiltrated my behavior, and I got to unlearn it. I'm not out here saying burn Mobb Deep at the stake, because I'm grateful to everybody who made art at a level of talent and skill that I was able to learn about talent and skill from them. I wouldn't even be having a lot of the issues that I have now if censorship wasn't a big deal. Like, censorship right now is crazy. And people think censorship… it's another word war thing. People think that censorship is keeping bad things out. Censorship could be keeping good things out. That's what we're dealing with now.
So as a kid, when when hip-hop was younger, and the presentation of it was younger and different, the variety between an "I'll shoot you in the stomach" Kool G Rap, "I'm the coolest cat in the world, I clearly have a lot of women issues," Slick Rick. You know, they called A Tribe Called Quest and Native Tongues "hippie rap." The spectrum of life is real. Hip-hop started off with a variety. So when it's all presented– actually, that's what I really would like to see. I don't want uniformity. For me, for the people that feel that it's going so left of center into the horrific world where people are selling drugs because it's cool, not because they have no other means of supporting themselves, and going to jail, I'm gonna take a no tolerance policy, and I invite everybody to get involved with me.
For the people that don't feel the same way, the next best thing is making sure that everything we absorb is talent-oriented, because talent will be the great equalizer. It's not true that everybody that can rap is a killer. Killing and music got nothing to do with each other. A lot of people that can rap cut grass for living or wash windows, you know what I'm saying? So we need to make sure that we got the window wash rap, and the killer rap, and the race car rap, and the whatever. We need to make sure we have variety, and variety will be based off talent. I personally think that when I look at the evolution, I believe that mainstream media even goes to test how far they could go.
When they came out with Soulja Boy, they were saying, "Yo, it's been kind of crazy that these people, these listeners, we've been giving them this stuff, and they haven't turned against it. Can we really give them anything? Let's see if we can really give them anything. Let's see if they'll turn it off." You know, I'm targeting that, but I think it was an example of that. But there's other things. Some stuff I hear now in the background, I'm like, "People haven't turned this off?" So I think that they go to see how far can we go. Once they see that you don't turn off the Soulja Boy, "Oh, we got these cats, you could just give whatever."
You can make a record that is every bit as skillful as the majority of records on RapCaviar. Something's wrong with that. I always bring up Stevie Wonder. People didn't listen to Stevie Wonder and say, "Oh, I could do that, too." 'Cause it's a God-given talent. People don't listen to Homeboy Sandman or any of the other rappers that I revere and say, "I can do that, too," because you can't. It's not supposed to be "Anybody could do this" because everybody can't do this. So when you hear somebody doing something that sounds like a zillion other things, let that raise a red flag for you.
Is that something that you've noticed more, that the negative attention is also fueling a lot of this interest?
Yo, I hear about rappers because people tell me they can't stand them. This is why I hear about rappers, B. "Yo, have you heard this new rapper?" That's the way I hear about mad rappers. It's a "There's no such thing as bad publicity" thing. If it was really about pushing what people liked when they heard it, it'd be mics getting murdered instead of Pop Smoke, you know what I'm saying? Because they're not out here trying to give cats the most hottest record, they out here trying to generate whatever anger, hate, whatever emotional click bait or whatever gets people angry, gets people sad, gets people talking. They really playing to the lowest common denominators in our nature.
They playing to the parts of our evolutionary brain that are just the furthest away from where we're at and the society we're trying to live in. Yeah, absolutely, they definitely picked up on that. If these people are going to engage with this garbage, and if they're going to engage more with it because they hate it, that's why we got to take it on ourselves, B. If they had a festival, you know, Summer Jam Hot 97 Annual Trash Festival, and nobody went, they'd have Homeboy Sandman on it the following year. It ain't about me, though. I mean, they'd have Quelle Chris on it the following year.
From January 2008 to August 2009, you hosted "ALL THAT! Hip Hop, Poetry and Jazz" open mic sessions at the Nuyorican Poets Café in Alphabet City, NYC. It's been home to not only hip-hop legends like Bobbito García and MF DOOM, but also great Puerto Rican and Latine minds and poets like Martín Espada and Sandra María Esteves. How did that intersection of art and culture across national and ethnic boundaries have an impact on you as an artist, as a writer, and just as a person?
All the flavor. I haven't been to the Nuyor in a while, but all the flavor in New York was congregating at the Nuyorican. Before 9/11, my sister was there. My sister used to do poetry. She was at the Nuyorican the night that Black Thought and Common dropped in. They used a pseudonym like "Lesbian Sex Party," or something like that. Called them up and they came up and it was Common and Black Thought. I wasn't there, but Cool Bob Love hosting and Flaco Navaja hosting after that. I was the third host after Bob and Flaco. I felt very proud, and it was the longest-running open mic and probably still is the longest-running open mic in New York City.
Everybody was coming through. There was a lot of tourists in the crowd because it's a global spot that is well-known. All five boroughs was in there, everybody from every different shade was in there, with every different identity and whatever nation. It was a melting pot of flavor. I really love how we had the live band. Having that warmth and that real instrumentation going on, and everybody had to use it. The one that I did, we had the live band, I did the one on Wednesday, which was the "ALL THAT!" One of them, you're able to bring some tracks, right? But at the one I was doing, you had to play with the band. So even though you had all these different energies in there, the band was the constant that took everything and held it all together.
That was an amazing time. I met so many amazing rappers, I made so many amazing friends. I mean, that time in my life when I was first starting to come out, that was such an amazing time in my life. I think back to that time often with great joy. And it's so funny, like, I was listening to Engelbert Humperdinck. "The Hungry Years," I don't know if you know that jam. But he talks about, "I missed the hungry years." Like, we thought we didn't have nothing, but we had everything. These are the times I was 60 pounds lighter than I am now, B. Sleeping on everybody couch. These are very lean years to me, trying to get a rep. And I was having a ball the entire time, and I would always look forward to that Nuyo that Wednesday, you know?
Speaking on that growth and looking back on those hungry years, how would you describe your relationship to your music once you release something? Are there certain songs and albums or eras that rank highly among your favorites from your discography, do you just quickly move on to the next project, or is it all part of the same connected narrative for you?
I feel most comfortable kicking it with the records that are where I'm at, you know what I mean? And what I mean by that is I want to cultivate a frequency strong enough that I could go in anywhere and have my frequency affect the room rather than have it affect me. But I do love kicking it with folks that be on the same wavelength as me. So right now, I'm loving Rich, I'm loving the recent. There's a line of demarcation or delineation for me, like, [and that] was Dusty. I don't like that record at all. Like, that record had to get right out the house. But leading up to that, there started to be a lot of deviation from who I wanted to be.
Don't Feed The Monster was like a return to trying to have the message that I wanted to have and trying to be in touch with myself like I wanted to be, but I wasn't as strong with a rapping because I was so weak as a person. I feel like I'm not really flipping styles until the final song on that album. There, I catch a little bit of style. I really love that art, and I feel like it was meaningful to me. I love that album; to me, that's one of my most important albums in my career. Everything before The Good Sun was kind of a pinnacle of my immaturity for me. That was the best of me before I learned a bunch of important life lessons, you know what I mean? There was a lot of ways I had to be tested and fail in order to grow, so that I could move on as a person. I look at everything before Dusty as, "All that stuff was cool." Like, a jam like "Couple Bars." I love that jam, I love the writing, it's fly, but what did I really know about love?
I didn't know anything about love. If I brought a jam like "Not Really" now, it would be "Really." Even though I'll be able to integrate, I'm the same person and I keep it the same in these ways, but these are things that that have shifted. Because I'm a different person, because I've grown as a person, you know what I mean? The records that are resonating with me the most right now, I'm chilling here with my peoples. I got I Can't Sell These right here, I Can't Sell These Either right here, Rich, Still Champ, and we all kicking it. And we'll be here. Until I shed this skin for hopefully a more advanced skin, and then I look back at those other joints. I know there's things that I don't understand, always. I'm trying to figure out what they are, you know?
Looking forward to the next year, what's something that you want to challenge yourself with in 2024, and what's something that you have been challenging yourself with that you want to leave behind in 2023?
Well, I've been working on using any negative emotion, whether it be fear, jealousy, anxiety, as a light on a dashboard. You know what I mean? The other day, I was in a cab, right? Dropping me off at the airport. The cat, he didn't take card. I allowed myself to get a little vexed. Not vexed, but I allowed myself to get a little defensive to the point where it broke my frequency. I feel like I could have negative feelings and emotions without it breaking frequency if I just maintain awareness, and I'm able to see what it is. I'm able to think, "Where does that come from?" And try to use it as a learnable moment for myself, you know?
That's something that I am working on on a day-to-day basis right now, and would love to try to cultivate in 2024 to the point where I'm not even looking at anger as a bad thing. I'm looking at it as a good indicator. I don't need to respond angrily, I don't need to respond with any type of aggression, and it's just awareness. So vigilant self-awareness is something that's becoming more and more important to me. The first thing that comes in before for what I'm shedding, like, I've always listened to rap and I think "This is so ridiculous." Everybody out here listening to these songs saying "You ain't nothing, you ain't cool." Who they talking to? They ain't talking to me.
It's just so strange to listen to records of "You ain't nothing," you know? I would say, probably in 99% of my records, you can't hear any of that. When I do use "you," it's a very specific thing. So I'm kind of naming either a behavior or a group or something like that, right? What does that say about us listening to it that we just listen to ourselves get dissed all day? But that's something that I feel I'm starting to come into more leniency with. I'm still talking to specific energies and specific people, but before, I would have found another way to reframe it just so that I don't play into that "you" stereotype. I'm thinking to myself maybe I can have some leniency with myself on that. Maybe it's been a hindrance to some expression. So that's something I've been letting go of.
We've been hinting at it throughout this whole conversation, but we are in 2023: 50 years of hip-hop. We have a whole history to debate and discuss and celebrate. As an end to this enriching conversation, what got you into hip-hop and its history? What would you show someone today if they wanted to get into hip-hop and its history in 2023 in order to inspire that same spark that inspired you?
That's interesting because I have the same answer to both of those questions. I grew up in a very diverse area of New York City. As a kid, my uncle Sam played the sax, you know, jazz. My father loved jazz, my father worked in clubs. We used to live on top of a club called L'amour East on Queens Boulevard. It was like a rock club. We lived in a little spot above that when I was a little kid. Salsa was big, merengue. Freestyle music was big, there was soul music, disco. There was so much different music that I liked music, but hip-hop wasn't truly my thing, you know what I mean? My father had hip-hop records, but what brought me to hip-hop for real– this is, like, in the third grade. I always did good in school, it was important. My father told me, "You got to do your homework before you go play." That changed my life, you know, can't go play in the building, can't go play basketball, until you do your homework. So I did the homework, I knew what was on the test, my life changed.
As a result of that, in the third grade, I left my zone school, which I grew up in Elmhurst, Queens, a very diverse area. There's really everything in the whole world there, so it isn't like we're lacking for anything. But it isn't at all a homogeneous area. In the third grade, I was able to get into this program called the Beacon Program. I went to a completely different neighborhood, everybody was a light-skinned person. It was a very homogeneous thing. All of a sudden, I was the darkest kid in the school. I'm not the darkest cat in the world, it was uncommon to me. There was two brown kids in the school, me and Courtney Sorenson. We felt at that time, we're kids, we're really identifying very strongly. These days, I like good people, you know what I mean? I'm happy to find a good person of whatever variety. You cool, let's talk about God. But at this time, we're feeling out of place, these people don't look like us, you know what I mean? Of course, we gravitated to one another and became great friends. And he brought in Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper.
This was in 1988, okay, I'm eight years old in the third grade. Up until that time, my older aunts, my father's younger sisters, my uncle Bobby, my father's younger brother, they went to put me onto Big Daddy Kane or Boogie Down Productions. But I'm thinking, "I can't relate to that, I'm a kid." I can't relate to Slick Rick talking about these sexual exploits, I didn't know what's going on. But Jazz Jeff and the Fresh Prince was talking about school shopping and watching Nightmare on Elm Street, but the production on that album is amazing. And the thing about it is, that album brought me into hip-hop and it was not only the album being great, but that was the first time hip-hop became my identity. I saw myself as different in the environment that I was in, and I was like, "This is my music, it's not their music."
I went to junior high school back in a very diverse part of the city. But then I went to high school in New Hampshire. And then New Hampshire was another example of me having to leave where I'm from, to get a better education. As a kid, there were these times when I had to leave where I was from to my academic betterment. When those things would happen, hip-hop was something that made me feel connected. I would be up in New Hampshire, and I'd be like, "Dang, I'm so corny. Everybody's in New York having mad fun. I'ma listen to Ill Al Scratch. I'm gonna feel like I'm home." Was that telling me what home was, or was that actually what home was? But that's when hip-hop really solidified for me.
I do love the art form and I do love the craft, but a lot of it was identity when I first began. I identified that this is my stuff, these are my folks, these are my people, you know what I mean? If anybody were want to get into rap now, I would give them that tape and I would show them that this is a cat that was one of the best rappers out at that time. I lived in Philly for four years, hosted open mics, heard stories about the Fresh Prince and how cats used to try to clown him because he was smiling and having fun. He would say, "Oh, yeah, you want to rap?" And he would shut cats down rapping. I think that was a big influence on me and the style I try to have. I want to keep it love and I want to keep having fun. But if you think you can rap with me, you know you got a better chance straightening out Porky Pig's tail. So I would give people that tape to show them rap is about being able to rap, and the Fresh Prince knew that.
Homeboy Sandman, thank you so much for this! Really looking forward to everything that's down the pipeline. Is there anything else you want to add, reflect on, shout out, or anything you're looking forward to for the next few weeks?
Peace and love! Thanks so much for taking the time to help spread the word. I do got the Patreon, we have a lot of fun on there. patreon.com, Homeboy Sandman. And I do got the email lists. I don't be online that much, but if you want to be on the email list, just email homeboysandman@gmail.com. Say, "I want to be on the email list." And we got all types of fun we be having that I be disseminating through that. But beyond that, yeah, just good looking out.