Homeboy Sandman The Good Sun arrives June 1st.
Interview below.
L.A. Times: Your song “Yeah, But I Can Rhyme Though” defines you in opposition to what you're not. Has it been frustrating to be an artist in a genre where most people want to fit into a prevailing trend to get a deal?
Homeboy Sandman: I’m a musician, and hip-hop is my genre, but it’s just like jazz players, or country singers or a classical artist. It’s about musicality, talent, rhyme cadence, melody, assonance, alliteration, it’s about the gift I have. Music should have nothing to do with an image; what sets me apart is my ability. Nobody asked John Coltrane what his image was -- it didn’t matter. No one could play the sax like him and nobody raps like me. I make my music to last a lifetime. I love going back to the Roots’ “Illadelph Halflife.” I love music from the 1950s and 1960s. This whole sub-culture in hip-hop of disposable music is not something that I subscribe to. I spend time on my music. There’s no 15/16 in my bars. I spend time on my lines, the production and the craft.
L.A. Times: As someone who is obviously about the lyrical craft, what do you think about rappers who have made a point of stressing how their lyrics aren’t really important because they have swag or some other intangible?
Homeboy Sandman: People ask me if I’m a lyricist, but how can you be an emcee without being one? This isn’t supposed to be something that everyone can do -- when you take away from the musicality of it all, it becomes an image-based thing, and that’s something I’m so far removed from that you might as well ask me to speak about Dale Earnhardt. I don’t want to do things that have been done before.
Read the full interview here:
Los Angeles Times - Homeboy Sandman
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