SXSW Showcase: J*DaVeY, Blu, Pac Div, Homeboy Sandman & More!

SXSW showcase with J*DaVeY, Blu, Pac Div, Homeboy Sandman, Tanya Morgan, Stalley and more in Austin, TX, sponsored by Move Forward Music and Fusicology.

Homeboy Sandman Los Angeles Times Feature Interview

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