Guest Edit #53: Homeboy Sandman

Peace and love ya'll my name is Homeboy Sandman.

I'm an emcee from Queens. I gets crazy bizzy with mines and can't nobody in the whole world rhyme like me. It's pretty bizarre and uncommon how I get down. It'll take you like 4 seconds of listening to recognize. If that. Like Stevie Wonder, like Beethoven, like Miles Davis, that's the class of musicians I'm in. There's not too many of us. This is that hip hop they'll be talking about in 500 years. "Subject:Matter," just came out. "Chimera" just just came out. "First of a Living Breed" dropping this summer.

Check check it out. Peace and love.

Track
Artist: D'Angelo Track: The Root Release: January 2000 Label: Virgin Records

This is my favorite D'Angelo track. This song is what it must feel like to be completely obsessed with a woman, to just be putty in her hands, to just be powerless to her. "In the name of love and war, took my shield and sword/ from the pit of the bottom, that knows no floor." Damn son. I was going through it with my college sweetheart at that time but we were still in off-and-on mode, so we'd hate each other and I'd feel dead and then the next day we'd make passionate love and I'd feel alive, but I knew that she could break me at anytime. I used to hear this song in my head while we were in bed even when I hadn't put it on. Hearing it today makes me close my eyes and rock back and forth. This cat D'Angelo had so much soul I wonder what happened to this cat.

Album
Artist: Jude Swift Album: Music For Your Neighborhood Release: October 1989 Label: Nova Records

I grew up listening to this album. It was one of my father's favorites. I'm not particularly studied when it comes to jazz singers, but Jude Swift has gotta be among the greats. This album only had 9 cuts, and the last one is a cover of Lover Man, (which I know is a cover even though I can't remember who else sang it before Jude, but I just remember already knowing the words when I first heard it), but that doesn't even matter. It's like Illmatic. The title track has a magnificent bassline when the hook comes in. It also has a stellar obligatory '80s saxophone solo. It makes me feel like home. Heaven says, "what do you think you'll find there? If it's not what you thought/ Is it a marketplace, where souls are sold and bought?" Deep ish son, but so jazzy and so smooth and so light. Damn this album was dope I wish I could listen to it right now. I can write a sentence on every song this album has, but the last one I'll say anything about is Your Silence, which I just for the first time realized is about a relationship with communication issues. My sister and I used to run to this track back and sing along with it and squeeze our fists and raise them above our head just to convey the emotion it welled up within us, the feeling in the track. It's not just nostalgia people trust me. Check it out. Aight one more. Cold would make a ill hip hop remake. I gotta get on that.

Video
Artist: The Roots Track: Clones Release: September 24, 1996 Label: Geffen Records

I just found out that Illadelph Halflife - an album without which I would not be the man I am today - dropped on my 16th birthday. Eerie. Aight is this video particularly groundbreaking? Nah. But 2 things make it definitively noteworthy. For one you got Black Thought, my favorite emcee of all time, rocking one of them Vietnamese rice field hats. But as if that wasn't enough, then you got the way he starts swinging the mic over his head like a gladiator swinging one of them medieval numbers with the metal ball with all the spikes on it attached to the chain. This is singularly the dopest physical maneuver an emcee has ever executed. It gives you a glimpse into the mind of his genius that it even occurs to him to do that. Damn I wanna bite that shit so bad.

Homeboy Sandman Playlist

1. Minnie Ripperton - Inside My Love
2. Camp Lo - Sparkle It (Mr. Midnight Mix)
3. Michael Jackson - Lady in My Life
4. Common - New Wave
5. Core Rhythm ft. Rabbi Darkside - Ex Patriotism
6. DangerDoom - Crosshairs
7. I Am Many - Cyn
8. The Doobie Brothers - What A Fool Believes
9. J-Live - Don't Play
10. Amel Larrieux - Down
11. YC the Cynic ft. P.SO and 8th W1 - Fall Forward
12. GZA - Fame
13. Jose Feliciano - Golden Lady
14. Prince - She's Always In My Hair
15. De La Soul - Jenifa Taught Me (Derwin's Revenge)
16. Avenged Sevenfold - Bat Country
17. L.L. Cool J - Milky Cereal
18. L.L. Cool J - It Gets No Rougher
19. Jay Dee (J. Dilla) - Rico Suave Bossa Nova
20. John Robinson - Rapsploitation

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