Hip hop’s journalist is back. Thanks goodness.
Sole released a free album/mixtape titled Nuclear Winter Vol. 2 via Portland based Circle Into Square records.
It’s been awhile since I’ve listened to anything honest and informative. “Rap for rappers who read the news” as he calls it.
Sole’s music has always been heavily based on history and politics, but he’s developed a new style that will help make his music more accessible to a larger audience.
The album features B. Dolan, Mac Lethal, Luckyiam, and Busdriver amongst others remixing various pop tracks released throughout this last year.
This will be an introduction to Sole’s music for many people, but Sole is actually one of the pioneers of independent hip hop.
On July 19th he will be release his album with The Skyrider Band called Hello Cruel World, featuring Sage Francis and Lil’ B.
If you haven’t had the opportunity, make sure you visit www.circleintosquare.com. They do a great job providing a steady stream of new content and free music downloads. They are honestly ahead of their time with a lot of the things they are doing.
I had the chance to chat with Sole on the phone in March, just a few days after he released his “Donald Trump” video.
Viddy well, little brothers. Viddy well.
How’s life been?
To be honest I’m kind of in shock right now. Things are going really well man. Life is hard, its good when hard work begins to pay off.
I know that you were one of the first people in the independent hip hop scene to really utilize the internet.
Totally.
I remember reading awhile back, that when you first started you actually developed handouts to help them promote. Almost giving them instructions.
Yeah, it was call the Anticon Bible. I will say though that my internet hustle definitely did not begin there. I actually ran an internet radio station when I was 16. Did you know that?
I did not know that.
For some reason Portland, Maine was a beta test site for cable modems back in ’96. For some reason we were one of three cities that were given that capability back then. This was back when the internet was really first starting. Because I was involved in hip-hop news groups, I had come across tape traders, and one of them was the president of an ISP and he was letting us do a real audio stream using his real audio servers. It was called TrueHipHop.com. It still exists.
But basically because I worked at the local radio station I knew how to contact record labels. It was us and 88HipHop that actually reported and was considered an actual radio station. That was how I got in touch with all of the underground stuff.
That was actually one of the first hip-hop message boards also.
And because our modus operandi was like Fat Beats is a monopoly, we love that music, we love Company Flow, but we’re only going to play music no one’s ever heard. And that’s why basically everyone started hating on us. Because they took that as a diss. Actually it wasn’t.
Then when you fast forward to when we launched Anticon we had a pretty good idea of how the internet worked and how willing fans are to help, especially when they know you are doing it yourself. People feel more invested in what you are doing.
So we created these Anticon Bibles. It was basically how to talk about the music, how to describe it, how to go into a record store to convince the buyer to pick up the stuff, how to go to a local hip hop show and hand out the sampler tapes we convinced the distributor to pay for. We just would break down all these things. So if people would say, “That’s not hip hop” we’d break down what to say.
I saw what we did actually was kind of empower these kids a little too much and it ended up causing as many problems as we were hoping to cut off.
What were some of the things you saw happening?
I’m not sure how long you’ve been following my music, but back in the day when people would talk shit about us they’d say, “They’re elitists. They don’t like hip hop.” Ya know? But really it was our fans who discovered us before they discovered like Rakim.
When someone says we love your music you don’t talk about bitches and bling. There’s something that kind of can make you uncomfortable when people say something like that because you can kind of sense a little racism sometimes. Whether they know it or not, most of the time it’s not but sometimes it is.
Yeah, I’ve heard statements like that and it can definitely make things awkward sometimes.
I was reading on your blog or it might have been on Twitter, but you were saying that you might be losing some of your European fan base this year but that your real fight was going to be in the states.
What did you mean by that?
Well, first of all. Anything I say on Twitter can be taken with a grain of salt, I’m probably just talking shit.
Gotcha, but it seemed like you were planning on focusing more on promoting in the states this year.
I made that decision when I was in Spain, we lived in Spain for a couple of years. Because I toured around America in the early 2000’s and nobody gave a fuck. All anybody wanted to see was underground hip hop that was packaged for them, or whatever. People just didn’t come to our shows. Touring was grueling and depressing at that time. But we’d go to Europe and all of our fans were these 30 year old anarchists and everywhere I’d go I was having conversations with these Europeans who were 17 and know more about world history than I ever could.
The culture is almost so superior to ours in almost every way except for work ethic. It was amazing to me, and I was like why would I want to tour America anymore? Nobody gives a fuck. I’m out of here.
And so we moved.
And then I started getting that Michael more at Conn complex, where I’m getting paid 3000 Euros to talk shit about America for an hour. And it just felt dirty.
And then the New Orleans shit happened and I’m like why am I in Spain right now. I want to be in America. That’s where the war needs to be waged. So I had an opportunity to tour with Sage and I took it and saved enough money to buy a house in Texas. So I moved back to America and set up shop and started reimagining myself and my art.
That’s why I wanted to be in America. If you really care about social issues and making an impact you have to reach the kids who think that Lupe Fiasco is the only person who has something to say. These kids might give a shit about what’s happening in the world but they’re just not exposed to the truth.
That’s really been a work in progress for me really since I started listening to folk music around the year 2000. I only feel like within the last year I’ve really found my voice in how to speak to Americans about what’s going on.
Very Cool. What year was it that you moved back?
It must have been 2005, maybe 2006. I don’t even know man. It must have been 2005. Whenever Katrina happened I was back a month later.
You had one line in the Donald Trump track that I really connected with, you say “Top one percenters turning our teachers into waiters.” Could you talk about that line a bit.
First of all, my wife is a teacher. When she moved here, it was pretty hard getting a job. She has a good job now. But when I got out of high school, I had no college education. I had done a 6-month internship at Blue Cross Blue Shield and learned mainframes, and lans, and some tech shit. I moved to California and at age 20 I was making $50,000 a year at Arthur D. Little consulting. I was in charge of Tech Support for 7 different offices. I ‘d show up like a scrub every day.
Even when I was living in Maine I remember getting paid $18 an hour to answer the phone, just simple customer service jobs. And $18 an hour is rich in 2011. That’s what I was making when I was 17, and that’s what everyone was making. So if you were white trash back then, you could still make good money if you were willing to work. But today, because all of those jobs have been outsourced to the Philippines, Indonesia, and India, and they have these voice recognition software where we don’t even need workers anymore.
People don’t realize that nothing happens without a struggle.
What are some steps you think you can take as an artist to create a difference?
To be honest, I don’t think i can make a difference.
I’m heavily influenced by the Situationist Movement in France in the 60’s. Their basic idea is that you have to create situations. You have to intervene in the spectacle. you have to intervene in the media. You have to have these interventions that are like these moments of clarity. And that is a form of activism, it’s a cheap form of activism, but its activism.
My basic idea is that if art doesn’t choose to inform, it’s useless to me. I understand that people have love lives and they like to talk about that, but I don’t care about that. I never have. I think that what John Lennon did, what Bob Dylan did, what Woody Guthrie did, what Pete Seeger did, that’s what people should be doing.
It’s that field of dreams shit. “If you build it they will come.” If you throw enough lines out in the sea you will eventually start meeting people you can build with. I want to put together a compilation for Democracy Now to help put some more money in their pocket. Because I feel that’s the best activist tool there is, that radio show.
I feel it’s tough to get a mass movement going in America. Because people are working like 30 hours a day, and their dumb to begin with and lazy and scared. So its going to take a lot of fucking work to get these people motivated to take their fucking country back.