Every day’s an act of regeneration.
Skateboard prankster turned auteur Spike Jonze once defined “director” to mean “idea protector” — the person charged with knowing the limits of compromise, past which point the essence of a concept is lost. At Pixar, the animation studio’s braintrust refers to its projects in progress as “ugly babies”: imperfect, worth nurturing, with a soul of its own that must not be tampered with. In our realm of music, as songs evolve from first-take [untitled] files to wip’s to demo-itis survivors that reach the public ear, artists have a million chances to tinker, adjust, swap samples, etc. An under-appreciated question concerns who we listen to at each step. Do the voices we consult sharpen or dull our point of view? This can include our own (an internal monologue corrupted by insecurity after a night spent mixing to the point of hallucination) or professionals (an A&R with the wrong motive) or friends who mean well.
Beyond, before, and within the music is the human — historically, anyway — who creates it. Like our songs, every aspect of life reflects conversations with ourselves and others (and art, and trauma, and material limits). A trillion inputs to heed, discard, learn from, fight against, bend to. Erosion laps at the heels of ideas, and the minds behind them, without an airtight center of gravity. Sanity greets those who make peace with a few cracks.
They say all you need is faith the size of a mustard seed; a kernel of optimism and trust left to fate, if not the chance to shape it with ambitions and gifts of our own. It’s easier said than done to keep the locomotive on track. Harder still to switch routes when familiar paths and habits (and human-made catastrophes) deflate the spirit. Much of what’s beautiful and brutal about our time on earth emerges from this kiln of choice, pressure, and constraint. It’s worth celebrating those who find ways to keep moving forward with their sense of self intact, their willpower fortified.
Two lyricists we love at Liner Notes, New York’s prolific og MC Homeboy Sandman and the New York-raised, LA-refined, Vegas-based force of nature GREGNWMN, know a thing or three about fortitude, the ingredients of resilience, art as discipline and discipline as art. Hip-hop has been a constant for both artists. The tradition they’ve upheld through adolescence and adulthood offers cause and effect: love for rap can encourage love for the rapper, much like awareness of lineage, however short or incomplete, can reaffirm our own sense of place and belonging. Read on for all-time genre selects and an earnest life survival guide discussion. Words by Siber, interview by GREGNWMN. We hope you enjoy :)
GREGNWMN: 22 projects, 20-plus years of expression, one pen with a high conversion rate. That's all you, bro.
Homeboy Sandman: I have 22 projects? I never counted them up, you probably right!
GN: I counted it yesterday, and that’s just what’s on Bandcamp.
HS: It’d be cool if it’s 22, because my lady was born on the 22nd and she likes that number. But yeah, if that’s just Bandcamp, there’s way more than that. [Laughs]
GN: What’s willpower mean to you?
HS: I think faith has a lot to do with willpower, through different obstacles and challenges. I look at it as a gift: the capability to persevere. When you need to call upon a lot of patience, discipline, focus. It’s this toolbelt that lets you keep going forward, even if you don’t know what the destination is. Trying to take it minute by minute and stay productive. It comes from that belief in self and in message, from integrity. Follow your bliss.
GN: Imagine a world where everyone had the integrity, the faith in self, and the social and spatial awareness to express a certain level of agenda. Right now there’s endless taglines: “believe in yourself,” do this, do that, but the iceberg is deep. Sometimes we have the stopping power to acquire depth, but the staying power of consistent depth, where do you draw that?
HS: I think God made the world the way it is, with all the trials and everything. I don’t know why God has made Herself so clear to me. I know God isn’t a man or a woman but everybody’s always saying “He” so I do a little affirmative action and say “Her.” [Laughs] That’s not to say I don’t struggle with anything, but even when I falter, I can return and give it another go. When I look around me and see folks giving up or stepping off, letting go of the dream, I see that lack of connection. People tell me I’m courageous with how I move, but if I didn’t believe in God I’d be scared to leave the house. It’s the people who don’t believe, those cats, that are brave. [Laughs]
GN: That’s it.
HS: Word up. I know I’m going to be fine. So what do I want to do? I want to make raps and make them my way. I don’t got to worry about nothing. It’s a personal relationship people have. People say God, universe, source energy, She, He, the creator, the most high. That’s a personal thing. The only thing I theorize is establish your source. From there it’s a lot of invincibility.
GN: The paradox of “ignorance is bliss” is that it’s a safety blanket some people do notice. They just decide if it’s optimal to keep the blanket on or not because it’s a crazy world. Other folks might feel a confidence in knowing they have a solid foundation and spring off it to various heights, trusting that some constant in this experiment we call life is always there. As long as we have a familiarity, we have something we can contrast with what’s unfamiliar. How does faith show itself in moments of uncertainty for you, when ‘won’t power’ takes the place of willpower?
HS: ‘Won’t power’ is very strong, as we all probably know. My strategy is practice makes perfect, you know? I look at decisions in a fear-versus-faith way. Maybe I’m on this planet to get to a place where I don’t feel fear anymore, day by day. It’s not a workless route. I don’t have easy answers. When you were just talking about how some people leave the blanket on and others pull it away — that foundation? I need to be able to return to it 100 times a day and know it’s real. I return to it when I walk into a group of people I’ve never met: “What would you do if you wasn’t afraid?” That’s what you do right here. When I’m discussing an opportunity for the dissemination of my music, or when I’m talking to my wife, or my sister, or when I’m driving, or if there’s a financial circumstance, I’m asking myself that question. I have to practice what I’d do without fear. That’s how the muscle grows. I believe experiential knowledge is true knowledge.
GN: Empirical results.
HS: It has to be repeatable. So when won’t power is fighting against me, I now have 15 years of “return to source, return to truth.” I can only imagine how it’ll be after 30. I’m excited about that. I used to hoop from when it got light to when it got dark, then I’d do it again. I hooped the other day for two hours and I still feel it. [Laughs] I’m not the spring chicken I once was physically, but this muscle up here? It gets stronger.
GN: So many artists are told they need to be a part of a certain ecosystem, produce a certain level of output, commit to a certain amount of face time and engagement. Especially for those who aren’t aware of their own limits, they’re being asked to put a lot of weight, emotionally, on a very light amount of reps within a condensed time period. Before they’ve done 100 micro-reps a day.
HS: You can depend on the foundation that gives you integrity, always. Shouts to anybody doing what they feel comfortable with. What I’m talking about is when people believe something because that’s what they’re told, despite how anxious or pressured or distracting it is for them. We have to cultivate what we want to charge the right batteries. People are so scared of what might happen that they never go there. Everyone tells me how they wish they didn’t have to be online. I tell them to get offline! “Well, I got to do it. If I don’t, nobody gon’ come to the shows, nobody gon’ care about the records.” They believe that’s true, but they never actually try it.
GN: I love this idea that there’s good stress and bad stress. It makes you consider what you allow into your life, and where you direct your faith. I think about mountain ranges and how we’re told to appreciate the peaks and valleys. We marvel at them, but it’s a violent, tectonic process that builds these things that we live on, that we’ve built life around. In a way, we’ve looked beyond that violence; we think everything should be peaceful, non-confrontational. But then we take that thought and go directly to the bad stress: “I have to keep the job, because if I push through this uncomfortability, comfort might meet me on the other side.”
HS: “Good stress” and “bad stress” make me think of creative tension. When you’re working toward something, or when you’re exercising — you can make the process fun, but it’s challenging! Easy answers are a dub. Don’t despair, just pick your pain. What is it that you’re going to work through? How are you going to work hard at that? Stress has this negative connotation, but we need tension to create the energy to achieve something. It goes back to faith or fear. Positive stress comes from doing things you want to do, versus doing things you don’t want to do to avoid what you don’t want. That second thing wastes a lot of time.
GN: We might think we’re going in a certain direction off our own volition, but it’s really a series of compounded pushes, as opposed to pulls. Being unfaithful to yourself is the easiest way to fall in line with what’s expected of you. In the context of your 22 projects, those max reps, at what point did you decide you played the music game enough, and it was time to step offline?
HS: Listening to you talk about push versus pull made me think about it mathematically. A line has an infinite amount of points on it. If you’re avoiding one of those points, you can wind up at infinite places. But if you’re zeroing in on one of those points, you’ll wind up at it or very close. I got offline in 2020, but I didn’t get online until 2016, which was late. By that I mean spending hours on my phone every day, talking to strangers, trying to promote my records. Using social media as a tool for my art. My intuition always told me, “This isn’t for you.” I was with a label at the time that was constantly urging me to get on top of it. At first, I was like, “Wow, how did anyone know about my records before this?” I post a thing, people comment on it, they know about it, they share the thing, I get tagged, it turns out other people know about the thing, etc.
GN: The original essence of hand-to-hand, in an online sense.
HS: You get that fulfillment! But it’s pseudo, in my experience. It wasn’t long before I’m checking the thing, seeing what cute chick hits me after a show. And soon enough I’m spending more time looking at what other people got going on than working on my own life. And then bad energies that would have never reached my consciousness are now seeping in on a regular basis. In 2020, it was clear the dependence of online interaction was going to heighten like crazy. Now, it feels more extreme. I was doing a tour back then, on the road in Europe when they started shutting things down that March. I told myself when I got back, I’d step offline. Stepped off for like a month. When I went online again in April or May, I felt this yuckiness I had become desensitized to when I was using it every day. It wasn’t contributing to my magic. I look around and I saw so many people behaving in a way where it’s like, yo, this person has a terrible problem. We need to have an intervention. How does anyone get anything done if we need to constantly return to zero? The mass distraction of fertile, rich, beautiful minds capable of creating things that could help so many people — it’s hypnosis. It’s hysteria. It derails us into feeling like this addiction matters more than the substance we’re really here to work with.
GN: You’re not missing out on anything when you’re focused on self and true community. The foundation, the micro-reps. So when I’m online watching other peoples’ stories, how am I supposed to have time to write my own? And when I write my own story, is my own story just a rehashing or a derivative of all these other stories I think are original, but are really just incepted?
HS: It’s bound to be! The subconscious is so powerful. We are going to absorb whatever inputs we take in, which is why it’s important to be vigilant about that, from films to books to the people we surround ourselves with. I hope to go into any environment powerful enough to impress love on the situation, rather than have nonlove imprinted upon me. That’s a goal.
GN: What’s your definition of validation?
HS: I want to share these things because they’re working for me and it’s helping, but I’m still practicing. People bring the internet to me all the time. They send me a screenshot of a tweet that says, “Homeboy Sandman gets busy.” I get a nice boost! But what I want is to make God smile. Not to personify God, because I don’t think God has a face. Who knows. But I want God to think, “Angel did a good job today,” with whatever tasks or challenges I’m given. I don’t want it to be cats thinking I’m nice on the mic. I love that and it’s wonderful, but it’s not what I need.
Growing up, I used to think about nonviolence like, no way. As kids, people talk about Martin and Malcolm. Both amazing brothers. One of them: nonviolent approach. The other one: “you come at me, I’m coming at you.” Me and everyone around me gravitated toward Malcolm at the time, not really recognizing the courage of nonviolence. Like, you’re going to take an L so you can maintain your dignity and not stoop down to their level.
GN: That’s good stress.
HS: Mos Def got the line, “This life is temporary but the soul is eternal / Separate the real from the lie, let me learn you.” It’s true. Take something as simple as knocking somebody out. People will say, “If somebody’s hitting you, and you don’t hit them back, that’s a fail.” No. That’s just a “I need everyone to know how tough I am” fail. A small fail. Hurting somebody is the big fail. So when people say, “Yo, Sand, if you put your videos out like this, you’ll get mad more views, and if you put your records out like that, you’ll get mad more attention,” thinking it’s success? That’s just a little life validation. God’s running the long game. So I ask myself: “Is this going to be the decision God’s happy with?” Not, “Is this going to bring me notoriety.” I’ve got a line on “Extinction”: “Is it better to be talented or famous? I admit to you I wish that I was both. But if I only could choose one to be my favorite? The answer’s talent and it isn’t even close.”
GN: I think for artists who want to add value and know how quick 100 years goes, there’s this urgency that comes with a survivalist mindset, and it creates the tension, the energy to sustain. A line of yours that stood out to me: “Those of y'all that know me, know what's absolutely crucial in my mind, is making sure I'm being useful with the time when it moves slowly.” Artists struggle with the idea of pace. It feels like the two options are risk burning out or get left behind.
HS: I’m holistic with mines. I don’t think there’s a bunch of separate compartments of my life. I’m one thing. I believe in miracles and magic and creative forces. What I’m saying will sound crazy to somebody that doesn’t have faith, but as long as I do what makes me happy, including the hard work and hardships, and listen to my intuition, everything is gonna work out. I’m here getting taught lessons by a God that’s trying to improve me. I’m given what I need. My contribution is keeping the faith and staying grounded in the reality that what comes to me is what’s best for me, and I should meet it with honor, to the best of my ability. I don’t even think about burn out. It’s all fraudulent. Everyone reading this right now, I believe you as an individual can shut that all out. Put it to the test. Everything I learned in school, every societal prompt in every film, it taught this mechanistic view of the world. Nah, there’s magic all over.
GN: I’m just moving in the direction I’m meant to move in, with a million reference points and dots of expression that are all just elements of who I am. So at any point of time, if anyone wants to engage with a version of me, I’m heading west, Book of Eli.
HS: Love Book of Eli.
GN: Is that required, to understand why I’m on the line I am? You once said, “If it was up to yall, I never would have heard Illadelph Halflife.”
HS: [Laughs] Word up kid. They tried to keep Halflife from me, kid! What kind of violence is that!
GN: It’s inhumane! How has hip-hop informed your perspective? You reference Yasiin and Black Thought, these artists who put a battery in your back to be the best version of yourself.
HS: I love how Q-Tip says, “I don’t really mind if it’s over your head / 'Cause the job of resurrectors is to wake up the dead.” I grew up listening to Phife say, “See my auras positive, I don’t promote no junk / See I’m far from a bully and I ain’t a punk.” Now I reference Joseph Campbell or Clarissa Pinkola Estés — like I love reading, but hip-hop came before that. I was at a school yesterday; I take opportunities to build with kids and try to be useful. When I was their age, before I realized I had no idea what I was talking about, I was listening to hip-hop music because it spoke to my soul and it moved me. This is the most lyric-intensive art form of all time: “I got to rhyme 16 bars, three verses long / that’s the output of a Beatles album in one song.” I listened to Mobb Deep, and I learned a lot of things I had to unlearn because they sent it to me in a positive format. The potency of hip-hop to transmit truth, I still regard as unmatched. I can listen to a classical record and feel emotions beyond words, but the way one talks to a friend, or one hears from an elder or a role model? It taught me so much. Conflicting things, but that’s part of being human. I feel grateful to grow up in a time where you have a spectrum — your Mos Defs, your Tribes, De La. I like writing essays, research pieces, articles, but I do it less and less because what tops the potency of an executed hip-hop record? That might be the pinnacle.
GN: Listen no further than “Dream Merchant.” For a lot of people, looking in the mirror means feeling like something’s omitted. Thinking about distant futures, a lot of your archives are going to be excavated. Thank you for sharing a small piece of your perspective.
HS: It’s been a pleasure communicating with you. We’ll chop it up again. Peace.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
GREGNWMN’s Selects
1. Lauren Hill: “Everything is Everything” (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill)
“Adjacent to the king, fear no human being, roll with the Cerubim’s to Nassau Coliseum, now hear this mixture where hip-hop meets scripture, develop a negative into a positive picture”
2. Sweet Tea: "It’s Like That Y’all" (It’s Tee Time)
“Nonchalant as I flaunt, the style I know you want, like a ghost in your mind it’s your conscience I haunt, when a rapper bring joy to every girl, every boy, don’t think I play games because my name is Toi”
3. Mos Def/Yasiin Bey: “Hip-Hop” (Black On Both Sides)
“Speech is my hammer, bang the world into shape now let it fall, my restlessness is my nemesis, it’s hard to really chill and sit still, committed to page, I write rhyme sometimes don’t finish for days, scrutinize the literature from the large to the miniature, I mathematically add-minister, subtract wack, selecta wheel-it-back, im feelin that!’
4. Lupe Fiasco: “Hurt Me Soul” (Food & Liquor)
“So through the grim reaper sickle-sharpening, Macintosh marketing, oil field auguring, Brazilian adolescent disarmament, Israeli occupation, Islamic martyrdom, precise (yeah), laser guided targeting, oil-for-food bartering, terrorist organization harboring, sand-camouflaged army men, CCF sponsoring, world conquering, telephone monitoring, Louie Vuitton modeling, pornographic actress honoring, String theory pondering, bulimic vomiting, Catholic Priest fondling, preemptive bombing, and Osama and Obama and nem’, they breaking in my car again, deforestation and over-logging and Hennessy and Hypnotiq swallowing, Hydroponic coughing and, all the world’s ills, sitting on chrome 24-inch wheels”
5. The Roots (Black Thought): “Ain’t Sayin Nothin New” (Things Fall Apart)
“Head lost, sippin’ this Lambic Framboise, spittin it for like whoever demand the answer, what’s the cure for this Hip-Hop cancer? Equivalent to th is avalanche of black snow, rap flow, to get my people thinkin’ mo’ we at the brink of war, what’s it all mean? What’s it all for?"
Homeboy Sandman’s Selects
1) E-Turn: “Hello World” (So Meta)
“Culture’s an overpromising conglomerate / hollow out the message but they never stop to honor it”
2) Art Morera: "B-Boy Bebop” (Avalon)
“Space shuttle looking like a crushed can of beer / shouldn’t have installed the chandelier till I landed here”
3) Spit Gemz: “Crime Gnosis” (Ninja Vanish)
“Every mind you come across is a potential lesson / so nevermind if love is lost, as long as you gain direction”
4) Moses Rockwell: “Duck Sauce” (Regular Henry Sessions)
"I’m cool with any criticism you write / I get busy despite / I ain’t the sentimental sensitive type”
5) Wavy Bagels: “San Juan”
“I don’t tell everybody that I make music, ‘cause everybody makes music, and I ain’t trying to make music with everybody”
