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Some years ago Aotearoa hip hop heavyweight David Dallas was interviewed on RNZ, and spoke about the way it wasn’t strictly a younger person’s genre anymore. New York MC Homeboy Sandman isn’t that advanced in age - he’s 42 - but his recent music did remind me of Dallas’ quote, in that it’s reflective and mostly free of braggadocio.
As someone of a similar age, I empathise with Homeboy Sandman finishing that song with the line “Things are gonna be fine”. There’s a certain ambivalence about it that’s miles away from his earlier work, when he sounded much hungrier, and more urgent.
Recent releases have sounded less and less like someone gunning for victory, and more like he simply wants to collect his thoughts as they happen. His last album contained twelve Christmas songs - one for each day - and was similarly off the cuff. Growing content can be the death knell for certain artists, but it suits him well.
Even the vocal sound is extremely unpolished, like he picked up a mic and went with it, and I think that’s intentional. As much as anything these sound like muttered diary entries.
In that track Sandman even addresses the listener, saying “Thanks for choosing to press play”.
In 2018 he lured the notoriously reclusive producer Edan out of retirement for an EP called Humble Pi, layering guttural rhymes over the beatmaker’s psychedelic splicing.
Here he teams with New York producer Mono En Stereo, who favours old-school soul samples and a more traditional approach. His loops are expertly selected and usually amiable, suiting Sandman’s laidback flow.
‘Then We Broke Up’ ups the pace somewhat, sounding like a 70s cop show - and that weirdly suits the subject, as Sandman talks about a past relationship with fondness and no animosity.
It almost feels like the soundtrack to a heist, where what was stolen was the two protagonist’s time together.
After rapping about overnight oats, avocado toast and cute dogs on that one, the following track ‘Nevermind Pt 2’ gets more confrontational in its delivery, as Sandman drops the revealing line “True expression is more important than being understood”.
I mostly like the bombastic background chanting and drum fills.
Rich often reminds me of 90s-era hip-hop, and that’s definitely part of the appeal, but it’s Homeboy Sandman’s stream-of-consciousness flow that I find so mesmerising, and the way his style changes to suit the track.
‘Crazy’ has him freewheeling about seemingly trivial stuff like supermarket brands and food types, over a crisp bassline and flute samples, but the approach is such that it feels like he’s confiding in you, and I can’t help but listen closely.
