Quannum: Solesides - Slap January 1995
This month we start our series of posse showcases. Instead of one group, we’ll tell you about a whole collective. Our first installation features SoleSides, from the unlikely location of Davis, Ca. Long known in the underground, SoleSides’ DJ Shadow has done remixes and singles for Hollywood Basic and Mo’ Wax. It turns out he had a whole crew hidden up there in Davis – writers, MCs, and DJs – all with original unique styles that come from experimentation, dedication, and love for the art. SoleSides is finally beginning to get the recognition they deserve, so check out this crew of college radio refugees and learn how the new generation of hip-hop sounds…
The Players:
The Gift of Gab: MC for Blackalicious, a group within the collective crew called SoleSides.
Jazzbo: Journalist, label promotions.
Chief Xcel: DJ for Blackalicious, also does the beats.
Lateef, the Dread Piper: an MC, never documented photographically.
Asia Born: MC, self described "half a producer."
DJ Shadow: Born and raised in Davis.
Benj: an MC on the come up.
DJ Zen: hip-hop guru figure, writer.
How did SoleSides get together?
Shadow: We all met at KDVS, which is the college station in Davis. Zen was a DJ there with a hip-hop show. I went down, met Zen, and then a few months later, met Asia and Xcel when they were rifling through all the records looking for beats.
Jazzbo: We all had the same philosophy about music. We had the same mental state when it came to listening to hip-hop.
Zen: All these people were working on their different things in different areas, developing a very unique kind of sound individually. They would all come in separately, play tapes, and I’d just be blown away. I was like, "Yo, y’all just need to get together," ‘cause they were all coming in and hanging out during the show and becoming really good friends anyway, but they had never talked about their own music. After a few months everybody felt comfortable working with each other. We were sitting around going, "You know, we really ought to do a record company. Wouldn’t that be a dope thing?" By that time I was moving to L.A., and they were just like "We got some records here. We want to put this out." Everybody put in money, we pressed the records and went out and hustled it.
How many people are in SoleSides?
Asia: We have eight members total, everybody pulls their weight on good days. We have four rhymers: myself, Benj, Lateef and A Gift of Gab. We have two and a half producers, Chief Xcel, DJ Shadow and me, I’m the half. And then we have the business team, who are at every show. They’re the ones that are in the back shaking everybody’s hands. That would be the man, DJ Zen, who’s kinda like our mentor, our spiritual leader. And then we have Jazzbo who’s kind of like our towel boy, and Benj. They help us with the business end.
People don’t usually think of Davis as a hip-hop Mecca.
Shadow: The fact that there’s nothing going on means that there’s no pressure. It means that you’re able to do what you can do without anybody telling you that it’s wrong. It’s kinda like an island without that hip-hop pressure that’s so prevalent in every big city: "This is our sound and if you don’t live up to this sound, then we don’t wanna know about you." If you don’t have to worry about anything like that, you can just do your original thing.
Xcel: Each of us within SoleSides has a distinct background, something that we bring. How is it that you get something original coming from a place that is not "metropolitan?" It’s these influences that we bring.
What would you say is the ultimate goal for SoleSides?
Asia: For myself, I would like to keep making records that express our individuality, not only as a group, but as members, and just kinda keep exploring alternate routes, keep tryin’ to blaze our own collective trail and our individual trails as well.
Jazzbo: We want to revolutionize music, both from a musical standpoint and a business standpoint.
Xcel: This is one of the first times that you have a label that is really run by the artist. Everything is done with the artist in mind. The agendas on certain projects, the funding or whatever, all the business stuff, it’s all artist centered. We always wanna be in a position where any artist on this label can do what he wants at any time.
It’s almost a punk rock philosophy…Jazzbo: Exactly. It’s like Fugazi and Dischord. Ian MacKaye started Dischord to put out his own music. I really admire how he handles his business. How many industry people are gonna be open to Shadow doing a thirty minute song like he just finished from Mo’ Wax? How many people are gonna be open to a thirty minute hip-hop composition? They’re gonna want that shit four and half minutes with choruses, a dance beat behind it and production by so-and-so.
Zen: That’s exactly it. Hip-hop and punk came up at the same time, mid-seventies, underground movements and that type of thing, and punk really blew up and took off quicker than hip-hop did for a lot of reasons. The interesting thing about punk was this do-it-yourself attitude. I got music, I can play three chords, fuck it, I’m gonna make a 45. Hip-hop’s never developed that type of independence in terms of actual musicians or bands running their own shit. However, in the Bay Area there’s really this do-it-yourself kind of attitude developing. You got E-40, you have Murder One records out of East Palo Alto, you have a lot of these so-called hardcore, gangsta rappers. I hate the term gangsta rap, but you have those kinds of folks that actually are putting it out on the street level. You don’t really have acts that are looking at it from a skills point of view going and putting out records. We have more of a college radio type of hip-hop, stuff that’s been supported mostly by major labels. Hopefully, if we do it right, and if we’re successful at it, it would open up a whole new way of doing business in the hip-hop arena. It’s kind of grand, it’s kind of ambitious, and we’re making hella mistakes, but I tell people, go on and start your own business, make music that’ll change people and do business that’ll change the way business is done. That’s the way we look at it.
Jazzbo: I do it because I have full faith in the music that we put out, whether it is Blackalicious or Shadow or Asia Born or Lateef or Benj, I have full faith in whatever we put out.
Is your crew expanding?Jazzbo: We probably won’t expand much because we’ve been here from the beginning, making this shit work. You see how Blackalicious is coming up, and this shit has been done from scratch. It isn’t even like we got a manager to hook up shows for us or we got a label that’s pulling some weight or whatever, we’re hooking this shit up from scratch, and I think that’s real important ‘cause you learn as you go along, and it makes your crew or your organization have more character and have more integrity in the long run.
Would you guys be open to the idea of putting out other people’s records?Benj: Oh, most definitely. Right now we’re just trying to hook ourselves up. Hopefully the label will take off and blow up to where we can have other artists get signed to our label.
Is your project scheduled, Benj?Benj: I’m still in the ground work. Hopefully spring ’95.
Musical influences?Gab: I’m just into experimental type things. Posdnuos, the Heavyweights down in L.A. like Mikah 9 and Aceyalone, Pharoahe Monch, Busta Rhymes, the fools with style.
Shadow: I look to the innovative producers. To me, it’s basically Prince Paul and Steinski who did all that shit way before anybody. And people that did cool things with samples, Large Professor, that type of thing.
Xcel: People like the 45 King, Prince Paul, I really look to people who made the sounds of today: Afirka Bambaataa and Jazzy jay. People I admire are the people who say, "I’m gonna do this and watch everybody else follow."
Asia: I don’t really draw all my inspiration just from hip-hop producers and hip-hop lyricists. In terms of lyrics, I like people like Ninja Man, Minnie Ripperton, Bounty Killer, G-Rap, KRS-One, Johnny Cash has lyrics on his new album, I peeped it, that’s a little revelation. These days, I’m sick of hearing good songs. I wanna hear some inspirational shit. Everybody can make a headnodder, make the beat – that’s been proven – I wanna hear stuff that just knocks me flat.
Shadow: A lot of inspiration comes from outside of hip-hop. The innovation in the last few years has come from things taken from outside of the hip-hop realm, such as jazz. You can get inspiration from any kind of art, whether it'’ painting or writing or movie making -–and interpret that inspiration musically.
Lateef: Lyrics are my thing, and I like people who put it all together and can give back to me in a way that I can use. Talk to me about how you feel when you go to work and how it feels when you’re walking home and you gotta catch the bus, talk to me about something like that. You can talk about how you can rip this MC’s head off, but unless you’re built like Hulk Hogan, you can’t really do that shit. Also, I like it when fools are really, really ill and come with some shit that’s just expanding what I think.
Whenever a great thinker comes along, it opens the pathways of consciousness. Anybody could’ve said what Malcolm X said, but since he said it, everybody can share those ideas with him. He opened doorways for other people. There are doorways that you can open any time, I like it when all of those doorways get opened real quick in different directions. That’s dope.
Tell me what you like to do outside of hip-hop and music.
Asia: To me, life is music. It’s going to sound corny, but some of the best lyricists and some of the best musicians in the world never even played music per se. It’s just all how they managed the variables around them and how they kind of coexist with everything. To me, that’s music.
Lateef: Well, it’s a trip for me, music does take up a lot of my time. It is to a certain extent, a reflection of the rest of the time that I spend. I like to kick it with my boys, I love to kick it with my family.
Gab: Other than music, get paid, get laid and kick it in the shade.
Shadow: I like to shop for records, and absorb all manners of art, from movies to books to television to anything where information is sent from one person to another, I like to observe that and try to use that in my own career.
Parting words?
Benj: yeah, I’d just like to say be on the lookout for SoleSides. I’m not bragging, but our stuff is tight. Just keep your eyes and ears opened for us, coming out strong.
This month we start our series of posse showcases. Instead of one group, we’ll tell you about a whole collective. Our first installation features SoleSides, from the unlikely location of Davis, Ca. Long known in the underground, SoleSides’ DJ Shadow has done remixes and singles for Hollywood Basic and Mo’ Wax. It turns out he had a whole crew hidden up there in Davis – writers, MCs, and DJs – all with original unique styles that come from experimentation, dedication, and love for the art. SoleSides is finally beginning to get the recognition they deserve, so check out this crew of college radio refugees and learn how the new generation of hip-hop sounds…
The Players:
The Gift of Gab: MC for Blackalicious, a group within the collective crew called SoleSides.
Jazzbo: Journalist, label promotions.
Chief Xcel: DJ for Blackalicious, also does the beats.
Lateef, the Dread Piper: an MC, never documented photographically.
Asia Born: MC, self described "half a producer."
DJ Shadow: Born and raised in Davis.
Benj: an MC on the come up.
DJ Zen: hip-hop guru figure, writer.
How did SoleSides get together?
Shadow: We all met at KDVS, which is the college station in Davis. Zen was a DJ there with a hip-hop show. I went down, met Zen, and then a few months later, met Asia and Xcel when they were rifling through all the records looking for beats.
Jazzbo: We all had the same philosophy about music. We had the same mental state when it came to listening to hip-hop.
Zen: All these people were working on their different things in different areas, developing a very unique kind of sound individually. They would all come in separately, play tapes, and I’d just be blown away. I was like, "Yo, y’all just need to get together," ‘cause they were all coming in and hanging out during the show and becoming really good friends anyway, but they had never talked about their own music. After a few months everybody felt comfortable working with each other. We were sitting around going, "You know, we really ought to do a record company. Wouldn’t that be a dope thing?" By that time I was moving to L.A., and they were just like "We got some records here. We want to put this out." Everybody put in money, we pressed the records and went out and hustled it.
How many people are in SoleSides?
Asia: We have eight members total, everybody pulls their weight on good days. We have four rhymers: myself, Benj, Lateef and A Gift of Gab. We have two and a half producers, Chief Xcel, DJ Shadow and me, I’m the half. And then we have the business team, who are at every show. They’re the ones that are in the back shaking everybody’s hands. That would be the man, DJ Zen, who’s kinda like our mentor, our spiritual leader. And then we have Jazzbo who’s kind of like our towel boy, and Benj. They help us with the business end.
People don’t usually think of Davis as a hip-hop Mecca.
Shadow: The fact that there’s nothing going on means that there’s no pressure. It means that you’re able to do what you can do without anybody telling you that it’s wrong. It’s kinda like an island without that hip-hop pressure that’s so prevalent in every big city: "This is our sound and if you don’t live up to this sound, then we don’t wanna know about you." If you don’t have to worry about anything like that, you can just do your original thing.
Xcel: Each of us within SoleSides has a distinct background, something that we bring. How is it that you get something original coming from a place that is not "metropolitan?" It’s these influences that we bring.
What would you say is the ultimate goal for SoleSides?
Asia: For myself, I would like to keep making records that express our individuality, not only as a group, but as members, and just kinda keep exploring alternate routes, keep tryin’ to blaze our own collective trail and our individual trails as well.
Jazzbo: We want to revolutionize music, both from a musical standpoint and a business standpoint.
Xcel: This is one of the first times that you have a label that is really run by the artist. Everything is done with the artist in mind. The agendas on certain projects, the funding or whatever, all the business stuff, it’s all artist centered. We always wanna be in a position where any artist on this label can do what he wants at any time.
It’s almost a punk rock philosophy…Jazzbo: Exactly. It’s like Fugazi and Dischord. Ian MacKaye started Dischord to put out his own music. I really admire how he handles his business. How many industry people are gonna be open to Shadow doing a thirty minute song like he just finished from Mo’ Wax? How many people are gonna be open to a thirty minute hip-hop composition? They’re gonna want that shit four and half minutes with choruses, a dance beat behind it and production by so-and-so.
Zen: That’s exactly it. Hip-hop and punk came up at the same time, mid-seventies, underground movements and that type of thing, and punk really blew up and took off quicker than hip-hop did for a lot of reasons. The interesting thing about punk was this do-it-yourself attitude. I got music, I can play three chords, fuck it, I’m gonna make a 45. Hip-hop’s never developed that type of independence in terms of actual musicians or bands running their own shit. However, in the Bay Area there’s really this do-it-yourself kind of attitude developing. You got E-40, you have Murder One records out of East Palo Alto, you have a lot of these so-called hardcore, gangsta rappers. I hate the term gangsta rap, but you have those kinds of folks that actually are putting it out on the street level. You don’t really have acts that are looking at it from a skills point of view going and putting out records. We have more of a college radio type of hip-hop, stuff that’s been supported mostly by major labels. Hopefully, if we do it right, and if we’re successful at it, it would open up a whole new way of doing business in the hip-hop arena. It’s kind of grand, it’s kind of ambitious, and we’re making hella mistakes, but I tell people, go on and start your own business, make music that’ll change people and do business that’ll change the way business is done. That’s the way we look at it.
Jazzbo: I do it because I have full faith in the music that we put out, whether it is Blackalicious or Shadow or Asia Born or Lateef or Benj, I have full faith in whatever we put out.
Is your crew expanding?Jazzbo: We probably won’t expand much because we’ve been here from the beginning, making this shit work. You see how Blackalicious is coming up, and this shit has been done from scratch. It isn’t even like we got a manager to hook up shows for us or we got a label that’s pulling some weight or whatever, we’re hooking this shit up from scratch, and I think that’s real important ‘cause you learn as you go along, and it makes your crew or your organization have more character and have more integrity in the long run.
Would you guys be open to the idea of putting out other people’s records?Benj: Oh, most definitely. Right now we’re just trying to hook ourselves up. Hopefully the label will take off and blow up to where we can have other artists get signed to our label.
Is your project scheduled, Benj?Benj: I’m still in the ground work. Hopefully spring ’95.
Musical influences?Gab: I’m just into experimental type things. Posdnuos, the Heavyweights down in L.A. like Mikah 9 and Aceyalone, Pharoahe Monch, Busta Rhymes, the fools with style.
Shadow: I look to the innovative producers. To me, it’s basically Prince Paul and Steinski who did all that shit way before anybody. And people that did cool things with samples, Large Professor, that type of thing.
Xcel: People like the 45 King, Prince Paul, I really look to people who made the sounds of today: Afirka Bambaataa and Jazzy jay. People I admire are the people who say, "I’m gonna do this and watch everybody else follow."
Asia: I don’t really draw all my inspiration just from hip-hop producers and hip-hop lyricists. In terms of lyrics, I like people like Ninja Man, Minnie Ripperton, Bounty Killer, G-Rap, KRS-One, Johnny Cash has lyrics on his new album, I peeped it, that’s a little revelation. These days, I’m sick of hearing good songs. I wanna hear some inspirational shit. Everybody can make a headnodder, make the beat – that’s been proven – I wanna hear stuff that just knocks me flat.
Shadow: A lot of inspiration comes from outside of hip-hop. The innovation in the last few years has come from things taken from outside of the hip-hop realm, such as jazz. You can get inspiration from any kind of art, whether it'’ painting or writing or movie making -–and interpret that inspiration musically.
Lateef: Lyrics are my thing, and I like people who put it all together and can give back to me in a way that I can use. Talk to me about how you feel when you go to work and how it feels when you’re walking home and you gotta catch the bus, talk to me about something like that. You can talk about how you can rip this MC’s head off, but unless you’re built like Hulk Hogan, you can’t really do that shit. Also, I like it when fools are really, really ill and come with some shit that’s just expanding what I think.
Whenever a great thinker comes along, it opens the pathways of consciousness. Anybody could’ve said what Malcolm X said, but since he said it, everybody can share those ideas with him. He opened doorways for other people. There are doorways that you can open any time, I like it when all of those doorways get opened real quick in different directions. That’s dope.
Tell me what you like to do outside of hip-hop and music.
Asia: To me, life is music. It’s going to sound corny, but some of the best lyricists and some of the best musicians in the world never even played music per se. It’s just all how they managed the variables around them and how they kind of coexist with everything. To me, that’s music.
Lateef: Well, it’s a trip for me, music does take up a lot of my time. It is to a certain extent, a reflection of the rest of the time that I spend. I like to kick it with my boys, I love to kick it with my family.
Gab: Other than music, get paid, get laid and kick it in the shade.
Shadow: I like to shop for records, and absorb all manners of art, from movies to books to television to anything where information is sent from one person to another, I like to observe that and try to use that in my own career.
Parting words?
Benj: yeah, I’d just like to say be on the lookout for SoleSides. I’m not bragging, but our stuff is tight. Just keep your eyes and ears opened for us, coming out strong.