| A Conversation with Sage Francis at Rock the Bells…
- by Numerous
Numerous: How was your show today? How do you think you did?
Sage: I don’t think it was the greatest show of my life but it is the last musical show of mine after a three-month stint. It felt really good just to get it out and to cap everything off. This is the end, get to rest a little bit after this, talk some shit, see if the crowd can follow and have fun, that’s it. That’s pretty much all it boiled down to. I let them make some noise, get rowdy but I also gave them some off kilter shit that they’re not used to at a hip-hop show. And that is fun to do as long as you don’t totally lose everybody.
Numerous: So do you play the West Coast much?
Sage: Yea, in fact this is my fifth or sixth show in San Francisco in the past two months. I played a free show at Amoeba Records as an in-store and then I played back to back shows at the Fillmore, which we sold out two nights in a row and that was incredible. Then I played the Warfield, which was part of this tour that we played today and then I will be back in three weeks.
Numerous: But this is the last show right?
Sage: Yea, I go home and then I start the Spoken Word Tour in September and I will be playing Slims.
Numerous: Were you doing spoken word before you got into actually making lyrics?
Sage: Spoken word came in about ’96, ’97 when I really started to involve myself in the poetry scene and basically it was just an open mic. It was a venue for me to perform my material and I was really hungry, always looking for places to rap or perform and there were these poetry slams and people and crowds and my stuff just worked for that audience. So I jumped into it and did really well and made a name for myself. But there is only so far you can go with that. Even after a few years, its like been there, done that and no one is feeding you and I don’t think you’re not feeding anyone else. Everybody is just ripping each other off. It gets really fuckin’ lame after awhile. There are people who continue to elevate, but they are few and far between the masses. People figure out the formula and then they get the quickest reaction. They know what works and they stick to that and it gets real lame after that.
Numerous: What do you do to keep that bar constantly rising?
Sage: I don’t know what I do or unintentionally do. I just keep pushing myself in terms of what I write about and how I address certain topics. I’ve always kept the same standards for myself. I like stuff that has a catchiness to it, but at the same time I can’t operate on a surface level. It has to really be multiple levels happening within my work for me to be sure I am doing something worth people’s time. So if they are going to listen to an album of mine thirty times or so, on that thirtieth time I want something to click, and for them to be like shit I know what is going on there, that’s cool. But even if you don’t listen to it thirty times there has got to be enough catchiness so they’re still enjoying it and maybe they don’t know why, but they are like, yeah, that’s cool. That’s the game I play. I am still walkin’ the line. And I don’t know where it is going to go from here, but I’d love to do more live instrumentation stuff. The last album was half live instrumentation and half sampled beats. I am really about to go the whole way. My first CD was with a live band and that was really difficult and ever since then and working with sampled music, it just sounds great without a whole lot of effort. It’s about time to go back and fuck with that shit.
Numerous: I remember a long time ago, seeing one of your songs on a Punk-O-Rama, I saw one of your songs on there and that to me set a milestone of genres not being exclusive. What do you think about that? There are a lot of rock/hip-hop crossovers.
Sage: In the day of mp3s and free file sharing programs and people just listening to buttloads of music, people are open to a whole bunch of different stuff. Punk rock kids just don’t listen to punk rock. Hip-hop kids don’t just listen to hip-hop. If they do they are doing themselves a disservice because there is so much good music out there. You shouldn’t be so insecure in who you are that you are, afraid to experience or enjoy any other type of culture or music outside of what you deem to be a representation of who you are. Like I am so hip-hop, I don’t ever listen to rock. Or I am so indie-rock that whatever. I think that is being quickly washed away. And I remember when Epitaph put my Makeshift Patriot song on the Punk-O-Rama CD and there was a little bit of a backlash, people were pissed off. People were like there shouldn’t be hip-hop on this shit. And I kinda smirk at it because it doesn’t affect me. These guys obviously gonna check me out anyway. It was cool that Epitaph just took a chance, took a risk and put me on one of their CDs and it won me a lot of interesting new fans, people who wouldn’t normally hear my shit and they were open to it. I still that to this day that the first song they heard from me was on the Punk-O-Rama CD.
To be Continued in Issue #54…
To hear this interview check out myspace.com/YourMusicMagazine or myspace.com/SoulScienceRecords |
