Cochlear Implant

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I sat down (on the phone) with Sage Francis, here's what came out. (You'll note that I didn't completely transcribe my questions)

Sage Francis Interview

I was wondering if you could talk a bit about your journalism background.

Sage: I don't have much of a journalism background, I did go to college for it but it wasn't initially for it – it was just a major I ultimately chose in my last two years of college. And I did that because it was easy [laughs]. All of my energy and focus was outside of class at that point. I was doing the radio stuff and it was an easy way to breeze through classes, which I know sounds really wack – especially when you're paying for classes. It is just one of those stupid things I had to do, but I was really interested in it too. What I really wanted to do was music journalism. If I had to get a job – I had to get a real job, in the real job market - I would have wanted to get a job at The Source Magazine or fuckin' Rap Pages – some magazine I read as a kid. But that never panned out, obviously.

When guys like me interview you, do you see a lot of flaws:

Interviews are different, I mean, I tried my hand at interviews when I was on my radio show and I tried having a couple of interviews on my radio show a while back, but I turned out to be quite an awful interviewer. So, I can never fault anyone for doing an interview. I guess my one gripe is that people do ask the same question over and over again, so I am forced to either give stock answers or come up with lies that interest me and don't sound completely fake.

What aren't music journalists doing?

Music journalists aren't writing well. There aren't a lot of music journalists that are actually doing a lot of writing. They're doing a lot of re-posting of press statements and re-posting of blogs. Press agents, publicists and artists – I am speaking from personal experience here – will write a full on bio or a break down of an album and it will just be rehashed or re-written or even copied on other sites. A lot of music journalism has been confined to to websites. One thing I can't fault Pitchfork for is that they have original writing. I mean, I have a lot of gripes with them, but I like reading their stuff whether they're trashing me or praising me. I just like reading their stuff – they're very masturbatory with their language. They jerk off while they write, taking out their thesaurus: 'what word has never been used in the past ten years?' and then they use it and make me go to the dictionary and look it up.

On Cadence Weapon:

That dude's multi-talented, he's the national treasure. Isn't he poet laureate?

Edmonton:

Yeah, that whole tour is such a blur to me. I didn't know where the fuck I was half the time – I was stowed away. They (the other bands) didn't even know I was on tour, I was hiding in one of the bunkers. They didn't know I was part of the tour, I just snuck on.

On Rise Against Tour:

People weren't there to see me, obviously and that leaves me with an interesting opportunity. I could either totally take the crowd by surprise and they'll go home and remember, or I will do something that they will hate and they'll remember. So it was good for me – I was happy to have that opportunity. However, playing arena shows – playing inside of these massive, massive spaces was not enjoyable. It is not what I want to do with my life. I don't want to get some large that I end up playing those huge shows. I mean the money's there, but that is not how I perceive performance art to be. It's definitely many degrees separated with any intimacy you can have with a crowd.

If you can put on the journalist hat for a second, what would you describe your hip-hop career like?

I'm like the fuckin' Sarah Palin of hip-hop, man – I'm a fucking maverick and I'm totally a milf. I play by my own rules and that may have stopped me from being the next Eminem, but I'm really fucking happy with where I'm at. If I was a journalist I would like to explain how that was [becoming an Eminem] was even possible when I came up. These days it's almost impossible for various reasons. In fact, I think that would be a great angle for an in-depth story: just talking about how the independent scene in hip-hop had a lot more potential back when I started because of the internet, on both sides of the spectrum. It was both possible for artists to blow up early on because of the internet, and and now it's impossible for dude's to blow up because of the internet.

Go on....

Well, early on – and this is before people were so content and, let's put it this way, they bought music – people would support the artists, however, in ten years time, people are finding out about artists but they aren't supporting the artists because they grew up downloading music. Artists aren't able to build any type of business – any type of empire – they really are just fighting for scraps week after week. The music becomes more and more disposable because you release an MP3 and then you have to release another one a week later because of this type of mentality. It's like 'what's new for my iTunes playlist?'. Adjusting to the new paradigm has been frustrating and challenging: here I am trying to run a record label and break artists that deserve to be heard, who deserve respect and deserve to be supported, but a lot of people just sort of gave up and said 'well, music is free'. And there's no way we can change it. I'm just gonna keep talking about it but it's not going to change anything. I guess we fucked up, whaddya gonna do about it?

How did you fuck up?

We fucked up – as listeners and as artists – by over saturating ourselves. Music became very disposable. The craft kind of went away. I am not a huge fan of regulations or anything, but maybe if music piracy was hit earlier it could be a better situation now. I really don't know – I mean, I have no fucking idea. Here we are in 2010 with people having a very difficult time living off of their music, whereas earlier on we were lucky. I was kind of lucky because I established myself when people were actually still buying music. I was able to use my money – spend more money, to make more money – in order to build my business to record quality albums, and kind of raise my status within the music industry to get coverage, etc. A lot of kids – new rappers – aren't even able to get booking agents interested because agents outside of their city don't really want to book them because they aren't really known outside of their city. There are no sales to back up claims.

The whole idea of punk rock sort of transferred into hip-hop and you can see a lot of parallels there. [Brett Guerewitz, Epitaph, Anti]

Yeah, there are tonnes of parallels and I'm glad that Brett saw that [Andy Kaulkin, President of Epitaph].

What turns has hip-hop taken over the years, you've implied. Your tastes are so eclectic – that comes through especially with your new album – why is that important? Why is it relevant?

I don't know. My music is not a sign of hip-hop, it's just a sign of what can be done with hip hop; a possibility. I am a possibility of hip-hop. I am a certain potential of hip-hop – even to the point where people will even question if I am hip-hop and that makes sense to me. I used to get kind of bugged if people would push me out of the hip-hop genre and be like 'naw, that's not hip-hop' and i was like 'i was inspired by hip hop, everything I do is from hip-hop. If it's not hip-hop, what the fuck is it?'. And they'd create new genres to dismiss me or tear me down somehow. Every time they'd come up with a new term – like nerd-rap, backpacker rap, or whatever – it would be anything other than hip-hop and I'd get mad at that, but now even though there is no term that encapsulates the kind of stuff that I make, I'm okay with it being called anything. A lot of the stuff I've made up to this point is in a different class, not to say that it's in a better class, it's just a different class. It's just different. I put a lot of work into it, I put a lot of my experience into it and a lot of people relate to it and others feel that it isn't what they want out of hip-hop. And I'm still having a hard time trying to figure out why people would trip over what I'm doing.

Some people might say that this isn't anything like what you were doing around Personal Journals....

Oh yeah, but if I was still making that album 10-years later, they'd be fucking 'Ahh, it's the same old shit.' What is most important is that I followed my own impulses. If I paid attention to what I thought people wanted to hear out of me, it would sound false and I wouldn't enjoy it as much as I do.

Eminem:

Eminem's career was developed, he was kind of manufactured and there were a lot of us back there who were so desperate and there were a lot of talented cats. A lot of people want to say Eminem is 'The Best' but there were a lot of people who could have been in the same position he is now with the right manufacturing and career push – just the gloss and sheen that he had. And obviously the dude is multi-talented. He has impressive skills that are original and unique, but when he came out there was a lot of that. There was an electricity in the scene. I wouldn't even put it past myself – there were points in my life where I just knew I didn't want to go unheard, and I'd do anything it takes to just get out there. And if it had come about where someone saw that they had the chance to mold me and turn me into a sellable artist on a grand scale I probably would have submitted to that – especially if it was fucking Dr. Dre or some other legendary. When you're sleeping on a floor every night, you're willing to make those concessions. I'm just truly happy that the decisions that I made, every move that I made, every step that I took – whether I learned it the hard way, or I was lucky enough the first time – that from bottom to top I created my career, I created myself and was in control the whole way. I never made a concession, and I'm really proud of that – I feel really content in that.

All I can say is the best thing about Edmonton is Cadence Weapon. We were in the cold frozen tundra of Canada the whole time – I just got out the bus, played my set and sold my merch – this time I'm coming in a van, so I'll get to check out the culture a bit more.

Enjoy 'The Best of Times', which was the easily the highlight of his Edmonton stop.