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Words: Bootleg Al In 1997, Tim Holland aka Sole and the Anticon collective founded one of the most influential labels of the past decade. Often described as the hip-hop equivalent to post-rock, Anticon is an avant-electronica record label based out of California, created for the purpose of advancing the field of hip-hop. Having spent the past few years in Barcelona were he wrote the groundbreaking masterpiece Live From Rome Tim Holland has returned to his native country of the United States with a new aggressively charged political record and a new alias ‘Mansbestfriend’. It’s at this point that OIB caught up with Tim to chat about politics, the power of the musical note and his immigrant status! OIB: Being most famous for your ‘Sole’ alias, in what ways do Sole and Mansbestfriend differ? Sole: Sole has always been my attempt to make more traditional songs that resemble the sort of music that I consider to be poppy/listenable. Mansbestfriend has always been me going crazy in my studio just sort of losing myself in noise with no preconceived notions of what it’s supposed to be. Sole, the music is always made by other people, and Mansbestfriend I make all the music. Unlike other Mansbestfriend or Sole projects this is instrumental. OIB: When you were writing this record was it always your intention to create a predominantly instrumental record? Sole: Yes for the most part. Some of the stuff I wanted to rap on but didn’t like the lyrics I came up with, and the more and more stuff I put on the music the less I wanted to rap on it. So instead I wanted to use other people’s words that could convey what was on my mind at the time. After moving around so much in the last few years I had to get my bearings on the world around me, I had to re-evaluate how I was making the ‘Sole’ stuff, and so in that period this record was sort of hatched. I have always wanted to make an instrumental record so being isolated in the Arizona mountains felt like the place to do it. OIB: To what extent do you believe that if you remove lyrics (in their traditional sense) from music then the natural passion of the musical track takes on a new meaning as an aural representation of the artist’s thoughts and beliefs? Sole: I don’t know really. I know that Godspeed is one of the most political bands that ever was and it was in the music and didn’t need lyrics. Some music can be very visual, and if you edge people on a bit they can come up with their own apocalyptic visions to accompany the music. Personally, I can tolerate instrumental music a lot more than most rock music, usually shitty lyrics ruin the music for me, you can convey a lot of heavy emotion using just sounds, it’s sort of a paint by number, let the listeners fill in the blanks. OIB: Famed as a politically minded rapper, to what extent do these instrumental tracks musically embody your political outlook? And how would you feel if someone were to use them as instrumental beds for their own lyrics and expressions? Sole: Well, I think starting with Emma Goldman talking about exhile, a 12 year old Lebanese child talking about how his vacation got cut short because of the Israeli invasion, having an old recording of wheel of fortune from the New Orleans superdome, having an old man talking about how his ideology has failed him, it kinda says it all for me. I try to not talk about stuff like George Bush or wars in my music, I try to talk more about the abstract social things that effect normal people than a bunch of ‘no blood for oil’ rhetoric. So it’s just another weapon in my arsenal of getting my point across and having fun making music. I don’t really mind if people want to rap on this stuff that would be funny/interesting. OIB: What do you hope people will get out of listening to this record? Sole: I hope that people will enjoy the free spirit about it and just appreciate it for what it is. It’s a new kind of record for me, and I hope to make many more. It’s not a hip-hop record, it’s just songs I made, some about subjects that I could never find the words to rap about, I hope that everyone who listens to this record will become a gardener. OIB: Has your outlook upon American culture changed in anyway since your return to Arizona from Spain? Sole: Yeah when I came back I was loving America. Now I’m sort of planning a new move and the only place I really wanna live is France or Holland, or maybe Chicago or Denver. Who knows what I think of America. One minute I hate it, the next minute I love it, it really depends on my mood. Luckily I’m living in a very very beautiful part of the world, and I’m enjoying what I’m doing, so in that sense I can be anywhere. Although I do really miss the southern European lifestyle, walking to get a baguette and vegetables, etc. In the end I don’t think my outlook has changed at all, maybe I have more empathy towards illegal immigrants after having been one for a few years. The world is changing so quickly, in the end, it’s really difficult to make sense of it all. Selected
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(Still) Staring at the Rude Boys Help She Can’t Swim / Blood Brothers Photo Tour Diary |
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Chit
Chattin' with Sole