Friday February 3rd 2023
HOMEBOY SANDMAN
E-TURN
JON DITTY
& special guests tba
at Hooch & Hive
$15 advanced tickets // $20 day of show tickets
BUY YOUR TICKETS HERE
HOMEBOY SANDMAN
E-TURN
JON DITTY
& special guests tba
at Hooch & Hive
$15 advanced tickets // $20 day of show tickets
BUY YOUR TICKETS HERE
The Queens native brings a directness and precision to his latest album, an unassuming notebook of observations from a mature rapper with nothing left to prove.
Consistency and longevity have become the defining traits of Queens-native Homeboy Sandman, whose first EP turns 15 years old this month. Though nowhere near as verbose as his regular collaborator Aesop Rock, he’s almost as prolific, with a consistent stream of albums and mixtapes under his belt, as well as full-length collaborations with the likes of Blu and Quelle Chris. His latest album There In Spirit, produced entirely by Detroit beatsmith and emcee Illingsworth, is more condensed than his previous solo records: It plays like an unassuming notebook more than a full-fledged piece of art.
While other backpack rappers might have spiraled off into abstraction, Homeboy Sandman has found a bluntness in maturity, bringing a deadpan precision and defined sense of melody to his flow. On the anthemic “Stand Up,” each couplet and bar comes together like two hands shaking, interlocked tightly together. The words arrive fairly directly, without much dense metaphor or description, his voice endowing even the simplest of words with a charismatic weight. Though he’s capable of constructing dense bars and elaborate webs of words, there’s a restraint to There In Spirit that feels slightly more intimate, an acknowledgement that sometimes the most straightforward word is the most evocative.
Sandman’s more unguarded bars pair well with the enveloping beats of Detroit stalwart Illingsworth, who has previously appeared on records by Open Mike Eagle and R.A.P. Ferreira. Fittingly, his productions are somewhere between Dilla-ish soul chops and the cartoonish electronics of the L.A. beat scene. Illingsworth’s beats have an analog warmth, pulling samples of string tremolos, piano lines, and soothing vocals from soul and vintage pop, to most vivid effect on “Voices (alright).” But the production is not entirely a throwback, fused with electronic wonkiness, like the fluttering hi-hats and bassy synth lines on “Keep That Same Energy.” These are beats that sound like they were chopped up live on an MPC, unquantized and human even when flirting with more futuristic textures.
