#16-Sage Francis-"Personal Journals" (2002)

Indie Hip Hop, while powerful...can totally throw off a lot of purists. Some of the kids that hang in the same circles that I do can be a tad bit confused when a Big-Ass dude from Rhode island with a scraggly beard and a pair of Camo Shorts breaks into the scene and starts to rhyme like his life depended on it. These same cats sometimes have issues with white Rappers/MC's; I've heard that argument "I dont' care how fresh this cat's rhymes are; he's from MINNESOTA?" Real MC's have to be from Compton, Bed Stuy, Queensbridge, etc, etc, blah blah blah.

Come on. Really? Are you from the bridge? Did you grow up in the projects? No. you're probably from Akron, Ohio, Laredo, Texas, or ...dare I say,ST PAUL Minnesota? Guess what? hip hop trickled down from the hood and enriched ALL of our lives. Rakim might not've had Columbia, Missouri in mind when he recorded "Microphone Fiend" but I'm sure there's a kid there with a set of turntables and a copy of Paid In Full on wax that could one day blow us all away. When I was younger, I always felt like there was some kind of divisor because I didn't come from the bad part of town. In Westchester, Ohio (where I grew up) -The subdivisions were nice and the apartment complexes and trailer parks were the hood. Growing up in the Westchester "hood" wouldnt have made me any more qualified to wax intellectual or philosophical on the subject, as a matter of fact, had I came out of the sullen bosom of the WC "hood" I'd probably care more about oil changes than not only nodding my head, but writing this very blog.

But I digress. Not only am I rambling, I'm high atop my soapbox trying to find the rest of my surburbia 'heads (I can see you, Beth K!) For those of you that don't know, Sage might be the only heir to Rhode Islands' rhyme throne-he cut his teeth competing in Poetry Slams, which definitely shines through in his rhyming style. PJ might not be his best release, but it's his most concentrated; blending old school storytelling with clever puns and worldplay, it's a record that an MC needs to make to establish himself, and Sage did just that with PJ and then some. Production that was mostly handled by Reanimator, Sixtoo, and some cat named "Mayonnaise"-rough around the edges but lends itself well to the overall vibe. Blasting out of the gate with "Crack Pipes" and weaving an intricate array of everyman vignettes through the Bass heavy "Smoke and Mirrors", along with the dusty, acoustic-driven aura of "Specialist" ..ending up at an otherwise unknown destination; a spoken word piece called "Hopeless" that starts like this:

I played connect-the-dots

with your beauty marks

and I wound up with picture perfect sheet music

Whoa. every time I hear that intro it gives me chills-Sage is not only a solid MC but a proven poet and consummate pro.

All in all, we have a solid record by an Indie MC who's about to, from what I can tell, have his sound fully realized on his new LP, Li(f)e which is due out early next month. With all the talent in the underground, someday soon the belts of this conversion van are going to break and the game will again be wide-open. Somehow, cats like Sage are keepin' it real just staying on the high road, pulling to the next city with wide eyes and open hearts.

-Marty.

Biblio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Journals


Sage rippin' "Crack Pipes" at Emo's here in Austin, Circa 2004: