Original Anticon artists reunite for the first time in over a decade. Taken from Sole and The Skyrider Band’s Hello Cruel World, due 7/19.

LISTEN: Sole – “Progress Trap” (feat. Sage Francis)

Tim Holland, a.k.a. Sole, is one of the label’s founders as well as one of its most consistent contributors in terms of quantity, and this record marks his debut with the Skyrider Band.

The self-titled project from Sole and the Skyrider Band is Sole’s most accessible to date, due largely to the contributions from the band, and the subsequent abandonment of his usual dark and abstract instrumentals. Recalling a line from Sole’s 2003 release Selling Live Water, he said, “I only rap cause I’m not smart enough to write a book.” While he still opts for auditory releases, his albums contain enough dialogue to give the feeling of a rhythmic book on tape. Each song is like a chapter, packed to the brim with tangential ideas until the music stops. Lyrically, this album will take longer to absorb and appreciate than most other hip hop releases, but the Skyrider Band offers a beautiful soundtrack so you can simultaneously nod and scratch your head.

Standout track, “The Shipwreckers” is a delicate soundscape anchored by a steady acoustic drum beat and occasional glitch, creating a warm canvas for Sole to proclaim, “Welcome to the ocean, let the champagne fill your lungs, the shipwreckers name is only remembered by the sea”

Before the Skyrider Band, there was just Skyrider, a.k.a. Bud Berning. An electronic musician and dub bassist, Berning lends his dubabilities to the track “Nothing Is Free”, a nu-dub adventure that combines a traditional dub snare and key harmony with a rapid fire bassline and synth fills that retain the cohesiveness of this song to the rest of the album. (Being a beer geek, I have to mention that Sole references Fat Tire beer, the famed Colorado brew that us East Coast dwellers can only obtain on ski trips to the Rockies.) Sole also offers the valuable advice that “you can’t kill God with a slingshot”. Just in case you had plans to do so.

The distorted guitar on “In Paradise” and the acoustic strumming on “A Hundred Light Years And Running” contribute to the welcomed production diversity. The jittery, bouncy drums and chopped keys on “The Bones Of My Pets” show that even when not rocking with the band, Sole is updating and refining his sound.

The initial lyrical overload on this record should be taken with a grain of salt, and patience is definitely a required virtue to soak up everything Sole has to say. The listener would benefit if he occasionally paused to let the more poignant lines sink in, but Sole would probably object that a pause is simply a void begging to be filled with more words. – Chris Seeger

   While Anticon has had more critical favorites than consumer favorites, Sole’s Selling Live Water is a perfect example of what Urb would call hip-hop on “the bleeding edge”. The bleeding edge of what you ask? With this release Sole and perhaps his entire collective is on the bleeding edge of becoming the next (dare we say it) definitive juxtaposition of hip-hop – but he’s not there yet. (All he needs is cooler artwork and constructive criticism). 

    Selling Live Water shows growth from Sole – he’s matured as an emcee, and come somewhat more down to earth (yet not fully grounded), with this release, bringing the usual banquet of sarcasm and social ranting we’ve grown to love (or hate) him for. Less strange chanting this time around (which is good), and the beats have vastly improved, but more on that in a minute.

     Sole starts off on “Da Baddest Poet” with an excellent first verse, where he vaguely beats around the bush to what-could-or-could-not-possibly-be-subliminal-disses, reflecting on his one-time beef with El-P : “Went for Rupert Murdoch’s throat and left with Rawkus trying to sign me / You can’t buy me, I’m holding my chips till I land on last base / I didn’t burn any bridges; I never needed none of them in the first place.” Yet while Sole holds back from saying what he really may want to say and is admirable for taking the high road, by the time “Shoot The Messenger” or “Salt on Everything” hit, listeners will be scratching their heads trying decipher to his riddling-rhymes, even with the included lyric book. 

    Nevertheless, sometimes Sole’s music is best ingested sitting on a couch blunted, as his voice becomes one with the music, rhythmically riding the beats, as found on “Respect Pt. 3″, “Tokyo”, and “Plutonium”. But while Sole is spitting fast with lots of vocabulary, the bottom line here is that it’s poetry and you’re not going to get it all, but it sounds dope. Sole’s literally a ghost-faced pen killer – one that if he spoke in fewer riddles and was more straightforward, he could reach a lot more people (i.e. Aesop Rock “Labor Days” vs. “Daylight”).

    Where Anticon has stepped up as a whole with this release is with the beats. Jel gets dirty on two wonderful tracks – on “Respect Part 3″, he incorporates hard-hitting drums with somber grooves and a haunting Portishead vocal sample. Meanwhile, Jel’s best beat comes in the form of the album’s crown jewel (one of them) “Sebago”, as Sole’s paints a paranoid picture of a mushroom-trip flashback. But the real star producer here is Alias, who produces the majority of the album’s tracks, and it’s easy to see why. As one of the most underrated producers out there, Alias creates wonderful audio soundscapes that you can truly feel. Beats with emotion, tracks you can visualize, adding incredible dimension to Sole’s lyrics. Peep “Slow Cold Drops”, where Pedestrian speaks through Sole, and Alias speaks through them both. Or feel the somber horns and contrasting hard-hitting drum kicks on “The Priziest Horse”, an excellent track where Sole pours his heart out, in fear of falling off. Or check Alias’ most incredible concoction “Tepee On A Highway Blues”, where Sole examines white man vs. red man. Peep these joints and then say you aren’t feeling Anticon.

     But back to Sole – this is probably his best album yet, however he’s still advancing past the common listener He may have not reached super-emcee status yet (and may never want to), but all it would take for him to become the underground’s rap savoir is to tweak his lyrics a bit – to speak to us, rather than over us. It might make Selling Live Water to out-of-towners with cameras even easier. 

But then there’s a smaller voice in the corner who has a lot to say. Hailing from Maine, but now residing in the Bay, Sole began with the group Live Poets a few years back, and most recently has formed his own label Anticon, with other experimental hip-hop gurus, Dose-One, Sixtoo, Circus and others. While not as recognized as Company Flow’s El-P, and nor as respected in NYC’s fussy underground scene, the true independent artist, Sole, is struggling to be heard. Yet by listening to his music, it’s evident that he feels that heads in hip-hop’s mecca don’t want to listen. Like many other artists outside of New York, such as Living Legends, Aceyalone, or even Hieroglyphics, Sole’s frustration with the entire scene has led him to the boiling point. A lyrical war of words with El-P has been waged over some of these very issues.

The controversy over what started the battle still remains a mystery. Is El-P really selfish enough to block distribution of Sole’s record? Or is Sole just paranoid over misinterpreted Company Flow lyrics? We talked to both parties about the beef, and thought it would be best to let you decide for yourself.

HipHopSite.Com: What set this whole thing off?

El-P: Set what off? What set Sole off?

HipHopSite.Com: Well, why do think Sole came at you like that?

El-P: One time that I ever met Sole was at Rocksteady ’97. He came up to me, as a fan, gave me respect, took a picture with me, and gave me his record.

HipHopSite.Com: Did you listen to his record?

El-P: Yeah, I didn’t think much of it, because a lot of people come up to me and give me their records. I think I spoke to him one time after that. He called me about doing shows in Maine, where he’s from. You know, basically just illin’ on some hip-hop shit, but just one conversation. I didn’t really speak to him again. I didn’t really know him, I don’t even think I even remembered him.

HipHopSite.Com: And then…

El-P: When I heard from him, it was indirectly. I did a show in Boston, last summer. These cats that I’m cool with, 7L and Esoteric are like:

“Do you know this kid Sole?”

“No, who is Sole?”

“This kid Sole, from Live Poets…”

“Oh yeah, I met that kid.”

“Did you dis him in “Weight”?

“Nah, I didn’t dis him. What are you talking about? What the fuck does he think I’m dissing him?”

“That line where you said “Is it Live You Motherfuckers?”

HipHopSite.Com: That’s kind of vague….

El-P: Yeah, not only is it vague, but it was a throwback to Run DMC. But he wouldn’t know that being the new jack that he is….

HipHopSite.Com: But why did he think the line was aimed at him?

El-P: I don’t know! ..Bro, because he is in “Live Poets”. …”Is it live?”

HipHopSite.Com: I see….

El-P: My whole thing was, I was buggin’…, because I was like, how fuckin’ egotistical and paranoid is that? How important does this kid think he is that I would dis him, only meeting once in my life. Why? Why would he be sitting, living in Maine, convinced that El-P from Company Flow was dissing him in this song.

But the way it was phrase to me was that he wanted to know if I was dissing him in the song. So I tell them to tell him to chill, and that I’m not dissing him. They get back to him apparently, and much later they come at me like, “Yo, that kid Sole, still thinks you are dissing him in another line.”

HipHopSite.Com: And what was the line he thought this time?

El-P: “Let’s eliminate bandwidth, and communicate physically.”

HipHopSite.Com: What was the original intent of that line?

El-P: Yo man, it was a concept… I guarantee you it had nothing to do with Sole from The Live Poets. If that’s the case, I could essentially take any lyric from any song, and twist it around so that it was about me. I don’t know, maybe he thinks that he is the Lawnmower Man or something, living in his virtual universe, so that if I say something about bandwidth it automatically has to be about him….. Like I even ever gave this kid one thought, especially a negative one…. But this kid was so not part of my existance that I’m buggin’ out like, “This cat again? He’s out of his fucking mind!”

HipHopSite.Com: So then you went to Fat Beats?

El-P: Nah….that’s not the chronology. I have not said anything about this kid publicly, but he’s doing this whole cyber-promotional slander campaign of misinformation. I don’t go on the internet….I just got a computer like two months ago, and all I do is play backgammon on it. I don’t go to websites, I’m not up on it that much, I got people who do that…. So, then we go to Europe, and kids are telling me, “Yo, a lot of kids are dissing you on the internet.”

HipHopSite.Com: Specificly?

El-P: Nah, just miscellaneous cats talking shit…. But then I get back, and I’m told that there is this website with a picture of me next to The Spice Girls, saying “Company Flow Vs. The Spice Girls”. And then it had all this shit about saying we’re not really independent, and making fun of the whole underground scene in New York, dissing Fat Beats and Fondle ‘Em. Basically dissing all the independent shit, or what was perceived as independent. So then, someone alerted someone in our camp that this was that kid, Sole’s, website, and he put that shit up about us. By the way, at this point, the song “End To End Burners” was already in production, the track, the lyrics and everything… So this kid thought we were dissing him, we went out of our way to tell him that we weren’t.

HipHopSite.Com: How did you go out of your way to tell him you weren’t?

El-P: By telling the cats that told me that he thought we were dissing him, to tell him that we were not dissing him. So then…. Well, I’ve heard Sole tell the story, and in his version, apparently, he called up Len, and confronted him about it, and they squashed the beef…. That’s not how it happened. 100% bullshit. Len called him. Sole was in NY recording with some cats we knew, so Len calls him up, and proceeds to scream on Sole, basically telling him, that he’s lucky he didn’t come there because he’s going to beat his ass. And all that funny internet shit, bullshit, is way out of line…. Sole is apologizing, and then Sole translating this as the beef being squashed. Then, I’m like, “Okay, this shit is dead.”

So then we did “End To End Burners” and I said that line about the internet shit. That came from the heart, because I felt like a lot cats were dissing us on the internet…. (“Dis me on the internet like picket line crossing teamsters / Scabs are only down with hip-hop if convenient”) So then I think about it, and am like, well, if this kid took my other shit out of context, he’s gonna take this shit out of context. So, then I go the extra mile, and write that shit on the back of the “End To End Burners” 12″ (“To all of those who fantasize we’re dissing you specifically, stop, if that time ever comes, you’ll know”) So, Sole’s the asshole who goes, “No, you are dissing someone specifically, it’s me!”

HipHopSite.Com: Yeah, but I remember when that shit came out, and when this whole thing was brewing, and when I read that line, it was clear that that shit was aimed at someone in particular.

El-P: But I am literally stating, “I am not dissing anyone specifically”. But my whole thing was, I went out of my way, to make sure that cats like him, and I wasn’t thinking about him specifically, but cats like him, don’t think I am talking about them, because I went through this shit with him already. He inspired me to write it, no doubt, because I didn’t want anyone to misinterpret this shit. He was on some real, “If the shoe fits, wear it” shit. It seems pretty simple to me, I went on the back really specifically stating I am not dissing anybody in particular, and he still thinks I am dissing him. I thought that it was incredibly clear, but then I find out, that he thinks I am dissing him again, now on “End To End Burners”. At this point, I think to myself, fuck it, whatever I say, he’ll think I’m trying to dis him. So then I hear,

“This kid Sole is doing a dis record on you.”

“Word?”

“Yeah, did you block his distribution?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“He’s saying that you blocked his distribution.”

HipHopSite.Com: Why do you think he would come at you with that shit?

El-P: Son… I wish to God, I knew what was going on in this cat’s head. I’m thinking, “how the hell do I have enough power to block his distribution? Who the fuck am I? Rupert Murdoch?” Like I am some big player in the hip-hop industry. So I am connecting all the dots. He spoke to Lenny, apologized to Lenny, thought we were dissing him from day one, and now he thinks we’re blocking his distribution. Then he’s conjuring shit out of thin air, saying that I bit my style from my man Vordel, who is someone I just met like last year, and who is also someone I am down with. Now, I’m getting pissed off, because he told Len that he was feeling us. Essentially I am getting dissed by this kid who is a big fan of ours. This is slowly starting to annoy the shit out of me, and really the thing that set me off was that thing about blocking the distribution. If anything, we have gone out of our way to extend a helping hand to artists, and he’s saying were doing some shit that is totally against my whole nature and my whole philosophy, that I got really fucking upset.

HipHopSite.Com: So then he releases his shit….

El-P: I hadn’t heard it, but it was circulating around the internet, and on tapes and shit, and then I’m starting to get pissed off because all these people are asking me about this shit. I got magazines from Canada asking me if I want to give my side of the story, and I’m like “No, I don’t give a fuck….” So I pt a phone call in, leave a message and he doesn’t call back for a while, or something, I don’t remember how I got in touch with him. Finally, I get fed up, and I get this little micro-cassette recorder that we use to record skits on and shit. So he calls my crib, and Vordel was there, and he picks up the phone, and has words with him and is like: “Yo why you putting my name up in that shit, I don’t have anything to do with this…” So then, I call him back, and we go through the whole chronology of this shit as to why he was completely out of his fucking mind, and maybe it was possible that every lyric I ever wrote was directed at him. And he’s telling me: “My distributor tried to get my record in at Fat Beats, and they asked him, if I was the kid who dissed Co-Flow on the internet, and they wouldn’t take it.”

HipHopSite.Com: So do you think that this whole thing played a role in Fat Beats not wanting to distribute the record?

El-P: I told Sole that nobody ever talked to me about this, and if Sole was a fucking man, he would have talked to me about this. But I don’t have control of this. Even if I wanted to do this, I really don’t think there is any way that I could call a distributor and tell them not to make money off of a record. So, I’m telling him “Yo, you should have called me cause I had no idea this shit was going down. But what did you expect, if you put some shit on the internet dissing people, others that are down with that person may take it badly.” I didn’t even know if that really happened. He told me that that’s what happened, but I talked to everyone on the Fat Beats staff, and nobody over there knows what I am talking about, and they told me that they just didn’t like the record.

HipHopSite.Com: Okay, so, by this time you have probably heard the record.

El-P: Honestly, I still haven’t heard the record…. I have heard pieces of it, read the lyrics in Urb or whatever, but I haven’t heard the song in it’s entirety. Anyway, so at the end of the conversation, he’s like:

“You’re being cool, I wished I had talked to you. It’s dead, I am not going to release the record.”

“Go ahead, release the record if you want to release the record, but I want you to know, you are not on point. All that shit you are talking is not reality.”

It’s like all that shit he was talking was little pieces sewn together to seem like something bigger. But I decide that I’m going to put this shit out of my head, and not respond to it. So, months later we’re listening to this tape of him on the phone, laughing hysterically, and we are just marveling at what a pussy he is. What I mean by that is, he talks so much shit on the record, but when it came down to it on the phone, he turned into a little bitch.

I wasn’t even going to respond, but then I’m hearing about it everywhere, on internet websites, the lyrics in Urb, and I’m like I just can’t handle this anymore. I can’t let him shit on my name like that, and say things about me that aren’t true. My whole thing was, I’m just going to do some real funny shit…

HipHopSite.Com: So then you did your retaliation…. What’s it called?

El-P: Yeah…. It’s called “Linda Trip”

HipHopSite.Com: What are you trying to say in the retaliation?

El-P: Basically my whole point was, don’t step to cats if you have no idea about it. On the real, you could get fucked up on some shit like that. If you are spreading rumors and gossip about someone, it could come back to you. My message to him is “You don’t really know who your fucking with, and don’t try to front like you are Mr. Badass, when you are not that person.”

But then there’s a smaller voice in the corner who has a lot to say. Hailing from Maine, but now residing in the Bay, Sole began with the group Live Poets a few years back, and most recently has formed his own label Anticon, with other experimental hip-hop gurus, Dose-One, Sixtoo, Circus and others. While not as recognized as Company Flow’s El-P, and nor as respected in NYC’s fussy underground scene, the true independent artist, Sole, is struggling to be heard. Yet by listening to his music, it’s evident that he feels that heads in hip-hop’s mecca don’t want to listen. Like many other artists outside of New York, such as Living Legends, Aceyalone, or even Hieroglyphics, Sole’s frustration with the entire scene has led him to the boiling point. A lyrical war of words with El-P has been waged over some of these very issues.

The controversy over what started the battle still remains a mystery. Is El-P really selfish enough to block distribution of Sole’s record? Or is Sole just paranoid over misinterpreted Company Flow lyrics? We talked to both parties about the beef, and thought it would be best to let you decide for yourself.

HipHopSite.Com: Tell me how this whole shit with El-P started:

Sole: Basically it started last year on this website we had, truehiphop.com. It was like a little sarcastic website, it wasn’t anything malicious, you know. There was this little graphic on there, or whatever, that said “Company Flow Vs. The Spice Girls”. Co Flow saw it, and hey got really angry, because it said “Fuck independent hip-hop, it’s all about good music.” We’re going to support anything from New York, L.A. , Minneapolis or where ever. They took that like we were trying to take out the New York indies with what we were doing, but it wasn’t even like that, so they took it like a dis.

I was in New York, recording with Atoms Family, and I spoke with Len, and he was like “What’s up, why you dissing us.” I was like, “Yo, it’s not a dis, it was more of a compliment to you guys, saying that you guys are like the forerunners of this movement. I don’t want beef, I love Company Flow and I don’t want to be against you guys.” So then he mentions that we thought they were dissing us on “Weight”.

HipHopSite.Com: What prompted you to think that they were dissing you on that song?

Sole: I don’t know, there were a bunch of lines…. “Is it live you fucking suckers” It just seemed like it was aimed at us. They were like, no it’s not about you and it was all cool. Three months later, I hear “End To End Burners” with that line. (“Dis me on the internet, like picket line crossing teamsters / scabs are only down with hip-hop if convenient.”) I’m like what the fuck is that shit?” Then I get the single, and I see that shit written on the back (“To all the heads that fantasize that we are dissing you, relax. If that time ever comes you’ll know.”) That was obviously directed at us, but I wasn’t really trippin’ at this point, and I wasn’t going to do shit.

Then, my distributor, Big Daddy, tried selling the record to Fat Beats, and they weren’t going to take it. And they (Fat Beats) were like, “What’s up with El-P?,” and then I do a little homework, because I know a lot of people….

HipHopSite.Com: Can you be a little more specific?

Sole: I really can’t be, because I don’t want to drop names of motherfuckers that told me shit, and put people in awkward positions. But these are people that are down with the whole elitist empire, people that may or may not work at Fat Beats, but people that I have known for a long time that ain’t going to bullshit me. This motherfucker’s taking money out of my mouth all on some paranoid shit, on some bullshit, like squashing the little guy for no reason. Then I come back to San Francisco, and I find out that El-P is dissing me to The (Living) Legends, and he is dissing me to DJ so-and-so. All those fools are like, “El-P’s talking all this shit,” and I’m like “What the fuck, I thought we squashed this shit?” I told Len before, we can battle or whatever, and they didn’t want to battle, so it was dead.

So I made my little record, and it was more like “Fuck Company Flow, and fuck that whole scene of the elitist New York indie scene.” Right after I recorded it, El-P calls me up, sucking my dick, trying to get me to not to put the record out, he doesn’t want beef, he doesn’t want this to go down. And we didn’t know if we were going to put it out. First we were, then we weren’t. But then El-P’s calls, straight leveling like “Yo man, look man, here’s my life story, I know you guys respect us, but please don’t do this to me.” I was like, “Yo, I didn’t want beef, but ya’ll motherfuckers dissed me anyway.”

Later that night, Len calls me up, and is like “Yo, ya’ll motherfuckers, if you put that record out, we’re going to fuck you up.” I was like “Don’t threaten me, I’ll just put the record out.” I’m like, “Do you want to just battle then?” and El-P was like “Well, if I am feeling all hip-hop maybe we’ll battle…” I was like, that’s your whole thing, you guys are battle crazy emcees, but you won’t freestyle.” So, then he cuts the conversation all up and makes a record out of it.

HipHopSite.Com: You mentioned a New York elitist empire, what did you mean by that? Can you break that down a little?

Sole: It’s like, you got people who are doing a certain type of music…. You got your west coast artists, your mid-west artists, your artists down south, your artists in Canada or overseas. Then you got this small group of people in New York…. It’s not even really in New York, it’s more like people in Fat Beats, people over here, people over there. They’re bitter motherfuckers who didn’t make it in the major label industry, they all got dropped from they’re labels or ran they’re businesses into the ground, and now they have their little support structure. But rather than turning that love around, and helping other people, they make it a point to only help fools that are down with them. My beef with that shit is, if this is supposed to be underground, independent hip-hop, some creative shit, like an excursion away from the major label bullshit, it’s like this is the same politics all over again, and the music is just as lackluster, just not all shiny.

It’s like an animal farm. They set up an establishment as like an escape from major label shit, but it’s worse because everybody is broke, and nobody is making any money. I’m not saying everybody is trying to do what we are trying to do, being all abstract, and on some crazy shit, we are just trying to make honest music we like. But there are people in New York, Boston, and other places that would like to hear the kind of music that Aceyalone does, the kind of music Labtekwon does, the kind of music we do, but that shit gets fronted on. As whole, I think that really destroys independent hip-hop. That’s what “Dear Elpee” was about, it wasn’t just “fuck El-P”, it was like “Fuck all of ya’ll” because I don’t need them. What Anticon is trying to do, is set up another establishment, so fools don’t have to suck Fat Beats’ dick, or anybody’s dick. Just make good music and it will get put out there, and distributed correctly.