Point man of Anticon Records Sole

The independent hip-hop industry can be a rough hustle. Just ask Sole, point man of Anticon Records, a Bay Area collective made up of transplants to the Bay Area from lesser known hip-hop markets like Minneapolis and Canada. Sole, who originally hails from Maine where he was the member of a crew called Live Poets, moved out to the Bay Area after scouting around the nation for a suitable place to build an empire, and found San Francisco to be a progressive hub of the culture.

With fellow crew members Alias, Dose One, Sebutones, Mayonnaise, Moodswing 9 and Slug, Anticon records is coming up fast. With a distribution deal through Caroline Records—know primarily for punk rock—a steady stream of releases and a growing name, Sole and Anticon Records aren’t planning on being buried in the Bay Area underground for much longer.

And to those who are in the thick of the independent hip-hop scene, this may come as bit of a shock, because Sole and Anticon have figured out new ways to get their music to the people. Because of beef with certain members of the New York scene, namely Company Flow’s El-P, Fat Beats (traditional, underground hip-hop distributors), Sole was mired in a bit of public controversy, but in the spirit of an artist, he and Anticon kept pressing, and it’s done them alright so far. Spurred on by the growth of the independent hip-hop industry into the markets of punk and indie rock labels, Anticon has joined the ranks of crews like Arsonists, who recently signed to Matador Records. These independent rock labels are getting into the hip-hop business at the right time and crews like Anticon are finding it easier to get their music to the people, many of whom eat it up.

In preparation for Sole’s appearance at Duffy’s Tavern(Chico) this week, The Synthesis chased him down and asked him a few questions about himself, Anticon and getting by in the industry.

I came out here and did a show. I went everywhere, though—Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, L.A., San Francisco. I wanted to be in San Francisco ‘cause I like the vibe out here, and I like the scene. I think there’s a huge window of opportunity for dope MCs. Originally, our plan was to move to New York, but you know, people are more, um… We couldn’t really do what we wanted to do out there. Put it that way.

Live Poets was a collective in Maine with me, Moodswing 9, Alias and Mayonnaise. We put out a few records, did it all ourselves. That was basically the foundation for Anticon—all the Live Poets stuff. But Live Poets is disbanded. Basically, it was mainly me and Moodswing doing Live Poets. But we figured that the name was too pretentious, and there were too many people with similar names. We had the name since ’93, but that didn’t matter. There were, like, Dead Poets, Black Poets, Street Poets, Funky Poets. I think your music should speak for itself.

Yeah, you know [laughing under his breath]… No, not really. I got an SP [1200 beat machine] that I have yet to turn on.

We all wanted to put out our own stuff and own our own stuff, and at the time, Slug from Atmosphere (from Minneapolis) had heard my stuff and was really feeling it. Dose had given a tape to Mr. Dibbs to give to me and I was blown away by Dose. So me and Dose and Alias were going to do a record, but we wanted to get one person on it. Slug wanted to get on, so we went to Minneapolis to record it and we didn’t really know each other, but we knew that we all wanted to do some shit that’s never been done in hip-hop before. We did "Deep Puddle Dynamics" in three days. It really blew a lot of people back, and changed a lot of people’s opinion of hip-hop. From there, we just clicked, and we knew we wanted to do music with each other. And we knew the Sebutones from Canada. I was like, "If you guys wan to sign to Anticon and put records out on it, we’ll all be owners of the label, and all the artists will get 50 percent. Let me shop a distribution deal, get some industry buzz going, we’ll see what we can do and I’ll make everybody famous." That was how it came together.

Within a week, I had CDs burned of everybody’s stuff, and bullshit one-sheets [short, one-page artist bios], and stuff we were sending out to every distributor, and we’d do little one-offs for them and play them against each other until we got our stuff carried through Caroline.

Well, honestly, we want to be a real heavy-hitter, but then, no one signs to Anticon [for the long term]. You’ll sign a project, but, for example, we’re doing stuff with Mush records, an acid jazz label; everybody records literally, like, five albums a year with different people. We just like to record. Nobody’s really limited to Anticon, nobody is Anticon. It’s just me and Dose and everybody who’s out here. So we’re always shopping projects, but if someone steps to Alias and says, "We want to sign you, here’s a hundred thousand dollars," we’re not gonna be, like, "No, man you gotta be down!" That’s ridiculous. I mean, we want to live off our art, and we want to make music and have as many people hear it as possible, and make as much money as possible, and have full control over it. So by establishing ourselves as an avant-garde hip-hop label, that sets the expectation that everything we do is not going to be like the stuff on the radio.

Well, that was the main reason that we called all those people out. That was another main reason we started Anticon, because all of us were doing what we considered to be real hip-hop, and people out there were telling us, "This isn’t hip-hop. You guys don’t understand the foundation of hip-hop. This is wack." Their DJs were saying it was too abstract. But there’s nothing abstract about the stuff we do. It’s not necessarily straightforward, but all you gotta do is listen for five minutes and it makes sense. I get really annoyed with all these people who claim to be next-level and claim to be underground or independent, when all they’re doing is just recycling shit on a lower scale than Puff Daddy and Mob Deep.

I’m not mad at anybody, you know, I’m in California, and here and in the Mid-West and everywhere I go, people are feeling what we’re doing. The main reason for Anticon was basically that you don’t have to make those compromises, you don’t have to have one of those 92-bpm, jiggy beats. You don’t have to make formulated music, you can do your own thing. We’re selling records through Caroline and Revolver—they mostly sell punk and indie rock stuff—because they’re feeling it . Hip-hop heads are definitely into it, but there’re also all these other kids who are appreciating it for the music and not just, you know, "rap." It’s definitely hip-hop, but I’d like to think that what we’re doing is more than just mindless music.

Anyway, that was one of the main motivations behind Anticon, was to make sure that we would always be able to put records out, and that we form a separate empire aside from the reigning politics. You know, make our politics work for us in our way, and so far, its worked.

The validation is that we have a really dope publicist, we have really solid distribution. We pressed the Anticon CD and we sold out of it in two days; we did a repress and we sold out again. The "Deep Puddle" 12" that we just shipped sold out in two days. Keep in mind, that’s only two thousand units of each, but for no press, no nothin’… Right now, we have a 70-person street team. We’re doing a news letter, snippet tapes, I have a video coming out. We’re doing a lot of retail promotion, and now we have Tortoise’s publicist working for us. Dose is in the next Vibe, we’re getting reviewed in the next Spin, we’re supposed to be getting into the next Rolling Stone. People are being supporting of us, but there’re always going to be haters, there’re always going to people calling it pretentious or saying that it doesn’t make any sense. Whatever. Once they put aside all the reservations and all the negativity, and just listen to it for what it is, eventually they’re going to stop hating me because I was the guy who dissed El-P. Whatever, man.

I don’t know. I do know there are a lot of labels that are sweating us right now, but the future for Anticon holds… Hey, we’re in almost every major magazine with [a combined total of] over a million in circulation within the next three months. We have videos that are going to at least be on The Box and BET. We just started doing an Anticon newsletter that we’re about to turn into a ‘zine. We’re doing a makeshift writer’s workshop Web page, we’re starting a weekly venue up here, which is dedicated purely to theatrical hip-hop.

I know that a year ago, I didn’t think I would be chillin’ with Freestyle Fellowship and seeing my name in the Next 100. I also didn’t think that we’d be getting distribution through Caroline, and other major support. So it’s all there, and from now on, we just have to be consistent, stay on top of our business, promote our records, make sure things are selling, make sure that we’re touring and make sure that we don’t lose touch with what we’re doing and why we’re doing it and why we started doing it in the first place. I can’t really see it not blowing up as long as everything stays honest.

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