Former Kanye West signees, Sa-Ra take a page out of Hollywood for their debut album.

By Richard "Treats"Dryden

There is no such thing as a standard beginning and end anymore. Prequels changed the face of storytelling. Thank the Star Wars film franchise for awkwardly starting with "Episode IV," followed by two sequels, and eventually three more films, revealing the origin of the series. Hollywood wants you to connect the dots (for an average $10 bucks, of course). The 'hood played the game too in 2003 with Jay-Z's blueprint for his ninth studio release, The Black Album, and now in 2007 with the debut of former Kanye West protégé's Sa-Ra. After being dropped from West's now defunct Sony label imprint, G.O.O.D music in 2006, the trio of Taz Arnold, Om'Mas Keith and Shafiq Husayn finally released their album, The Hollywood Recordings on Babygrande records. It's been a long road to get out their dreams: from ghost-production on Dr. Dre's 2001, sleeper-hits for Pharaohe Monch and Consequence, to their self-proclaimed prequel album. Let the games begin.

How did you guys come together to form Sa-Ra?

Taz: We came together as separate producers, separate artists, admiring each other's work. We started making beats together and coming up with blueprints of how to make music-it wasn't being done at the time-experimenting with different instruments, concepts and samples mixed with different instruments to create a new sound. Eventually our beat CDs would circulate and people wanted us to perform and buy songs.

Om'Mas: The styles were very unique as far as individually. Techniques were similar to the effect that we all use the same equipment. I began sampling at 15, 16 and moved towards sampling less because of my desire to recreate what I was hearing on record. You know that's driven by business. You don't want to have to pay that additional fee and lose all your money. When I got a little older, we were in a much more creative form of sampling-using sampling as sound layers and textures like a painting, and as a keyboard as opposed to just jacking. I would say all three of us had the same intention to make good music, program hot shit, make drum patterns, and listen to our peers to find new rhythms.

Shafiq: But we all pretty much like the same thing. I actually produced 12 songs on the OG album for Ice T. I did the sound effects for "Cop Killer" during that era.

That early gangsta rap era.

Shafiq: Rappers weren't calling it that. The journalists were calling it "gangsta rap."

Right.

Shafiq: N.W.A, Dr. Dre, and Ice T, they were doing hip-hop.

But their gang ties were deep!

Om'Mas: Criminal Minded was considered a "gangsta rap" album.

Shafiq: Even the Beatles, them albums, Magical Mystery Tour, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band they're talking about weed, drugs, fuck the establishment.

Om'Mas: Pootie tang!

OK. So what are your roles, as far as production?

Shafiq: Taz is a visionary. Taz sees it. You can look at him, it's obvious. His approach is always big. Om'mas is a technical wizard, precise, concise, thorough and masterful. Me? Textured, how it feels.

How does that play out musically?

Om'Mas: We're rappers and singers.

Shafiq: You rarely see three rappers in a band. Nowadays, most artists are not even producing their own music, they're probably not even writing their own lyrics. That's not to take away from what they're doing, but you have three guys that write, produce, arrange, compose, play instruments, and perform the music.

Om'Mas: It's like the Eagles man! I think rhythmically, we're like the new Meters. That was something that just dawned upon me thinking about male bands, and masculine energy when it comes together, it creates something. I think we're very similar to a group like that who was accepted, had hits, but just were on their own frequency. They had to struggle initially to get it heard. And it's been like a 10-year struggle for each of us. People think ten years, and overnight it goes down. Damn, it's been a long time coming but it's been totally necessary in our development that we went through all that shit-being dropped, had deals offered to come to this place of kind of a free place where we're now in control, not obligated, free to record with whomever whenever we see fit. I think to that extent, we are in a really good place.

Babygrande "good" or Sony/G.O.O.D.?

Om'Mas: You gotta understand, the deal with Babygrande is kind of a very unique, unprecedented deal for us. Sony just got through giving us all this money to make this record and now here we are about to get that record back from Sony, free and clear of any claims. We have a tremendous amount of leverage to put out this Black Fuzz album that everybody is still waiting for and compile a "best of" from the vaults of what we're doing for the past 5 years with Babygrande. We're not really obliged to having to be exclusive to anyone. It's a non-exclusive deal. That level of freedom is what most artists work their whole lives to get, just to be able to do something on kind of a larger scale. We shipped 50,000 copies. It's a completely independent record. To be able to do something on that scale and still be free and not have to worried about your image or name being tied up, you can't work with nobody unless you gotta call this dude, you gotta call A&R admin to use your own name. We decided what we're gonna do now is go back to the point that we started this whole shit off before we got with Sony. Keep it independent, keep it fly, keep the conversations among us, keep the power within us to navigate as opposed to giving it up to a bureaucracy. Babygrande, we welcome others, there will be others. People are courting us right now.

What's the difference between Black Fuzz and The Hollywood Recordings other than the major/indie issue?

Shafiq: This album, [The Hollywood Recordings] is a production driven album based with features. There's a couple of songs that we perform on there, but in its entirety, it's a lot different from having a Sa-Ra album.

Om'Mas: Black Fuzz is a more conceptual album. Sony Japan, after they done got rid of us, headquarters is saying, "well let's license it back." We just fought a battle that was comparable to David vs. Goliath. Sa-Ra went up against one of the biggest conglomerates and we had a loophole and we got our masters back. We're free to now license it on our terms with whomever we see fit. So we have collateral.

How much of this album was recorded in California?

Taz: Maybe about 70%.

Om'Mas: Yeah. Because records get finished in other places, but they definitely get originated in our labyrinth, in Silverlake.

What were bigger influences, the women, weather or weed?

Om'Mas: As a transplant for me, especially from Hollis, Queens, I got turned out on the air. The smell of the air and the palm trees the first time I landed when I was 17.

Taz: It's a paradise dude!

Om'Mas: Fuckin' bricks to paradise. Rolls Royce's, and white skinny sluts and drugs and coke and meth and all the trappings of success are all in front of you. It's like TV. That shit inspires you to make is some shit that is otherworldly in the respect, above and beyond the scope of the world that I knew as some punk from Queens and growing up in the projects. The music then became out of my world scope and opened me up to new sounds and textures. You'll see how LA kind of makes chords different. New York's beat quality, the bricks, come out when you're back home. But just the feeling you get inside of you makes you knock a different way in LA. You kind of get more free harmonically. A key example for me is how Steely Dan recorded "I'm Asian" in LA. It's like, damn this is what that city inspires.

Shafiq: Look at all the greats from the '70 Stevie, Marvin, Ringo Starr.

Om'Mas: Coming out to LA...

Taz: Beach Boys.

Shafiq: Everybody's migrating to LA...

Om'Mas: To experiment...

Shafiq: Go out there and capture their goals and that magic...

Om'Mas: LA is the bastion of creation and experimentation.

LA, LA it's the big city of dreams. Did it help you get out your dreams?

Shafiq: It's such a spread out place that you can't help but be free. There's not a type of life like you're living on top of each other like in New York.

Taz: It's a paradise. It's green and lush up and down the coast. From the mountaintops to the deserts, it's like expansive, and it's ancient. California is one of the most ancient places on the planet, even more so scientifically than Africa. They show that. That's science. It is like the west side, is really the east side because California was the most eastern point of a now sunken landmass, which we call "mu." You hear Muhammad. All these things are mu like. If you look at Sumerian languages, every Sumerian language, mu is a word for water in different inflections of that.

Shafiq: Mother came from the word mu.

Taz: It's deep. But that's that land they say California is a part of that continent is now sunken.

Om'Mas: WEST SIIIIDE!!!

Speaking of the west side, how instrumental was Dr. Dre in your career?

Om'Mas: That's the teacher.

Taz: We all as a collective was working with Dr. Dre before I got with him. That's how I initially met him. He was producing for Ali S. and some other artists that were signed to Aftermath. I met Dr. Dre through him and it started a business relationship, and it lasted for like maybe three years. It was a cabinet. This guy Ali S., he was working with me at the time, we shared a lot of ideas, going back and forth as far as being overall consultants for the 2001 project. But with the per song situation, hands on with production, Ali would get records from Mel-Man, I would come up with name titles, tell Hittman what to do, you know we provided a service for my artist Hittman. That was the relationship at that particular moment. But we worked with Dre inadvertently for years. Way back in the day, Ali sold him and Sam Sneed a record store-20,000 records. It's been like on and off relations with that camp for a while. But the big thing was the Hittman thing. It was great working with dude too. Whether it be James Brown or George Clinton, it's the same-dudes that are the creative heads of this shit.

Om'Mas: I think more of our reference came from Miles Davis and jazz, in the capacity of overall inspiration to create, to manipulate music. The timelessness of a figure, the allure, someone like that makes you strive to really just strive to be the best fucking human being you can be. Of course Dre sets a fine example as well, but to attest to the timelessness of Miles.

Did you contribute to the Detox album?

Taz: All of us went back and produced a song that was slated for Detox but who knows what's gonna go on there, when it's coming out, or if we made the final cut. We know we've been paid, and it's for Detox. So we'll see. I think for Sa-Ra, it really didn't have anything to do with Dr. Dre. We use samples, but we are heavily offensive, in music as a whole, and when we make our music, he never came up as a reference as a point except maybe for mixing, but we have a lot in common with him, and he is like I said, he's one of the best, he's one of the greatest cats out there. When you talk about keyboards and all that stuff, we really listen to Stevie Wonder, Roy Ayers, jazz records, Pink Floyd, experimental rock, disco, just colors, and textures and fuzzy shit.

"Glorious" is a few years old, but appears on the album, what new material can we expect?

Om'Mas: We went back in the vaults for this album. A lot of the songs we were songs we were trying to figure out how to finish for a long time. So Black Fuzz is more of the concept overall. Focusing in on skits, transitions, we have characters associated with the record. This record is more like we put some songs together and made something happen. We have Erykah Badu, Bilal, Talib Kweli, CNN, Kurupt, Rozzi Daime, Lord Nez, J. Dilla, and Pharaohe Monch.

Shafiq: It's very fun. It's a time to learn, those are masters of what they do, exchanging ideas, bonding, camaraderie, adding extension to your roots. We're friends now. We had a session with Badu at the house. The first session we had was at Taz's mom's crib, with Bilal. That's a whole 'nother intimate realm.

Om'Mas: There's only really four true Sa-Ra songs on this album, without somebody else on it. "White," nobody's on that...

Taz: "Glorious" "Rosebuds"

Shafiq: And "Lady Sings"

Om'Mas: We got 19 cuts, and "Hollywood" Redux too.

Is that a remix?

Om'Mas: Like how they do a film redux-redo. They cut it over. It's a new version of one of our most popular tunes. It's like a slow, pimped out version.

What's your relationship like with Kanye since being dropped from Sony?

Taz: That's my homeboy and he's looking to business with Sa-Ra.

So you're content with your situation?

Shafiq: It's the best thing. Majors they put you on a larger format, in a wider range for people to see. But everybody is expensive, you can really get rid of some people on a major and they wouldn't really feel it. Independent, when they put their money into a project, they're gonna put it out because they know they have a clear idea of what they are trying to do and maximize their money. That's the biggest difference. Business is more flexible. Majors are fixed because they are the ones producing the money for you for the project to exist. With independents there's a thing where you're lending them your greatness, what you're about, your brand, something much bigger than what a Joe off the street would come with. Independents will allow you to get that off. They will allow you to be, as opposed to the majors will try to switch you up, like bring other producers in. They usually get priority but that's another thing.

Everything happens for a reason.

Shafiq: We always were going to keep on putting records out regardless of the majors and independent. We're in the business of putting music out, so we would exploit any opportunity to put music out and do business with us. Home // CELEBRITIES // WEB EXCLUSIVE // Sa-Ra