"AMERICAN PYRAMIDS" - OldBoy Rhymes feat. Mr Lif & Sage Francis

From the dark tundra of Alaska to the heaving jungles of Papua, OldBoy Rhymes has experienced a lot -- from terrorist attacks to home invasions. He's befriended billionaires, kids in "third world" slums, and people at all levels in between.  OldBoy Rhymes has lived a crazy, multi-polar life, and his lyricism is drenched in the love and angst he soaked up along the way.

OldBoy Rhymes’ The Sane Asylum is the war journal of a reluctant combatant fighting for loved ones who can’t. The international American emcee’s full-length debut is a series of true, dramatic dispatches from frontlines all over the planet. From Jakarta to Silicon Valley, the saga has left him with scarred hands, a scarred brain, and an unbroken spirit. 

“I’ve spent the majority of my life outside the US,” explains OldBoy. “Since I was a kid, rhyming has been an outlet that I've leaned on to process my perspective on life and society.”

The Sane Asylum broadcasts a point of view that is delicately balanced and brutally informed. It bumps with that trademark Strange Famous Records blend of personal resonance over strong, musical tracks. This no-skips album provides your recommended daily allowance of big beats, soul-shaking samples, and nimble rhymes from an overstimulated mind.

OldBoy’s stage name functions on different levels. Most obviously, he doesn’t feel young. And he’s not. “I don’t believe a no-name nobody has ever dropped a debut album from out of nowhere, in their late 30’s, featuring a bunch of genre icons,” says the rhymer, typing in his top secret American headquarters.

The Sane Asylum is produced by Rhode Island rap vet Mopes (the artist formerly known as Prolyphic). And the record arrives like a mortar shell from indie-rap stronghold Strange Famous. The label is home to a committed crew under the charge of hip-hop luminary Sage Francis. Features and collabs on the record include Sage, Akil (Jurassic 5), BlackLiq, Brother Ali, JEL (anticon), Mr. Lif (The Perceptionists), Myka 9, Runt (of Jivin Scientists), Tom Thum, Locksmith, Lee Reed, and the late, great Zumbi of Zion I.

OldBoy’s journey includes a visit to a mental health ward and a life-and-death street scuffle. It almost ends in a plane crash. He takes notes the whole time. Palestine. The pandemic. Generational trauma. Terrorist attacks. An American legacy of murder from JFK to Trayvon Martin. Dysmorphia. Abandonment issues. The immunocompromised life. Body dysmorphia. OldBoy knows what is hard: Life is hard.

 “Despite the tone of the album, I am not anti-American,” clarifies OldBoy. “I grew up abroad as an unbelievably patriotic American boy. However, the older I became, and the more I learned, I felt like a kid who grows up to realize their father is a duplicitous deadbeat. My anger is because I love the US and expect more from it. US foreign policy is not ethereal when you have been attacked and beaten down by a crowd of 30+ men and women angry at the US invasion of Iraq — like I have."

His family’s sole breadwinner, OldBoy quit his job to bring his family to America for various medical and mental treatments. It’s just one of a series of ten draining family challenges that besieged him over the last six years. (Ask him, but be ready. He has receipts.)

Moving through The Sane Asylum, OldBoy revisits formative events and irresistible forces. OldBoy, Sage, and Mr. Lif call out the empire in “American Pyramids.” Righteous rage gives way to personal vulnerability on tender tracks like “Sasquatch” and “Somehow.” After the aerobic verbal acrobatics of “Liftoff,” the door closes. And hope has kept him standing.

“The life reviews that I do in ‘What’s Hard?’ and ‘Strange Kids’ are directly tied to conversations I had in therapy,” says OldBoy. “The world around me, and people closest to me, had literally gone crazy. And being sane was driving me out of my mind. Staying solid and carrying everyone on my shoulders resulted in The Sane Asylum.”

"ALL THE SMOKE" - Metermaids x Alxndrbrwn x Buddy Peace feat. Sage Francis

After nearly a decade lost in space, METERMAIDS return to Earth to team with producer ALXNDRBRWN & turntable titan BUDDY PEACE for A LINE IN THE SKY, their latest otherworldly transmission on Strange Famous Records, dropping everywhere November 10, 2023!

MM emcees Sentence & Swell are joined on the mission by SAGE FRANCIS, MOPES, CAS ONE, SEEZ MICS, JESSE THE TREE, and EARLY ADOPTED.

The first video from the album, "All The Smoke," directed by Tim Young, is one of multiple tracks featuring an appearance by SFR label boss and indie rap legend Sage Francis. True to the DIY-style of all things Strange Famous, everyone you see onscreen in the clip pitched in and shot their own segments, which were interspersed with additional footage selected by director Young. 

Metermaids mouthpiece Swell, known for his tendency toward quiet understatement, explains the concept of the clip with his trademark humility from his Brooklyn apartment: 

"Yo - let me break down for you fuckers how brilliant this video is."

He clears his throat, ferociously, and continues:

"The summer camp footage grounds the whole video because it features representations of children preparing for a productive life, which is what I think most camps are trying to teach. They're making fires, they're learning how to swim, they're doing things that are all bedrock to the human experience. It's a period in life that everyone who was lucky enough to have that sort of childhood adventure relates deeply to, because it's such a formative time. It really captures what the entire record is about: looking back with the honesty of hindsight, and realizing nothing's really changed - we're still those same kids trying to figure shit out in a hurry. Now we just got more salt than pepper in the ol' neck beard."

He pauses, contemplating. And inhaling... something. Deeply. 

"Also, most of us as kids didn't have neckbeards. Except maybe Sage. But that was on the inside." 

Neckbeards aside, the individual film of each member of the crew invites the viewer to glimpse a truthful version of their day-to-day goings-on in a way most fans don't get a chance to:

"The footage is clearly self-shot and distinct to each dude. For example, I'm outside being weird (which I actually do a significant amount of), Sentence is being a good father, like he is, and Sage is travelin' and performin', like he does. That was a creative decision, as opposed to a practical one caused by geographic challenges," Swell explains. As the performers are literally spread across the globe, in 3 countries and 3 states, "the footage isn't 'perfect,' and that just helps drive home the point of the record - the visual approach tells the story of the song, which is: it was hard being a kid and it's hard being an adult. Let alone a rapping adult. So fuck it. Give us errrrrrything you got." 

"All The Smoke" is a light-hearted look at some serious stuff: the paths we've chosen, the places they started, the choices that guide us from sunrise to midnight. Also, it's not a bad little anthem to holler along to as you get your recreation on, if that's your thing, as Swell reminds us: 

"And also I smoke a ton of weed, so if you have that, I will also take that. All the smoke." 

A LINE IN THE SKY will be available from Strange Famous Records everywhere you listen to music on November 10, 2023.

Mopes - "PARTY McFLY" feat. Sage Francis, Jesse The Tree, BlackLiq

 

Mopes show the visual "PARTY McFLY" with Sage Francis, Jesse The Tree and BlackLiq.