Rating:
  Review Date: June 17, 2008
  Website: Homeboy Sandman Website
  Label: Independent

Homeboy Sandman “Nourishment” Album Review
Everybody listening to Homeboy Sandman for the first time will agree on one thing: this guy can rap fast. In one of the tracks from the CD, React, he mocks critics who can’t keep up with him: “Yo sand, yo what’s up with all this fast shit man, slow that shit down man, can’t even understand what the fuck you saying man.” Sandman, though, you can tell, does not take his rapping speed to the limit in this album.

To me, more impressive than the velocity of his words was his uncanny control over his flow. He spits his verse fast but on target. Most artists who can rap at his speed make a living out of it, impressing the listeners with the mad barrage of syllables. But Sandman leans back and lets the words flow like a constant stream of water, turning up the faucet when he feels like it. Using the drums to set his pace, he hits his words right on the dime unless he decides to teeter to a particular word for a comic effect.

And Sandman’s sense of humor is definitely a major component that makes his work shine. Whether he parodies Justin Timberlake’s My Love in Nuts or reminisces about days he would avoid talking to girls in Knock Em Out, he makes his personality shine through his verses. Kain News is a track in which Sandman adopts the role of a news broadcaster, sharing the day’s “sex, lies, burgers and fries, murders and genocides, picket signs, switches and screws, what’s, where’s, why’s, and who’s.” What I loved about his delivery was alternations in his flow in accordance with changes in the rhythm and intensity of the drums. Here’s just a sample of the dope rhymes from the song:

Now for weather/
It’s hot in December/
It feels like it’s the summer/
Scientists say it’s probably coming from hundreds of Hummers/
Burning rubber/
And burning oil and gases instead of burning lumber/
Don’t let it burst your bubble/
It’d be a couple decades at least/
Before Queens 20,000 leagues under the sea/

Sandman’s decision to showcase much of his personality in the album goes hand in hand with his creative experimentation with beats. Experimentation in no way suggests a lack of experience or skill. Sandman demonstrates his ability to rap over any beat, to discipline his voice to match the sounds. Besides My Love, Sandman tears up a fast and bright piano loop in Knock Em Out and then drifts through Crepuscolo Sul Mare, the famous Piero Umiliani piece adorning the opening scenes of Ocean’s 12. And if you haven’t heard already, he supplies his own beat in VerbalSoulClapMania with his clapping, a performance that seemingly combines Def Jam Poetry and dramatic monologue of a play.

Throughout the CD, Sandman’s lyrics thrive from both simple euphony and clever wordplay. In the following verse, he juxtaposes words that don’t rhyme exactly, but it sounds good anyway:

I ain’t never heard of ass being too fat/
Anytime I pass people ask who’s that/
Gotta be the Homeboy Sand/
Literally get more ass than a homeboy van/
When I get annoyed better watch your vital organs/
Better have a Polaroid cam on hand/
Brother man got it on smash/
Homeboy sand doing the running man dance/

He also drops lines like “Lunar powered, I’m solar powered, I’m holding the Colin Powell, my colon in bowels is swollen with vowels.”

Homeboy Sandman’s album is solid in all aspects of discography. He has all the makings of a rising hip-hop star, and I am already looking forward to his next work.

- Min Lee

Album Track Listing:

1. Vitamins
2. Buttermilk
3. Kain News
4. We Can Fly
5. Extreme Measures
6. React
7. Nuts
8. Everyday Love
9. Knock Em’ Out (Boy Sand Edition)
10. City Dark
11. Comrade Punski
12. Us and Them
13. VerbalSoulClapMania
14. Guerra