In Part 1 of the Sole interview, the man behind the moniker, Tim Holland, talked about Public Enemy’s influence, his thoughts on mainstream hip-hop artists and what happened with Anticon, the record label he founded in the late ‘90s. In Part II, the Denver-based artist discusses the current climate of the country, controversial topics and what he’s working on now. Holland’s passion for speaking out against social injustices is nothing short of inspiring. Get ready to flex that cerebral muscle. Check out http://www.soleone.org/ for more information.
RAPstation (Kyle Eustice): You are clearly interested in political movements, etc. What are your thoughts on the current state of our country?
Sole (Tim Holland): Well, the United States is in a seriously fucked up place, and again folks point to all these peripheral things and they don't get to what is at the roof of it all: capitalism and the state. We have a system set up that benefits very few people, that forces the rest of us to fight over the scraps. What’s worse is all the jobs have been shipped out and they're not coming back. There is nothing for young people to do, nothing they can aspire to do that’s worth anything. And when they get a job, they're doing useless shit, answering phones for products no one needs to ship them around the world so people can buy shit they don't need and they can be fired or evicted at the drop of a dime. The entire system benefits no one on an emotional or material level. Around the time when MLK was killed, the [Black] Panthers and MLK were talking about "standard income for all," or what Murray Bookchin called "the irreducible minimum," which means every human being in a society as rich as ours should be entitled to education, food, housing, and health care. It’s 2016. By now, folks thought that we'd be colonizing Mars and solving cancer not going back to Feudalism. This is a truly precarious time we are living through, and if you factor in global warming, let’s face it, "This world is dead already and they know they have nothing to offer any of us." I'm paraphrasing 1882 Woodbine there.
You can’t watch the news these days without hearing a story about a mass shooting, black on black crime or white cops shooting black unarmed kids.
Cops shoot people of color because we live in a racist society and they are willing to attack out of fear to defend that. When cops kill a black teen, they usually say, "He was a big scary man and I feared for my life." That’s because the cops are part of this racist hegemony that can't accept any threats to their own power. They are literally afraid of black people because they have no other contact with them then through the barrel of a gun. On another level, it should be widely acknowledged and understood that everything in our society rests on violence. You pay your rent or you will be violently evicted. You follow orders of this bullshit society or you will be violently thrown into jail, not to be rehabilitated, but punished. Prison is a terrifying place where no one is safe. On a global scale, you bow to Western imperialism or we will invade you and destroy your country. What we do in Iraq, we do in Ferguson, and all that trickles down through our society. Our cities aren't violent because someone invented guns, our cities are violent because violence is how the US controls the world.
How do you feel about capitalism?
Capitalism reproduces itself in us. That’s why the more oppressed you are, the more you oppress. I thought white people were the only racists and when I started getting involved organizing around police deaths in Denver, I was shocked to see how much prejudiced talk I heard from various groups about each other. Blacks vs Native Americas vs Latinos, then you throw in sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fuck, we have a lot of work to do in this country to recognize each others' basic humanity and intrinsic value.
What about mass shootings?
Throw mass shootings in the mix? What do you expect? Folks have nothing to live for, except for maybe a few minutes of fame and to go out in a blaze of glory, to break through the alienation of daily life in the most shocking and fucked up way imaginable. Maybe these mass shooters want revenge against being bullied in high school or maybe they just want to be the star of Natural Born Killers for a few minutes. It’s terrifying. I live in Colorado and I won't go see movies on their opening days. So when folks talk about gun control and even mental health care they're not going deep enough, we need to talk about how this society is utterly failing everyone but the mega rich on almost every level.
Do these topics make their way into your art/music?
Yes. I spent a lot of time reading the works of Guy Debord/The Situationists. They believed the artist must "go beyond art." It’s fine to sing about these things, but how do we go beyond consumption of radical ideas to participating? Are we singing about stuff everyone already agrees with or are we deepening people's analysis? I try to back my words with deeds, to physically and ideologically support the movements and ideas that I care about in every way that’s possible.
Are you still working with Fake Four, Inc and the Skyrider Band? Any plans for another album?
I'm running my own label now called Black Box Tapes, but I still collaborate with Fake Four. They will be helping my out with the next Sole & Pain 1 album. Skyrider Band disbanded in 2011, but I sincerely hope we will get to do another tour and album together. I love those guys so much and would love nothing more then to hang out in French plazas again sipping espresso.
I read you’re making music with your wife Yasamin under the name Whitenoise. Can you tell me a little bit about the project?
Yes, we have an instrumental band. Again, it’s a thing we were just doing for fun. She has played keyboards on a lot of my stuff, but we always avoided trying to be some super couple or something. She has her own life as a visual artist, fashion designer and teacher, and I have mine. It came about really naturally and then we just kept doing it. We play shows around Denver and since doing instrumental music is new for both of us, we're just having fun with it and trying to get good at it before we take it around the world. It’s really fun working with her. We have all these things we like to do together, but it’s fun to make art together, too. It’s really funny when we're on stage together and I'm like, ‘Wow we've been together for almost 15 years and here we are now on stage making these walls of noise.’ Life is so funny.
Where can people find your latest creations?
I just launched http://www.soleone.org/solecast/2015/4/10/the-solecast - a podcast featuring long form interviews with activists, writers and artists about philosophy and revolutionary politics. My latest interview was about the revolution happening in Kurdistan and the stateless society there fighting against ISIS. You can find that here: https://soundcloud.com/soleonedotorg/solecast-20-w-janet-biehl-on-rojava-murray-bookchin. For the most part, folks can check me out on my website: http://www.soleone.org/ and http://sole.bandcamp.com/ to listen to all my albums. The last big album I put out was with DJ Pain 1, who has actually produced some stuff for Public Enemy and Chuck D. Check out our album Death Drive at http://sole.bandcamp.com/album/death-drive and to check out http://blackboxtapes.bandcamp.com/ to hear the music I'm putting out with my label black box tapes.
Sole: The RAPstation Interview - Part Two
In Part 1 of the Sole interview, the man behind the moniker, Tim Holland, talked about Public Enemy’s influence, his thoughts on mainstream hip-hop artists and what happened with Anticon, the record label he founded in the late ‘90s. In Part II, the Denver-based artist discusses the current climate of the country, controversial topics and what he’s working on now. Holland’s passion for speaking out against social injustices is nothing short of inspiring. Get ready to flex that cerebral muscle. Check out http://www.soleone.org/ for more information.
RAPstation (Kyle Eustice): You are clearly interested in political movements, etc. What are your thoughts on the current state of our country?
Sole (Tim Holland): Well, the United States is in a seriously fucked up place, and again folks point to all these peripheral things and they don't get to what is at the roof of it all: capitalism and the state. We have a system set up that benefits very few people, that forces the rest of us to fight over the scraps. What’s worse is all the jobs have been shipped out and they're not coming back. There is nothing for young people to do, nothing they can aspire to do that’s worth anything. And when they get a job, they're doing useless shit, answering phones for products no one needs to ship them around the world so people can buy shit they don't need and they can be fired or evicted at the drop of a dime. The entire system benefits no one on an emotional or material level. Around the time when MLK was killed, the [Black] Panthers and MLK were talking about "standard income for all," or what Murray Bookchin called "the irreducible minimum," which means every human being in a society as rich as ours should be entitled to education, food, housing, and health care. It’s 2016. By now, folks thought that we'd be colonizing Mars and solving cancer not going back to Feudalism. This is a truly precarious time we are living through, and if you factor in global warming, let’s face it, "This world is dead already and they know they have nothing to offer any of us." I'm paraphrasing 1882 Woodbine there.
You can’t watch the news these days without hearing a story about a mass shooting, black on black crime or white cops shooting black unarmed kids.
Cops shoot people of color because we live in a racist society and they are willing to attack out of fear to defend that. When cops kill a black teen, they usually say, "He was a big scary man and I feared for my life." That’s because the cops are part of this racist hegemony that can't accept any threats to their own power. They are literally afraid of black people because they have no other contact with them then through the barrel of a gun. On another level, it should be widely acknowledged and understood that everything in our society rests on violence. You pay your rent or you will be violently evicted. You follow orders of this bullshit society or you will be violently thrown into jail, not to be rehabilitated, but punished. Prison is a terrifying place where no one is safe. On a global scale, you bow to Western imperialism or we will invade you and destroy your country. What we do in Iraq, we do in Ferguson, and all that trickles down through our society. Our cities aren't violent because someone invented guns, our cities are violent because violence is how the US controls the world.
How do you feel about capitalism?
Capitalism reproduces itself in us. That’s why the more oppressed you are, the more you oppress. I thought white people were the only racists and when I started getting involved organizing around police deaths in Denver, I was shocked to see how much prejudiced talk I heard from various groups about each other. Blacks vs Native Americas vs Latinos, then you throw in sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fuck, we have a lot of work to do in this country to recognize each others' basic humanity and intrinsic value.
What about mass shootings?
Throw mass shootings in the mix? What do you expect? Folks have nothing to live for, except for maybe a few minutes of fame and to go out in a blaze of glory, to break through the alienation of daily life in the most shocking and fucked up way imaginable. Maybe these mass shooters want revenge against being bullied in high school or maybe they just want to be the star of Natural Born Killers for a few minutes. It’s terrifying. I live in Colorado and I won't go see movies on their opening days. So when folks talk about gun control and even mental health care they're not going deep enough, we need to talk about how this society is utterly failing everyone but the mega rich on almost every level.
Do these topics make their way into your art/music?
Yes. I spent a lot of time reading the works of Guy Debord/The Situationists. They believed the artist must "go beyond art." It’s fine to sing about these things, but how do we go beyond consumption of radical ideas to participating? Are we singing about stuff everyone already agrees with or are we deepening people's analysis? I try to back my words with deeds, to physically and ideologically support the movements and ideas that I care about in every way that’s possible.
Are you still working with Fake Four, Inc and the Skyrider Band? Any plans for another album?
I'm running my own label now called Black Box Tapes, but I still collaborate with Fake Four. They will be helping my out with the next Sole & Pain 1 album. Skyrider Band disbanded in 2011, but I sincerely hope we will get to do another tour and album together. I love those guys so much and would love nothing more then to hang out in French plazas again sipping espresso.
I read you’re making music with your wife Yasamin under the name Whitenoise. Can you tell me a little bit about the project?
Yes, we have an instrumental band. Again, it’s a thing we were just doing for fun. She has played keyboards on a lot of my stuff, but we always avoided trying to be some super couple or something. She has her own life as a visual artist, fashion designer and teacher, and I have mine. It came about really naturally and then we just kept doing it. We play shows around Denver and since doing instrumental music is new for both of us, we're just having fun with it and trying to get good at it before we take it around the world. It’s really fun working with her. We have all these things we like to do together, but it’s fun to make art together, too. It’s really funny when we're on stage together and I'm like, ‘Wow we've been together for almost 15 years and here we are now on stage making these walls of noise.’ Life is so funny.
Where can people find your latest creations?
I just launched http://www.soleone.org/solecast/2015/4/10/the-solecast - a podcast featuring long form interviews with activists, writers and artists about philosophy and revolutionary politics. My latest interview was about the revolution happening in Kurdistan and the stateless society there fighting against ISIS. You can find that here: https://soundcloud.com/soleonedotorg/solecast-20-w-janet-biehl-on-rojava-murray-bookchin. For the most part, folks can check me out on my website: http://www.soleone.org/ and http://sole.bandcamp.com/ to listen to all my albums. The last big album I put out was with DJ Pain 1, who has actually produced some stuff for Public Enemy and Chuck D. Check out our album Death Drive at http://sole.bandcamp.com/album/death-drive and to check out http://blackboxtapes.bandcamp.com/ to hear the music I'm putting out with my label black box tapes.
