Sage Francis began rapping when he was 8 years old. Hidden in a closet in his parents’ Rhode Island home, he’d rhyme into a cheap tape recorder for hours on end. By age 12 he was sneaking out to battle other Providence emcees, entering talent contests and learning the finer points of showmanship, if not the sizable advantage that, well, size offers where confrontation is concerned. The kid had a calling, and he wasn’t going to let anything—shitty equipment, stature, homework—slow his roll. Many years later, you might know him simply as a battle emcee, performance poet, heart-draining confessionalist, old school revivalist, political dissident, social provocateur, DIY business expert, label owner, friend, asshole, or one-time ice cream server. Sage Francis is many things to many people—and probably even more to himself—but if there’s anything he isn’t, it’s quiet.
We may never know just how the smallest state in the Union ended up being the home to one of the loudest voices of our time, but it probably had something to do with Public Enemy. Paul Francis was a relentless hip-hop fan raised in a loving-but-strict household. His family knew he liked rap, but if they knew how much, his mom probably would have never taken him to that first concert. It was 1988, the Run’s House tour. Little Sage went to see Run DMC, but it was Chuck D that blew his ears wide. Sure he’d rapped before, but now it was serious.
Knowing that a dip in grades might result in a raid on his tape collection, Sage kept his head in the books and his true love a secret. But record stores were his libraries, and rhyme circles his study groups, so once Sage left home for college, the learning curve bent exponentially.
In 1996, Sage captured the underground consciousness with his first official demo tape. Within a year and a half, he’d have a live band (Art Official Intelligence), his own radio show on Rhode Island’s leading independent station, WRIU (“True School Session,” every Tuesday from 3-6pm), and a recording project called Non-Prophets in 1999 on a friend’s label, Emerge Records. They managed to move a few thousand 12″ singles with virtually no promotion. That was, of course, the same year Sage won the Superbowl MC Battle in Boston, and only a few months later he’d head to Cincinnati to claim the 2000 Scribble Jam freestyle title. Sage wore a Metallica T-shirt during this battle, hinting at his utter refusal to abide by hip-hop’s orthodoxies, underground or otherwise. In fact, if there’s an overriding theme to his career, it is this: where conformity ends, Sage Francis begins.
With the cult following he’d amassed locally and through the Internet, Sage was able to support himself by bootlegging his own material and touring nationally. He’d press CD compilations of his radio spots, live performances and song cameos (the “Sick of” mixtape series) and take them out on the road, where he boasted the ability to draw more than 1000 kids out of any metropolitan area in the country. Somewhere in there he managed to pick up two degrees—an AA in communications from Massachusetts’ Dean College, and a BA in journalism from the University of Rhode Island. On October 11, 2001, he had tapped into something far greater.
Exactly one month after the attacks of 9/11, Sage wrote, recorded and released “Makeshift Patriot” as a free mp3. The song took the American media to task for its partisanship and hasty judgment, but it was written with the heart of someone who witnessed the country’s loss firsthand (worked into the track is a field recording of Sage’s trip to Ground Zero five days after the attack). “Makeshift Patriot” spread quickly, and a new Sage Francis emerged. The merciless battle rapper and renowned spoken word poet was now the most outspoken artist in a sea of tight-lipped, scared-stiff “entertainers.” And still the man hadn’t released a proper album.
Enter Personal Journals (released in 2002). At a time when battle rap was having its heyday, Sage turned his pen on himself, deconstructing his ego, his family life, and his relationships over 18 ghostly tracks. Braggadocio was traded in for vulnerability, dick jokes for confessional verse. Unknowing purists criticized Sage for eschewing hip-hop’s rich (if not a bit incestuous) history; the newly exposed press applauded his honesty, while backhandedly dubbing him the father of something called emo-hip-hop. But Sage had already planned his next move.
In 2003, the Non-Prophets full-length, Hope, was released. Despite it being a British import (making it difficult to find in the US stores and overly-expensive when it was found) the album received critical acclaim. It was an extended homage to the music Sage grew up with. Overflowing with Old School allusion and turn of phrase, most of the references were lost on the critics, but it was enough to put any naysaying to rest.
In 2004, Sage became Epitaph Records’ first hip-hop signing, raising his status level while giving him access to more venues (including indie and chain stores.) Any press/media outlets that had ignored him in the past began to run out of excuses when the sales numbers climbed to unpredictable heights with the release of the emphatic and aggressive A Healthy Distrust in 2005. There was a movement in the indie-hop scene that Sage was at the forefront of, running with a select few acts who were changing the rules to a game-gone-stale while challenging the status quo. Touring the world many times over, selling out top-tier venues from California to Sweden, there was no sign of things slowing down.
2005 was also the year when Sage grew his Strange Famous Records music label from a self-promotional bootlegging machine into a more official enterprise. A staff was hired, contemporaries were signed, and money was invested into the manufacturing, promotion and development of SFR projects (national and international).
After a couple years of touring and building his SFR, Sage released his second Epitaph album, Human the Death Dance. Darkness and light, anger and serenity, tragedy and comedy – these extremes are contained in the person, and they provide the foundation for HTDD. Unfortunately, promotional copies of the album leaked to the public four months before the official release. This certainly took some wind out of the sales, but the touring continued and lessons were learned. What fun is the batting cage if you aren’t thrown a curveball every so often? Aye.
A new rule was adopted: work in silence and only tease the public about a project when the iron is about to strike. With this in mind, Sage blindsided the world in 2009 with a free digital release of Sick of Wasting, the first mixtape of his in 5 years.
Is he going back to basics or is it all being abandoned for something new? Whatever you think you know about Sage Francis, rest assured that he’ll prove you otherwise. Enjoy the rest of the ride.
