by Taylor Ruckle (@TaylorRuckle)
Does anyone else find mushrooms delicious, but unsettling? Existentially, I mean? They're neither plant nor animal, but something else. They have more in common with the mold stubbling the strawberries in your fridge than they do with the fruit itself. They’re death made manifest, feeding on rot–decomposition as a form of life. Think about this the next time you order a pizza, or the next time you listen to Decay, the latest album from Fatboi Sharif.
Throughout his underground career, in hallucinatory beats and verses littered with viscera, the New Jersey rapper has made his home in life’s uneasy, hard-to-categorize spaces. His first record for billy woods’ Backwoodz Studioz is no exception; it breaks down everything in its path, from euphoria to personal and social trauma, and especially the walls of any container you try to keep it in. As Sharif himself puts it to me: "My music is a vehicle to both sides of what we go through as people, from the good and the bad, but also that in-between where we may get confused on which one is going on at the moment."
Enter the discordant keys and distorted religious imagery of “Ash Wednesday,” or the light-headed synths and shouts of “The Farewell Outfit.” Decay grows in the hairline cracks that separate the gorgeous from the grotesque–the beats, as produced by Steel Tipped Dove, spread like patchworks of colorful fungus, perfectly natural, beautiful, and alien, while Sharif drops references to literature and film by the thousands, like so many airborne spores.
After the release, Sharif spoke to Post-Trash about the fine line between good and evil, plus the snack bowls and synesthetic visions that powered Decay. When he says he smells blood and fire in a beat, believe him. When he says he cried tears of joy hearing a finished track for the first time, believe that too.
photo credit: George Douglas Peterson
TR: I first got into your music through the feature you did on "Haarlem" by billy woods. How did that track come to you?
FS: It's funny, 'cause I would say it was all kind of fate. It was a situation where he was recording at Steel Tipped Dove's studio… I go to Steel Tipped Dove obviously a lot to record and do music. Me and [woods] already knew each other, had a good relationship with each other–mutual respect for each other's music and all of that, and this was kinda already when we was in talks to drop Decay through Backwoodz, so it was kinda just like, I went there one day for a session with Dove to do some post-production stuff and listen to a few mixes that he had, and woods was there finishing up some last-minute recording for Aethiopes.
I wanna say he was recording his verse for ["Versailles,"] the song with Despot. He was just like, "Yeah, I'm just running a little behind, I'll be out of your way soon," and I'm just like, "Nah, you're good. Me and Dove just listening to stuff, we not really recording nothing per se, so we kinda just vibing out." And he's like, "Alright, cool," so he’s listening through stuff, and he tells Dove, "Yo, I wanna do one more thing before I leave. Bring up that part on the "Haarlem" beat at the end."
TR: The beat switch, with the piano and everything?
FS: Yeah, the beat switch. So woods just tells me, "Yo, Sharif. I might need some of those crazy voices. Just do something dope on this. If you wanna do a small verse, if you wanna just do an ad-lib, a chant, whatever." So in the studio right then, we start writing it down. He laid his part, I laid mine, he was like, "Oh, that's dope. Take those last two bars out," and it was done. After that, he was like, "Yeah, let me run it by [Aethiopes producer] Preservation, make sure he's good with everything." He sent it to Preservation, Preservation had run it back, "Yo, that's crazy. Who's that?" woods, "Yo, this my man Sharif." I didn't know Preservation at that point–knew his music, but didn't know him on a personal level, so we got on the phone, chop it up for a few minutes, just, "Yo, that was dope," this and that, this and that, I'm telling him, "Yo, I'm looking forward to what y'all working on, I'm sure it's gonna be crazy." And the rest was history.
TR: A lot of the beats you choose on your own records are noisy and experimental that way, but even by that standard, that piano bit is just crazy. How do you go about writing to something like that?
FS: It's funny you say that, 'cause people would joke and tell me, "Yo, he got you on the perfect song. You the only person he could get." [laughs] It definitely set the table for a future something I dropped. I always thought that was dope that that came right before Preaching in Havana, and the Preaching in Havana project was mostly all of that, shout out to producer noface. That’s always been my vibe and wave. Like, I always like to test myself. To me, once you get into those type of soundscapes–you can really craft those and write those in ways where it has meaning and you still stylin' on it–that's a true writer. Even though you'll hear me still on regular boom bap stuff and all types of different sounds, that's more the stuff I love to write to and put together thoughts on that.
TR: With the new record Decay, I wanna set the stage. You talked about working out of Dove's studio in Brooklyn. What is that space like? What was it like working there?
FS: I always make the joke that Dove has my favorite studio to go to when I'm in the city. The location is super convenient for public transportation, 'cause mind you, I'm born and raised and I live in New Jersey, but I've always taken that two-hour trip to Brooklyn a couple times a week for different studio sessions, different events my friends and peers have–different shows and stuff. So something that convenient is great for me, and it's a lively area, so a lot of food spots around and different bodegas, different liquor stores. Even the setup of the studio, it's nice and roomy. You can kinda walk around and get a vibe. And only true Dove aficionados know, but he got the snack bowl. The Steel Tipped Dove snack bowl in the studio is a one-of-one.
TR: What's in it? What's in the bowl?
FS: The last time I investigated the bowl, it was Doritos, some gummy bears, some granola bars. Sometimes I get sad when I go there and I'm like, "Damn, man, I been here two days this week. Where the snack bowl?" Other artists had gotten to it before me. But when you get the top notch Dove snack bowl? Oh, it's like heaven. It's heaven on Earth. I go in there, get me some water, few things in the snack bowl, I'm like, "Oh, we 'bout to make history. We 'bout to create something musically enhanced for the people." [laughs]
TR: I wanted to start by asking you about "Brandon Lee.” So much of it is built on The Crow, with the images of arson, revenge… "trophied eyes" is one that really stands out. How did that stuff make its way into the track?
FS: I'll go back a little. It's dope 'cause I would say when me and Dove initially linked up, it was October 2020, so from the early, early sessions, the first and second sessions we ever had with each other, certain songs that got made ended up being the centerpiece of the project, and we kinda got the theme and the title and what we wanted to do with it from that. "Brandon Lee" might have been the second song we ever did. Like, "Brandon Lee," "Boogie Monster," even "Scarhead." Those was all the first three or four sessions.
For "Brandon Lee” – I do this ritual where I usually take beats home and listen to them on repeat, and I'll sleep to 'em, and a lotta times I'll see different colors and shapes, and even feel certain temperatures from the production that'll have me write it a certain way. And for some reason, I just saw that world of The Crow within that particular beat. I saw heavy rain within the beat. I saw different grey colors in the beat. I smelled blood and fire within the beat. So that kinda wrote itself after me just sitting with the beat for a while, figuring out the concept and how I could fit it into the rest of the Decay story.
TR: When you work on a record with somebody like Dove, do you ever spend time in the studio watching movies together? Sharing recommendations?
FS: Me and Dove particularly didn't do that, but I definitely do that with a lot of my collaborators. For example, when I'm at my boy Drive By's crib–that's where I record in Jersey, another amazing producer. We got some stuff out there, we got more stuff coming soon. Yeah, usually when me and him get in the studio, we'll put the TV on mute, and we'll be recording, but we'll watch Fantastic Planet, Enter the Void, Holy Mountain, People Under the Stairs, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Stuff that, if you seen it one time or 100 times, it'll still have the same effect on you. That's kinda what we always go for with the music.
TR: There's this quote from Dove [about “Brandon Lee”] where he says, "the beat was totally different, but Sharif really helped shape it into something else, and then we got even weirder with the post-production, and found Decay's sonic foundation in the process." What do you remember about hearing that beat for the first time, and how did it change shape?
FS: I wanna say when I first first heard it, it might have been a more on-tempo loop. Like, I wanna say it started with a loop, and I wanna say the drum pattern that he had might have just been more in-tempo. I remember telling him, "Yo, I want you to make it a off drum pattern."
TR: Take it off the grid?
FS: Yeah, I'm like, "Take it off the grid every other bar, so it's kinda like I gotta write against myself." And he did it, and I sat with it for a minute till I kinda mastered exactly how I wanted to write it, that I'm like, "Oh, this is gonna sound dope." And I realize the way I gotta write it is kinda like, half bar, two or three bar right after to kind of catch it all within the–it's weird. [laughs] It's some super technical writing. That was definitely an experiment that we had fun putting together, and when we heard the final result, we was like, "Whoa, this is something special right here."
TR: Can you tell me more about how, from there, the idea of Decay crystalized?
FS: Yeah, I'd say some of the early stuff, like we were saying, "Brandon Lee" we recorded kinda early, "Kingdom" we recorded kinda early. "Scarhead," "Boogie Monster." Once we got those skeletons of the project, in my head I'm building out just what I see. The title Decay came to me, and it was from, literally, like, 2020 on, and I'm sure you see it from where you at just like I see it: the world has changed forever. Our sense of security was shut down forever. People's financial security was shut down forever. Mental illness was at a crazy alarming rate, suicide was at a crazy alarming rate, people was just struggling to get through day to day, and to me, it definitely felt like the world died and had to rebuild itself up, kinda like a baby learning how to walk again. That's what we was going through in the world, and the sense of decay.
If you look at the album cover, you see the abandoned house, all dirty and blue and grayish from the outside, but on the other side, you see the sun shining through both windows with the kid writing on the wall. To me, that was kinda like the resurrection. I wanted to kinda give my own take and story on how what was going on in the world around that time made me feel. So you get different, more personal stories than I touched on before. More stuff that – I called it peel back layer music. The production Dove was giving me at the time, I want to thank him for that, because that production made me write a certain way, and it made me touch on certain issues I didn't touch on before. It made me step into a whole 'nother lane writing-wise.
TR: It's interesting you use the word "resurrection," because so much of this record, the imagery you use is supernatural, often religious. The side-one closer, "Prisoner of Jesus," and things like "The Christening." If it's not too personal, where do you come at that from?
FS: Me personally, especially as a kid, even to now, I always had different forms of religion and stuff like that in my family. Down south, I have an uncle who literally owns a Christian church where people come and talk – I used to always go down south, and we used to go down there and visit. I always kinda knew about both sides of the coin, 'cause I have a mother who's deeply into Christianity, but I also have a father who's a Muslim, so he's on the Islam side, and I kinda always studied and had convos about both. I visited my father and went to the masjid and sat in on a lot of the stuff they was doing. Same thing with my mother. I sat in on a lot of her church on Sundays, stuff like that. It always had an effect on me, whether I knew it or not, if that makes sense.
TR: It's the kind of lines that really grab you on a record like this. "Kept Jesus captive downstairs in the glass case."
FS: When you really sit and think about it, and a lot of people don't really like to have those type of conversations, but to me, the line between good and bad, good and evil, all of that is super thin. You'll see somebody in church Sunday morning praying, they have they supporters come in, and then you might have somebody like a cult leader, who think they doing the same thing, pushing the same type of message, and one just is way more extreme than the other. [laughs] To me, that was always interesting: how the human brain works within those situations, understanding and things of that nature. 'Cause they both are literally born to you from the same meaning and the same thoughts.
TR: Every record you've released, on your Bandcamp, you include a poem to go along with the album title. What inspired you to get into that habit?
FS: I always kinda been a fan of the story before the story. Even just on books–I'm a big book collector, so I always loved, on the back of books, you read the author's own vision of the story. Even with certain movie synopses, when you see 'em online and hear about 'em. I kinda wanted to just do that with my own art. If you read the poems, it's kinda just a summary of what this particular story is bringing to you, from my perspective.
TR: I think a lot of people know you as a cinephile, but maybe less as a books guy. What have you read recently? Anything influential to your music?
FS: Well, see, it's funny, 'cause like – and I can't say I'm the same with film, but with books, I'll have certain books that I like to always go to for a form of just, "Wow, this story is actually amazing, just creatively." Like, 78% of Steven King's stuff. To me, he's one of the greatest–him and stuff like Donald Goines, and a lot of those stories where it has real life elements, but they kind of make a story in a world within itself for people to embrace and enter. That type of literature will always inspire me to the fullest, 'cause I'm like, "Damn, how do you sit and think of something like The Shining? How do you sit and think of something like Christine?” I always wanted to capture the same emotional feeling they do literature-wise in my music.
TR: I think that's something people would say about your music. How do you come up with "captive in the back of a spaceship”?
FS: [laughs] For sure. Definitely I would say literature, even certain comic books that stuck with me as a kid that I fell into…a lot of the early Marvel stuff, a lot of the X-Men. The two best to me is Punisher and Spawn. I was always a super huge Spawn dude, even though it's not Marvel, but you know what I mean.
TR: Recently on Twitter–getting back into the album proper–you said, "Once I cry to the final masters, I know the story is complete." Did you have a moment like that in the process of finishing Decay?
FS: Oh, yeah, hearing back "Boogie Monster" for the first time. Hearing back "Scarhead," hearing back "Think Pieces," hearing back "The Farewell Outfit." Those all gave me those type of vibes and emotions that I sit back, and I'm always like, "Yo, I'm aiming to touch people with this music the way that it's touching me right now at the moment," or the way that other stuff I've made can touch me over the past. Once we had the final final version, and I heard all the transitions, I definitely let out a lot of big tears of joy.
TR: You mentioned "Scarhead" a couple times, and one thing that stood out to me about that track, you shout out R.A.P Ferreira's Purple Moonlight Pages, which is a favorite album of mine from the past few years.
FS: Amazing album. It definitely was an album, when it dropped, it got heavy, heavy rotation from me. Shout out to R.A.P. Ferreira for sure.
TR: What other recent rap records have made an impact on you?
FS: Oh, that's a good list. I'd say as of new, definitely woods and Kenny Segal, Maps, amazing project. For me also, it came out last year, Cities Aviv Title for the Album Secret Waters, that's another amazing project that's super dope. The last Open Mike Eagle album, I played that to death. That was amazing. Lungs & phiik, Another Planet 4. Shout out to everybody out there that's pushing boundaries and doing new stuff with this hip-hop thing. It's always amazing to see.
TR: You've been performing recently, and since everything you make is supposed to be such a unique, one-of-one experience, what is it like to perform it live? Does it take any work to get back into the headspace of making something like that, or is it right there every time?
FS: Always shout out to my DJ, DJ Boogaveli, but yeah, whenever we put a show set together, we always like it to be different than the last one. We'll link up for about two hours and put it together where we'll have an opening song, where we like, "Alright, this gon' be the intro song, I'mma come out to this." Last summer we was doing it, but we didn't keep it up 'cause every venue don't have it, but we was doing projector videos. Like, if I had a 45 minute set, we would edit 45 minutes worth of footage. It'd be a mixture of stuff from the Bad Brains at CBGB's, to Cactus Jack vs. Terry Funk on ECW, to maybe a Headbangers Ball interview, maybe a scene from Gummo. Maybe a scene from a Larry King interview [laughs] to bring the emotion of the music to a whole 'nother level.
To me, that's super important. That's the final version of somebody getting into your music and kinda vibing out with you or becoming a true supporter, is just like, "Yo, it sounds amazing. Is it amazing, though, when I see it?" That's super big for me. Even within just, like–you probably seen old videos where I'm wearing a robe or a hospital gown, different costumes and masks. I like to make the stage show like a theater show. A real performing arts situation. And again, that was just from my inspirations coming up. A lot of my favorite performers that I saw live that I fell in love with live, I was just like, "Damn." Seeing Iggy Pop, seeing White Zombie, seeing Nine Inch Nails. To me, the stage show has to be top tier, for a fact.