Our Interview with Sahtyre

I first met Sahtyre as this dude who walked up and introduced himself as, well, Sahtyre. I couldn't tell if he was being satirical.

It was at a house party in Echo Park where I rapped on a lawn with no shoes on. Also Sole performed but seemed kind of annoyed when I tried to talk to him. I've been told, that's Sole.

I would run into Sahtyre again and again. It's not like we were buds, but the circles were hella Venn Diagramish. The overlap was rap shit. The only difference is Sahtyre is all charisma, and fun, and can rap his ass off. (See: awkward, old, and sad and it all starts to make sense.)

I would see dude murk a cypher somewhere. Watch him kill the stage with his Swim Team brethren, Open Mike Eagle, and Parker (Dumbfoundead). Eventually he'd transcend the meager underground rap trappings of boom bap Los Angeles, and next thing you know he's all hippied out on stage at Coachella and shit, fucking asshole!

But he earned it.Sahtyre is crazy talented.

Sahtyre was ALWAYS chinky-eyed and lanky. Rapping lazily, though not lazy. With big hair and a quick smile.Saht is that dude your girl might ditch you for and you find out two months later she's now living on a mountain in Humbolt County trimming weed plants in her g-string.

He is the rap truth, if turnt up rap decadence is your rap thing. There is very little subtlety going on here, but there might be just a tinge of satire. I never can tell.

OUR INTERVIEW WITH SAHTYRE STARTS NOW!!!

SYFFAL: You look like a dude your teachers couldn't stand. Why do you look like that? And am I wrong?

SAHTYRE: Considering I just got out of jail for being half black with crazy hair I'd say you definitely ain't wrong. Most of my teachers couldn't stand me because I talked too much in class and asked questions and basically was an individual which is generally looked down upon, but there was a couple that were secretly rooting for me even while they was writing me up and kicking me out the room and shit.

Watup Mr. Shepherd?

SYFFAL: I rapped before or after you a couple of times at the Airliner and once at some Korean Cultural Center. You performed with Dumbfoundead, or Parker, or whatever the fuck that dude is calling himself these days. I rapped with the homie Turtle. We were called Learning Curve. That's probably why you're there and I'm here.

Tell our readers a little about the long, strange trip from Swim Team to now.

SAHTYRE: Oh shit watup homie?! Yea Dumb is my nigga and s/o to all the Swim Team homies. I still kick it with most them fools from time to time. That's family!

Since then I've figured out a lot more about who I am as a person and it's reflected in my art. It's been hella fun, tribulations, girls, recreational drugs, documentaries, traveling, homelessness, near-death experiences, etc. that have helped shape who I am now. But at the core I'm still the same pseudo-philosophical asshole talking shit and laughing at this beautiful fucked up world.

SYFFAL: Do you prefer being solo? Do you miss working as a team? What's the best thing and worst thing about it.

SAHTYRE: The sick thing about Swim Team was that it was a big ass collective of solo artists. I probably did less than like 15 collaborative songs during that whole era. I was always working on my solo personal shit, that's just the way I work.

So, to answer your question I definitely prefer being a solo vocalist.

What's ironic though is now my mentality is more team-based than ever. The Hippies, Chase, and myself are creating the sound I always dreamt of from the instrumentation to song-writing structures and the way we like to mix our shit, etc. Adam, Mike, & West are capturing the visual media with the eye that tells the story of who I am. Dags & Wich hold it down on the merch design/printing among other things. My brother Hardy has some crazy shit he's working on musically. Not to mention the behind the scenes homies that help make half this shit possible.

SYFFAL: It does take a village. And not a village of rappers, aka AssholeVille, but a village of dudes who are good at all kinds of other cool shit, and one solid rapper.

What do you smell like?

SAHTYRE: I reek of B.O., yoffee, & weed. I needa brush my teeth & shower. I smell hella sus guaranteed. It's 9:13am and I'm doing this stupid interview, gimme a break.

SYFFAL: This interview is kind of stupid, isn't it? Sorry, not sorry.

You named your album LSD (Saga). Do you do a lot of psychedelics? Is LSD your favorite? Is it an acronym for something I'm too old or stupid to know about? For real though raving and staying up all night led me from LSD to a bad amphetamine habit and I had to move very far away for a time to get my life back. Granted, this was like the late 90s, but still.

How do you manage to party, do drugs, wile out and still not completely fuck your life up?

SAHTYRE: LSD is Love.Sex.Drugs. That's the mind state of me and the homies I told you a little about earlier and to me it represents the world we live in. Any real lesson I ever learned, or stupid decision I made or epiphany I ever had can be traced back to one of those 3 things if not all. And the trippy part is the same applies for everybody I've ever met. Even the people that deny it.

As for psychedelics, I'm a connoisseur of sorts. I had some amazing acid not too long ago in San Francisco and I recommend everybody try it at least twice. If you go crazy and blow your own head off or try to fly off the balcony or some shit the world was probably better off without you anyway, so it's a win win.

Make no mistake my life is no doubt hella fucked up, but I don't see it as a bad thing. Growth requires experience. I know that I'll get to where I need to be if not in this life then another one. Might as well have a shitload of fun on the way there.

SYFFAL: Name your THREE favorite non-you rappers and describe them as a drug. For instance, and so I know you know that I know you know, Open Mike Eagle as a drug might be caffeine as dude doesn't seem to sleep much and has an execution rate that makes the rest of us look like we're fucking sleepwalking. Your turn.

SAHTYRE: Danny Brown is ecstasy. Not molly but the old school smackers that had a lil mdma in em and was laced with meth and caffeine and whatever else that made for a excellent night but made you wanna claw your face off the day after. Not that Danny makes you wanna do that or anything, it's just the price you pay for a great party sometimes.

Lil Wayne circa like '07 is mushrooms cuz half the shit he say don't really make no sense but you still get it and it's fucking genius.

Eminem in his prime was cocaine. Relentless, and sharp. He fucks with your brain chemistry and got you feeling like you wanna kill somebody one moment then cry like a bitch the next.

Most these other niggas is placebos!

SYFFAL: With the Charlie Hebdoe massacre in the news recently, satire as an art form has come under scrutiny or examination. The line between satire and racism for example is interesting to me.

What about your music or your style is satirical? Why the name, bub?

SAHTYRE: I got called satirical by this random girl in high school and I thought it sounded cool, so I stuck with it then eventually shortened it. Of course I spelled it wrong on purpose cuz I was like 15 and cool. My music is like my personality. I say a bunch of crazy shit and you never can really tell when I'm being serious or not. I like it that way.

My girl doesn't. She love me though.

SYFFAL: If I pulled up on you in stretch limousine with a layered birthday cake in the passenger seat, wearing an armadillo skin hat, with character actor Clint Howard and Curt Loder and Sarah Silverman all making out in the back, LIKE ROLL FOOL! Where would you secretly hope we were rolling to?

SAHTYRE: Now is there some type of exotic hula skirt wearing sex slave bitch about to hop out of said birthday cake?

SYFFAL: Maybe.

SAHTYRE: Is Sarah naked?

SYFFAL: Yes. That slut!

SAHTYRE: Can I wear the armadillo hat?

SYFFAL: Da fuq outta here, gee!

SAHTYRE: I guess that's animal cruelty but I never seen a armadillo so I ain't convinced that they're real. And what kind of drugs yall got?

SYFFAL: Birthday cake, son!

SAHTYRE: I don't know who the fuck Clint Howard is so we gotta kick that nigga out if I'm a roll. Once we get these minor details ironed out I'm wit whatever but we might as well just hit Sam's Hofbräu in DTLA and smoke some DMT til we end up losing Curt in the champagne room then ditch his ass and hop on a jet to somewhere near the equator with a beach. On the plane I'm slipping some bad acid into your drink and locking you in the bathroom once your skin starts crawling and you trying to figure out why your eyes are melting. Oh shit we just landed!

Guess it's jus me and Sarah now ;)

SYFFAL: Pimp! How's your sock game?

SAHTYRE: Terrible. All I have is a bunch of free Huf socks with holes in them cuz I had them since way before they were cool.

Now I'm basically a 13 year old white girl that just smoked purple weed out of a bong for the first time in my stepdad's backyard with my tweaker homie Trevor that may or may not have fingered me one time in the movie theatre when we went to see Anchorman 2.

SYFFAL: If you came over to my stupid apartment now and we pushed my kids off the couch like GO PLAY OUTSIDE, ASSHOLES, what video game would you destroy me at no matter my skill level. And don't say Mario Kart, son. You stand no chance.

SAHTYRE:Unless you were born in Japan, Street Fighter. Ask my nigga Nocando.

SYFFAL: Nah. Just, nah, bruh. I used to scrap in real life at the bowling alley in lower Algiers over Street Fighter cheese moves in like 1991. I'd get you with Dhalsim, kid. YOGA FLAAAAME!

Bass diety, Taurus Scott hit us up about you. How did you come to work with the Smog God?

SAHTYRE: Taurus is my nigga. The Saga is distributed by Daddy Kev's Alpha pup/The Order Label and I been fucking with the whole Low End Theory family since that shit started. Everybody knows everybody in LA that shit is stupid.

SYFFAL: This is Los Angeles, land of a trillion tacos. If I call you up, and was Saht, tacos, and you were all who the fuck is this, but yes, tacos, what tacos would be shove in our holes? If music was food, where would I order your tracks?

SAHTYRE: Yo, the taco truck on the northwest corner of Venice & La Brea is the fucking truth I think it's called Leo's. DO NOT EAT AT THE YELLOW ONE ACROSS THE STREET. These niggas say it's a taco truck but the first thing listed on they shit is tortas. Nigga you failed! This is a taco truck. You can't say we serve tortas, burritos, quesadillas, and tacos. TACOS IS THE POINT OF THE TRUCK. PUT THAT SHIT FIRST ON THE MENU! WTF IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE!? You go to Burger King what they got on the sign? A big ass muthafuckin burger. Not French fries. Not fried chicken. It's called Burger King. Ok, I'm mad.

SYFFAL: Tell all the middle-aged dad rappers that read our blog about all your cooler-than-us stuff. This is the promotion portion of the interview where you tell us about all the stuff we're supposed to spend our tax return on, bruh. Don't fuck this up!

SAHTYRE: Thank you, this was an awesome interview. LSD (Saga) out now everywhere. Love yall, peace.

SYFFAL: Thanks for playing along, man. Holler!