Much like the rest of us, for Lyrics Born, the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown were overwhelming. While many of us spent those first months learning how to bake bread and bingeing Netflix’s Tiger King, the emcee born Tsutomu "Tom" Shimura moved full-time back to the Bay Area (he’d been spending half of his time in LA) and disconnected from the world.
After over two decades of non-stop touring and grinding, he needed time to decompress physically and spiritually. He spent some quality time with his family and got his head together, and eventually turned to another popular creative outlet for the quarantined: the Podcast.
Lyrics Born began broadcasting his podcast Mobile Homies through Instagram Live. It started as a way to talk with his friends. It transformed into the inspiration for a new album series. The first volume, Mobile Homies Season 1, is incredibly creative and unlike many other Lyrics Born projects in its execution. Over its twelve tracks, Lyrics Born employs seemingly dozens of collaborators and ten different producers.
Lyrics Born is nearly 30 years deep into recording music and has the impressive catalogue to back it up. He started as a member of the Solesides Records collective, a pioneering Bay Area-based underground hip-hop label, home to acclaimed artists like DJ Shadow and Blackalicious. The label was one of the early underground labels to get their records and CDs onto record stores shelves around the country and the world. Eventually, Solesides morphed into Quannum Projects, and the label become a bona fide global phenomenon.
In the years before the pandemic hit, Lyrics Born began getting into the film industry, playing roles in films like Sorry To Bother You and Always Be My Maybe (also on NetFlix). The latter, starring Randall Park and Ali Wong, features Lyrics Born as Quasar, the bass player for the film’s fictional band, Hello Peril, for which he collaborated with producer and friend Dan the Automator, as well as Park himself.
On Mobile Homies, Lyrics Born shares tracks with his brothers in arms from his Solesides & Quannum days, including Lateef the Truth Speaker (his partner in the duo Latyrx) and the tragically departed Gift of Gab (of Blackalicious). He also partners with his longtime West Coast underground peers Grouch & Eligh, Rakaa Iriscience, Cut Chemist, and the aforementioned Dan the Automator on the record. He recorded with the New Orleans Jazz Funk Band Galactic and his wife, Joyo Velarde. He even trades verses with Randall Park. Or Sitcom Dad.
Lyrics Born was gracious enough to sit down with me recently to discuss what he hopes to be the first of many Mobile Homies projects. He also spoke about trying to crack up Randall Park, Gift of Gab’s greatness, Solesides’ importance to hip-hop, and his Oscar and GRAMMY-winning friend, Joseph “Jazzbo” Patel.
So, this project was inspired by your podcast?
In this very room, in the bowels of quarantine. We didn't realize it then because we just didn't really know how long quarantine was going to last, obviously. There was this point where it's like, ‘oh, shit, this thing could go on indefinitely.’ I think maybe deep down, we didn't all believe that, but there was a sense that it was going on for far longer than people were comfortable with. Like everybody else, I was just feeling extremely isolated. I'm a people person by nature and I spend most of my working life out in the world and I'm around hundreds, if not thousands, of people per week doing what I do.
So, it was tough, man. It's still tough, in a lot of ways. And I missed connecting with my friends. That's where the podcast came from. A director friend of mine, Evan Leong, who did the movie Snakehead recently, came to me and said, “Why don't we try a podcast? I mean, everybody's at home. You'll have access to everybody because nobody's going anywhere, just like you, they’re sitting on their ass.” I was like, “Oh my God, that's an amazing idea.”
We started by doing [the podcast] and I was having some of the best in-depth, heartfelt, meaningful, intentional, meandering, random, thoughtful discussions that I had ever had. I think it was because we were all stationary, and present, and available to each other in that way.
I was on the road so much and working so much prior to the pandemic. You just see everybody in passing and you never really get a chance to have a really good quality conversation with people. And I was like, “Wow, this is really meaningful for me given where we were in the pandemic.” The fans really reacted to it. I was like, well, shit, if this could be a successful podcast series, it could definitely be a successful album series.
How far into the pandemic did you come up with the idea for the podcast?
It was about three or four months into the pandemic, I think. The weird thing about the pandemic is that the timeline is a fucking blur. On the one hand, it felt like it was five minutes, on the other hand, it felt like it was five years. And I say “was.” I mean, technically, it's still with us. You and I are still here on Zoom.
I probably had a couple of those songs recorded already prior to the pandemic, just because I was working on a new album anyway and then it just became clear. It was like, ‘oh, shit, just keeping in the spirit of the podcast, what if I did a whole album and an album series where I just did an obscene amount of collaborations?’ More than you have ever seen me do on an album in my entire career. Where I do maybe just one verse and a chorus, and it's more about the team. I've never done that. We ended up with 12 songs and 10 producers. There were at least three to four to five collaborators per song, whether that be guest artists, rappers, singers, musicians, bands, producers, DJs. It was wild.
Was it tougher putting those songs together now without personal interactions in the studio? How much did it change the dynamic?
It was easier, to be honest, because everybody's at home and you just had a lot more access to people on a timeline that was more conducive to completion. Normally, you’ve got to round people up. It takes time, bro. Even if you're working remotely, like we did on Mobile Homies, you’ve got to wait until you get off tour, until you put the kids to sleep at night, until you have your Sunday picnic, until you’re back from the movies, until you finish your own album, before I can get your verse.
But none of those things were factors. I was getting the music back and the vocals back pretty quickly. So that part of the collaboration was actually easier than in normal times. The only aspect of collaboration that was not possible was, obviously, getting everybody in the room together to create. But as time goes on, that's less and less a part of modern music making anyway. For better or for worse. Nonetheless, we got that shit done, bro.
When you were picking out collaborators for Mobile Homies, was it people who’d appeared on the podcast? Or good friends? Or people you wanted to work with?
All of the above. For me, I mean, obviously it made sense because of the podcast and the guests who are homies and friends. So, it made sense for me to work with Gab, rest in peace. I was very fortunate to be able to do that before he passed. Rakaa, from Dilated Peoples. These are all my friends who maybe I've done songs with them in the past, but maybe I haven't done songs with them in a long time. Maybe I've never worked with them ever before, but it also gave me a chance to work with people like Prince Paul. I mean, come on. This is a guy whose music really shaped my childhood, really inspired me. I mean, you and I wouldn't even be sitting here talking if it wasn't for Prince Paul and the influence he had over me and my life.
The thing that I also love about Mobile Homies is typically when I do a studio album, I'll work with one principal producer for the entire project, just because I like having that continuity of sound and the chemistry that develops with a person. But this gave me the opportunity and the chance and the excuse to work with a shit ton of people and not have to worry about thematically, “are these songs all consistent or cohesive?” We can just get in a room and record. Whatever happens, fine. We're going to throw it all on an album. We're going to arrange it and we're going to make sure that all the songs are great and that everybody's bars are tight, and that the beats knock and they slap and all that, but there's no theme to the album as a whole, other than it's in the spirit of collaboration. And we're just having a good time now trying to make some good music.
Which collaboration did you have the most fun with on this album?
Probably “This Song's Delicious” with Sitcom Dad. No, not Randall Park, Sitcom Dad. That was one of the few songs that we actually did do in person. He and I were in the studio, and we wrote it together in LA just before the pandemic started. For Always Be My Maybe, the Netflix joint that we did, all the Hello Peril songs, we did it the exact same way. And it was just nice to be able to get the room and just the whole thing with those songs with Sitcom Dad, or that we just try to be as funny as we can, have fun.
That's really the only point. And if I make him laugh, he does not laugh easily. For a comedic actor, it's hard to make him laugh. And maybe it's because he's around so many funny people all the time. I knew that if I wrote something and he laughs, it's good. And if he writes something and I laugh, then I know it's good. So that was really the goal for me in those writing sessions, that I was going to make this guy fucking laugh when I was writing this shit. And then Dan just has such a great, weird, twisted sense of humor anyway. The three of us are just a fucking awesome combination.
Had you met Sitcom Dad before Always Be My Maybe?
You mean Randall? He told me that he saw me eating a sandwich at a deli here in Oakland.
Which one?
Genova. Genova was a legendary deli in Oakland. It's no longer there. They still have them in other parts of the Bay Area. A lot of people, when they would come to the East Bay, they would want to go there, since it’s a landmark. And he told me, he was with a friend of his and he saw me years ago eating a sandwich, but he said he was too nervous to say anything. And so, no, we had never met or worked together until we did the songs for Always Be My Maybe at Dan's house. That was the first time we had met. And then we actually recorded the songs before I came in and shot my scenes. I shot my scenes, I think a month or two later. He's just such a great guy, man. Wait ‘til you see this video.
So, he was a fan of yours before you guys worked together on Always Be My Maybe?
Apparently, yes. We became really good friends on set during Always Be My Maybe. He’s a huge hip-hop head. And we talked a lot about music, and a lot about my music, and he asked me a lot of questions and I asked him a lot of questions about his occupation. And we've just been great friends ever since.
He's very genuine and unpretentious. And even for the name that he has and the success that he's had, he's one of the most down-to-earth, humble people that you could ever meet.
Was “My City” your last collaboration with Gift of Gab?
Yeah, yeah.
I interviewed him years ago. He was really cool. He seemed like a great person.
Yeah. There’ll never be another, man. That's all I can say. He was probably one of the most unique people I've ever met in my life. Just totally on his own wavelength. And anybody that knows him and knows him well, will tell you the same thing. He was a special person.
When I really think about who he was as a person, it's really not that different from who he was as an artist. He was on a journey. Everything for him, he approached it as if it was a quest. He was not interested in the trappings of life. He didn't have a car. He didn't have a driver's license. He didn't have a lot of earthly belongings. And it wasn't because he couldn't afford them. He wasn't interested in the trappings of life. He was interested in the meaning of life.
And there's very few people who have that purity of intention that I know. Everybody I know is trying to get the bag or really trying to achieve in a different way. Gab was trying to discover. You get that when you listen to his music. He was just on this mission and this journey to understand. And if you ever went to his place, I mean, it was just books everywhere. The most obscure books that you could only get at these boutique bookstores, and from these really obscure independent publishers and on really esoteric subjects. And just stacks and stacks of notebooks everywhere. And then maybe a TV and a peloton, a mic set up, or a bed, and that's pretty much it. That's how he lived his life.
He was successful too. I mean, it's not like he couldn't afford anything he wanted. It's just not what he wanted. And he was always that way. It was not like he had some epiphany later in life and he lived this monk-like lifestyle. He was that way from the moment I met him when we were teenagers.
And I think that music was just one of the vehicles by which he felt he could help himself answer some of these questions of life. Music was a spiritual path for him in order to help himself just understand and navigate this giant cloud. And that's the type of dude he was, man.
When did you first meet him?
I met Gab when I was 17. I might have been 18, as a freshman at UC Davis. I became really great friends with Chief Xcel really quickly. We bonded really fast. Chief Xcel in turn introduced me to Gab shortly thereafter, because Blackalicious had been a group since high school. And it's really remarkable, his journey, but also both of their journeys, if you really think about it. Just the length of time, the amount of time that they knew each other. There had been many iterations of them as a duo, as a partnership.
And so, I met Gab. I think he's one or two years older than me at the time. I've been rapping since high school, but as far as with my own eyes, to this day he was the best rapper I had ever seen or heard in my life at the time. He was just so far advanced and beyond everybody at that time.
I tell people I became great — Gab was great from day one. There's a difference. Gab was always great. So, it was just mind-blowing. I mean, imagine just sitting there as a teenager, in a circle, me, him, Lateef, various other rappers that would come by and hang out. DJ Shadow on the decks, Chief Xcel on the decks, et cetera, a bunch of people just in a living room rapping for hours. And just sitting shoulder to shoulder with these guys in a circle, just rapping for hours and hours. And every night I was like, this is crazy. I've never been this inspired in my life. If I knew that this was the path that I was supposed to be on early in life, being with those guys, being with him at that moment confirmed it all.
Before “Enough About Me,” you’re talking with The Grouch about your son not believing that people used to buy CDs. First of all, is your son a fan of your music?
He says he is. And actually, I think that's smart of him to say.
How old is he?
He's 12. But he's a huge hip-hop head. It's just that this generation's hip-hop is different.
When you first came out, you were on Solesides. How do you view the label’s legacy?
I think we absolutely were pioneers. Before us, there weren't really a lot of independent, underground hip-hop labels, particularly on the West Coast, that had distribution deals, full-on staff, a release schedule, shooting videos, multiple releases per year. We came before Stones Throw. We came before Def Jux. And these are all my friends. This is just a matter of historical fact is all I'm saying. We showed the world that it was possible to still release music that was groundbreaking, that could create careers, would have staying power and be outside of the mainstream major label machine.
Prior to Solesides, a lot of people felt like there was only one way to do it. And that was to get signed to a major label. We showed that not only was it possible to do that, it wasn't even necessary. And that you could have all these things that I just mentioned and be independent.
Now I look at it, 30 years later, I mean, I might be one of a handful of artists that started when I did that owns his entire catalog. I can't even say that about the other guys in Quannum. And I learned all of that from Solesides and then on into Quannum. This is a legacy. It goes beyond just music. This is a legacy that I will be able to pass on to my son. Maybe he knows this. Maybe that's why he says I'm his favorite rapper.
But it didn't start off as a business strategy. When we started the label, we didn't start it as a “platform” as people would call it now. There was no global plan for domination being an independent label. We did it at a necessity because nobody would sign us. It was either you make your own records or you make no records. Those were our two choices and we weren't going to choose the latter.
On Mobile Homies, there’s “Long Shot” with Joyo Velarde, your wife. Is your verse about meeting her?
Yeah, so that song was actually brought to us by Galactic, half written by another guy. I was like, "Yeah, this is cool. I bet Joyo would sound great on this thing." Joyo came in. She contributed to the writing. I added a verse in that regard and then it became “Long Shot.”
Did she enjoy it?
Oh, yeah. And it was so great for me to just be able to hear her recording full songs again.
So, are you still doing the Mobile Homies Podcast?
I’m going to start it up again in the summer. I'm finishing up another album right now. So once that's done and the touring is over for Mobile Homies, the album.
The other album is different from another Mobile Homies project?
It’s another Lyrics Born studio album. I have a pretty ambitious release schedule over the next two years.
But you’re planning on doing more installments of Mobile Homies?
I would like to do Mobile Homies albums once every year to year-and-a-half. That's the plan. Like I said, I wanted to turn it into an album series. So that's why this was called ‘Season 1.’ And as we go on, there'll be more and more.
I want to do as many of these as I can and it's great too, because I've already got songs that potentially could go on the next one. And it's great because I run into people on the street and I'm like, "Hey man, let's do a song together." "Cool. For what?" "I don't know, let's just do it." And that's typically how these things end up. And you come up with just some of the wildest, most random collabs. And that's what I love, bro. I love collaborating. I really, really do.
On a different note, Joseph “Jazzbo” Patel, your friend and Solesides founding member, is now an Oscar and GRAMMY winner for being a producer of Summer of Soul.
It's so fucking awesome. Can you believe that shit? I blow him up. I blow him up every day. I don't think I've ever sent the fire emoji this much ever in my lifetime. I am so fucking happy for him, man.
I think that's another part of the Solesides legacy that I think really needs to be examined is the sheer amount of success stories that the label has produced. There are obviously all the groups. But then from Jazzbo, to Jeff Chang, to Lydia Popovich who went on to become an executive at Apple, to Isaac Bess, who went on to become an executive at TikTok, to DJ D-Sharp, who's the DJ for the Golden State Warriors. There’s just so many and I'm so proud of that. There are so many success stories. And those are just the people that you've heard about. There are other people that went on to do other big things, but just in different areas of life. Did you see the movie?
Yeah, it’s great.
And I never thought that he'd win a GRAMMY before any of us. He won a GRAMMY before all the musicians did. We talked on the phone about a month and a half ago, before the Academy Awards and all that. We talked for a good two hours. We hadn't talked in about a year before that. And it was a great conversation. And I'm so happy and I'm so proud of him, man. He's worked very, very hard over the years. It couldn't happen to a better dude, to be honest with you.
We always ask people to name their top 5 albums of all time. Can you name yours?
Boogie Down Productions’ By Any Means Necessary. Kool G Rap & DJ Polo’s Road to the Riches. Bob Marley’s Legend. Curtis Mayfield’s Sweet Exorcist. They're bottle-necking in my mind, bro. Paid in Full by Eric B. & Rakim. I'm just telling you the albums that changed my life. James Brown’s In the Jungle Groove. Main Source’s Breaking Atoms. A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory, of course. De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising, bro.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited from the original transcript for length and clarity.
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