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9/27/2006 What's up? I'm good. I'm a little tired today but I'm good. Black October is about to drop. How do you feel about the album? I'm real happy with it. I feel good. This is your second album in a year. Before that, you weren't dropping albums very often. Why have you been dropping more frequently? I have the opportunity to drop them. That's all I need. Before I didn't have the opportunity to drop them as quickly as I would have liked to. How often can you drop without compromising your quality? I would like to drop one a year. How do you like your situation at Female Fun? It's cool. As with all independents, it's a grind and you have to be able and ready to grind it out. The single, "Black October," is real dope. You talked a lot about your upcoming prison sentence. Was that an easy track to do? It wasn't that hard. My situation is what it is. It was pretty easy. I just went in and did it. I always think about what I do and what I see every day, so everything you hear on my album is a true story. It seems like you're approaching your upcoming jail bid with a sense of humor. Yeah. You have to do what you have to do. Nobody wants to go to jail, but if you have to go, you have to go. I'm just going to get it over with. It's only eight months. I'm going to do it and get home soon. Just don't send you any ghetto books. I already know about that. Send me something uplifting that I can use. Those ghetto books don't do anything to me. You could put about five of those books in a plastic bag, read one, pull out another one, and it's the same thing all over again. What books do you like to read? I like to read non-fiction. I read a good one called Blue Blood. I also read Step Up. That was about a cop who worked in a precinct in the Bronx. There's another one I read about a guy from Birmingham, England. He was Muslim and was giving aid to the people of Afghanistan and all of a sudden they claimed him to be a spy. He was taken to a detention camp. I would definitely recommend reading books like this, books that will uplift you. I like to read real-life stories. I like to read about real things. I don't read a lot of fiction books because I don't deal with fiction. I deal with reality. There's nothing wrong with people who want to read fiction books, but it's just not my preference. Are you going to write a lot in jail? As much as I can. It's not like I can really work on music because I can't have an iPod or a CD player in there. I'll be writing lyrics. I'll do what I regularly do. I won't be able to move around like I normally do. A lot of rappers use jail for street credibility. How do you feel about that? It's a new era. They're trying to portray what they think people want to see. I'm not the one to say dudes are fake, but a lot of these dudes aren't really real with it and they have no idea what they're talking about. A lot of these things are based on an image and a lot of negative things are glamorized and glorified. My freedom is being taken away. I definitely don't want to glorify that. You have a lot of dope production on Black October. What's it like working with Diamond D? I've known Diamond for a long time. I've been knowing him since '87 or '88. It's always cool working with Diamond. Is there any chance for a full-length Sadat/Diamond album? Yeah. We've always been talking about that. At one point we were supposed to also hook up with Jay Dee. You also got some producers like J-Zone who grew up on Brand Nubian. How is it working with the younger producers? It's good. I don't care where the beat comes from. As long as it sounds good, I'm with it. Each one, teach one. That's how it's supposed to be anyway. Speaking of teaching, are you still teaching? I haven't been teaching for three years because of these albums. Are you going to get back into it? I would like to. Experience and Education dropped a year ago. Was that album successful for you? It was doing what it needed to do. Studio Distribution shut down in the middle of the album dropping so that stalled things for a minute. It did what I thought it could do. Were you happy with the response to the "Back to New York" record? Yeah, I was. A lot of people told me that was one of their favorite tracks, so that was cool. Did your collaboration with Jack Johnson ever go down? Yeah. I don't know when the song is coming out but it went down. It was cool. I would also like to work with the Gorillaz. You have a lot of range where you can work with artists outside of hip-hip. How do you do that? I think that's because I'm flexible and I'm willing to bend. I'm professional about it and I do what I have to do. What do you learn working with artists in other genres? You get a different perspective on things and you learn new things and how to adapt and blend in. You don't ever want to burn down bridges. That same bridge you burn down you may have to cross someday. What's going on with Boss Money today? They're still doing it. They got a new thing that they're doing. They're going to be at my video shoot. Are you still coaching basketball? Yeah. This summer I coached the Riverside Church. I came up through that program. We had a pretty good summer. We won a couple of tournaments. There were a lot of great players to come up through there. Yeah. Ron Artest, Kenny Anderson, Malik Sealy…a lot of players came through the system. I played with the original Riverside teams and the AAU travel teams. Basketball and hip-hop go hand-in-hand. Why is that? A lot of basketball players want to be rappers and a lot of rappers want to be basketball players. A lot of places, especially in New York in Manhattan and the Bronx, you might have 50 high schools but only seven of them play football. Every school has basketball. It's an urban sport. You do it outside in the parks just like you do hip-hop outside. That's how it goes together. Do you play any pick-up today? I still play. I haven't played this summer as much as I would have liked to but I still play a little bit. Are you the best combination of basketball player/MC? Maybe not right now. Earlier I was one of the best when I was younger and I was really playing like that. I played with Malik Sealy and Kenny Anderson. When I was first coming out I was much more competitive. I can still shoot though. What about you in your prime playing Cam or Mase in their prime? That would have been good to see. They're both uptown dudes. I would have liked to go up against them in their prime when they were really playing like that. Will we ever see a Sadat X/Ron Artest track? Big Ron Ron? I would like to. I've been following him ever since high school. He played with a friend of mine, Shamgod. I would definitely like to do something with Ron. It's been a long time since Malik Sealy passed away. What do you remember most about him? From when we were coming up and we were playing for Riverside, he wasn't the most outspoken person. He let it come out in his game. He wasn't the most exciting player but he had his stats. You would look at his stats at the end of the game and he would have 20 points, 8 rebounds and 3 or 4 assists. He was consistent and he was caring to the community. He was from the Bronx. It was a tragedy when he passed. He was a real genuine, good guy. Whatever happened to the song you did with the Neptunes? I don't know what they did with the song, but I did it. I have no idea if it's going to come out. They do so much stuff and so many songs. They might surprise me one day and it might pop up on something. Who knows? What's going on with Brand Nubian today? We would like to work on a new album when I get back. We would definitely like to do that. How come Brand Nubian isn't on Babygrande anymore? At the time it was probably creative differences. I don't have anything against Chuck. We just thought it was time to move on. What label will the next Brand Nubian album come out on? We haven't gotten that far yet, but we will be looking for somewhere to put it out on. What'd you think of Lord Jamar's 5% album? I think it's the album of the year. It's very well thought-out and it's very well-constructed. It has a message that's needed for today. You have a very unique style of rap. Do you every worry that you can be too left-field for hip-hop? I don't think so. I've always done my own thing. Everything I talk about is the truth so it shouldn't matter if it's left-field of not. Has anyone told you that you sound like Dave Chappelle? A couple of times. My voice has separated me from other rappers. You have other rappers that sound similar in tone. My voice separated me from other people and gave me my own identity. You start serving your jail term October 20. What are you doing for the next few weeks? I'm going to work on some more songs. I'll see my family and just get prepared to go in. Can fans write you? Once I know where I'm at, I'm definitely going to have it put on my MySpace. I plan to respond to as many letters as I can. What advice do you have for the young MC's on the come up? Have your own identity and not as much piggy-backing off the next person. Try to have your own style and individuality. What do you want to say to everybody? Keep checking my MySpace. Send me books but no ghetto books! http://myspace.com/sadatx

By Brian Kayser

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