Amir Sulaiman

There's been a lot of talk about hip-hop having to look itself in the mirror, in order to change what should have been changed 20 years ago. Rap music splintered into a number of different sub-genres, and with it came a bit of elitism which made one part of the audience hate another for foolish reasons. Amir Sulaiman has been rapping and doing spoken word for a few years, and if the name is familiar, he had been featured on HBO's Def Poetry. He has released two albums, and if you haven't heard him, make 2007 the year to take a serious listen, as he is one of the more gifted poets of our time, up there with Saul Williams, Beau Sia, and Mos Def.

Like A Thief In The Night (Uprising) is a plea for unity and understanding through love, and in fact love is the running theme throughout this album. It is refreshing to hear something like this, because love is not something that is generally celebrated in hip-hop. Or at least, everyone darts around the subject but Amir goes right into it, and it doesn't sound corny. When he rhymes in "How Beautiful", you're taken aback by what he's saying, and maybe that is why he did it, in order for people to stop, take time, and look at the world around us. We tend to get caught up in the B.S., and he touches on that a bit in "Change Gonna Come", where he esseentially shines the light on hatred, bigotry, and racism, and says more or less "now tell me why you're angry at me".

He speaks eloquently, so songs go back and forth between dropping rhymes in a hip-hop manner, and doing spoken word rhythmically. It's two sides of the same coin, but as a writer and public speaker, he knows how and when to say things at the right time, so it doesn't matter if you get heads or tails, you still get some exceptional music. Helping him out on the album are Mos Def (in "When I Die"), Goapele, and Abi Odun of The Last Poets. Like A Thief In The Night is one that must be listened to in full during the first sitting, then listened and listened to many times over.

(Like A Thief In The Night is scheduled for a May 15th release, but can be pre-ordered through Uprising Records.)



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NOW, WE TAKE A LOOK AND LISTEN TO MUSIC OUTSIDE OF THE HIP-HOP REALM...

Violet by Boy In Static (Mush/Dirty Loop) is an album that you really have to be in the mood for, but when you are, it will be something you'll never forget. The boy in question is actually a grown man by the name of Alex Chen, whose approach to his brand of pop music is to reveal personal thoughts and reflections in a manner that can be considered dreamy, ethereal, and very poignant.

The first track, "First Love", sounds very European-influenced, with the vocals going through a layer of reverb while a guitar chimes through and stereophonic sleigh bells dance through the soundscape as he sings about the one who he'll always remember. Other songs like 'Immortal", "December", and "Catching Death" seems as if he was listening to a lot of Simon & Garfunkel, Love & Rockets, New Order, and Radiohead. before he recorded them, and yet Boy In Static doesn't necessarily sound like either of them. The lyrics sound like something one would find in a diary or in a composition book, waiting to be read but only at the right time. Chen doesn't have an aggressive voice, but with a gentle approach he is able to bring out as much emotion as anyone who may sing with a lot of strength and vibrato.

Violet comes off like the ultimate road trip soundtrack CD, where you're with a group of friends or significant other, and you're questioning life and accepting the ugliness and beauty for what it is. Or it could be the album you listen to 20 years from now while reflecting on your life, asking if you've done everything you wanted, and if you are willing to go another 20 and fine out if there's more in store. In "Catching Death", with a rhythmless backing he says:

Our words are cold, our breath is white
we're catching death tonight
afraid to sleep, afraid to cry
the sunlight crawls inside
our regrets escape the windows glow
too young to be left alone

This leads to the album's closing track, the haunting and beautiful "Leave You Blind". The elements observed in "Catching Death" are revived one last time:

The sound of skies are all overrun
by angry gods who disappear when morning comes
stare into the sky until the sunlight leaves you blind
stare into the sky and when it bleeds back into white
it leaves us nowhere

The song then leads into an instrumental passage which takes it close to the eight minute mark, and not once does it get boring. The layers of guitar and what sounds like an accordian (nice use of it too) makes it sound like a slightly twisted take of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless album. The repetitiveness just helps drive the song's point home, and as the drums signal the end of the song, it makes a slow fade out into that sunlight and you almost don't want it to end.

Chen, as Boy In Static, will become an important and influential singer/songwriter if he keeps up with the quality of work he presents on Violet. I can see fans easily embracing these songs and turning it into lifelong mantras, the material is worth that type of praise. In a live setting he is backed by a full band, and I can only see the intensity of his compositions moving to a higher level when played in a room full of people.

He is someone everyone should keep an eye out for.

(Violet will be released in the U.S. on June 19th, and is available for pre-order through CD Universe.)

- Music for America

Amir Sulaiman does get lost in his own head. The beat poet and emcee gets even more lost on the road. He's not the type to keep one eye on CNN at all times, watching for the next college massacre, world affairs propaganda, or who else enlisted Anna Nicole's offspring.

When radio jockey Don Imus' foot made that nationally exposed beeline for his fat mouth, Sulaiman's grassroots promotion of Like a Thief in the Night was in full swing. Unable to escape the Crypt Keeper-like image of Imus' mug plastered all over national media outlets, Sulaiman needed to know more. A Google search of "nappy-headed hos" made him angry, but not because it was such a blatant racist remark. His three young daughters came to mind first, along with the world where their father's future legacy in the hip-hop arts might be tainted by the vocal blasphemy of an old fogy radio man with no clue to the ramifications of his words.

Rush Limbaugh wasn't the "fat, pill-popping loser" here. It wasn't that "bowtie-wearing pussy" Tucker Carlson. It was hip-hop that was raped of its integrity once again.

"It's a social issue, in a way. It's an issue with gender, but it's also an issue dealing with race, which is the most explosive issue in America," Sulaiman says. "This particular terminology he used, Ônappy-headed ho,' that is not born in hip-hop. It's not necessarily like a Ku Klux Klan-type of talk. I've heard this terminology before and I've heard it from people who look like me. So there we have to answer real questions. Like, is it OK for someone who looks like me to say that about our own women? Is it admissible? Is it OK? It still hurts."

Hip-hop music is in a constant wave of change, be it positive or negative. When controversial urban solecisms are uttered by white folk, the media always blames rap music.

On this day we find Sulaiman's proletariat adventure in a grocery store in Harlem - a borough over from where his brother lives in Brooklyn. Tomorrow, the Rochester-born realist-lyricist will borough-jump again to deliver an advance of his debut to Abi Odun of the legendary Last Poets, whose thoughts make up the track "We Are the Revolution."

The Last Poets' words were often controversial. Imus wouldn't know of their prose because he's the problem with the rap art - never followed the lineage, only used the popularity knockoff to better his cause. He was bit in the ass this time, but Sulaiman doesn't see hip-hop getting off so lucky.

Case in point: Dr. Dre's The Chronic, according to Sulaiman, is "a classic hip-hop album that changed the face of hip-hop for everything that went after it."

"Man, I fear the day my daughters hear something like that," Sulaiman says of the record's misogynistic levels. "It's not that it's just these guys making this music. Or when this music comes on in the club, it's not just a bunch of dudes on the dance floor. So many women - educated, intelligent, beautiful women - they love The Chronic, too. So it's a real problem for us as a community. It's not just rap records. It's not just the record labels. It's not just the producers. It's not just Imus. It's not just the people who buy it; it's not just the people who listen to it; it's not those who dance to it in the club. It's a social disease. Imus is like a blister that's just showing the time of a larger disease."

Sulaiman's message is clearer than most in his field. He's a man with a pad and pen - no glamour or glitz, no mainstream back rub, no bratty mightier-than-thou attitude. A mind struggler, lyric juggler, hip-hop sleepwalker, but most of all a provider, Sulaiman would like to see the vicious cycle come to an end.

In one of a collection of a cappella romps on Like a Thief in the Night, he proclaims, "We need more black John Mayers to win Grammys for singing songs about our daughters / Because we are caught in a culture of defeatism."

Right now the dialogue between cultures has lost any semblance of togetherness, Sulaiman says. In a nation for which many peoples are scaling walls and fighting through barbed wire, communism, and apartheid to join in on its freedom, we've become separated by words. What's right verses what's wrong seems to be a common theme in Sulaiman's dome, which includes a past stint on HBO's Def Poetry Jam.

Here he is, an ex-high school English teacher - a second generation West Indian with an Upstate New York accent - hoping to push hip-hop to extraordinary levels at a time when flash'll get you laid, true lyricism doesn't always pay, and where Sulaiman says, "It would not be absurd for someone to have a song called ÔNappy-headed Ho.'"

"I'd rather hip-hop take responsibility for itself," he says.


- Chord Magazine

Uprising Records artist, Amir Sulaiman has just been added to KRS One's upcoming tour celebrating the release of the blastmaster's upcoming full-length Hip Hop Lives produced by Marley Marl. Amir who is set to release his full-length album Like A Thief In The Night said of the prospect "Hip Hop has been under fire recently. There is a debate within the community if hip hop is dead. Also, with vocal opponents like Oprah Winfrey and Bill O'Reilly holding hip hop accountable for the ills in society; this tour addresses both issues by showing not only that hip hop is alive but it endorsing life and builds people up rather than tearing them down." Utilizing beats and live instrumentation from such producers as Minnesota among others and guest appearances from such artists as Mos Def, Goapele and The Last Poets, Amir has made an album that captures his love of poetry, hip hop and rock. Some poets release albums that are poems recited to music, I wanted to make music period. Though I have a name and appear frequently in circles that co-exist with the hip hop culture, I also greatly admire rock music. A lot of what influenced my album was bands such as Radiohead and Portishead. I am pretty pleased with the result. Press is also starting to echo that satisfaction with the album such as a recent review on Music For America.org proclaiming Amir is one of the more gifted poets of our time, up there with Saul Williams, Beau Sia and Mos Def? and going on to say of the album Like A Thief In The Night is one (album) that must be listened to in full during the first sitting, then listened and listened to many times over.

Sulaiman who is a highly regarded poet has appeared on HBO's Def Poetry Jam twice which led to him being invited by host Mos Def to appear on the BreedLove Odyssey Tour with Def, Talib Kweli, Pharoah Monche and Jean Grae in front of thousands of people each night. Highly immersed in education, Sulaiman who was a English and history teacher in high school for years, now works for an organization called Youth Speaks. Sulaiman explains I host workshops for young people on poetry and how to express themselves through words. Education without art is soulless so I enjoy the opportunity to combine these two.? A devout Muslim and an American, Sulaiman has a unique and not often viewed perspective from an American media standpoint. However he proclaims that "my poetry is rooted in virtues that all religions and cultures agree upon: truth, justice, charity, mercy. It is universal in that way."

TOUR DATES BELOW, MORE DATES TO BE ADDED SHORTLY

Date City Venue
5/8 Tampa, FL
5/9 Miami, FL Studio A
5/12 Greensboro, NC Cat’s Cradle
5/15 Baltimore, MD Otto Bar
5/18 Washington DC Black Cat
5/20 New York, NY Irving Plaza
5/23 Philadelphia, PA World Music Cafe - URBNET.COM

"The immediate impulse upon hearing Amir is some sort of mutant hip-hop hybrid of KRS-One and Saul Williams....and it doesn't really get more hip-hop than that. The crowd will definitely dig it." Brandon Perkins, Associate Editor, URB Magazine
- URB MAGAZINE

Even though Like a Thief in the Night is Amir Sulaiman's third album, it's his first majorly distributed release and it should gain much attention outside of the underground scene he's been a part of for years. With loads of respect and praises from fellow hip-hop all-stars such as Mos Def (who makes an appearance on the album) and Russell Simmons, Sulaiman is ready to take on the nation with his intelligent and deep rhymes, which never fail to express the pain and emotion behind them. - URB MAGAZINE

This Rochester, New York native’s status as a black Muslim living in America informs his mostly fiery, always provocative Like A Thief In The Night. Sulaiman spits his lyrics in rap and spoken word form on the largely impressive effort, which vacillates between bona fide rap tunes and straight up acapella spoken word performances that rail against America’s oppressive, racist infrastructure, recognize black pride and soberly reflect on everyday living. Although he’s capable of holding things down on his own, strong guest appearances from Mos Def (“When I Die”) and Goapele (”They Don’t Know”) provide a respite from Sulaiman’s virtually non-stop assault. With his intense subject matter Sulaiman sounds like he’s about to bust a vessel as he delivers some of his work. Even though this passion gives his work extra urgency, it can come off as forced. Nonetheless, Like A Thief In The Night strikes hard. - The Source

If you’re not familiar with Amir Sulaiman, you should be. This gifted rhymesmith takes hip-hop back to it’s revolutionary roots, a time when rappers used lyrics like weapons. On Like A Thief In The Night(which is brilliantly produced by Minnesota), Sulaiman spits a barrage of Knowledge that echoes the brash style of Chuck D., with an in-your-face approach reminiscent of Sticky Fingaz of Onyx. The album begins with a spoken-word tirade where Sulaiman blasts materialism and the state of politics. But it’s not just a bunch of empty bitching, as the record is full of messages of hope and solutions for change. On “How BeautifulAre You,” he calls for women to stand up against the misogyny that dominates mainstream rap music. It’s a shame that while media blasts hip-hop for its negative images, positive artists like him fall under the radar. (Uprising; uprisingrecords.com) Eddie Fleisher


- Alternative Press

There's been a lot of talk about hip-hop having to look itself in the mirror, in order to change what should have been changed 20 years ago. Rap music splintered into a number of different sub-genres, and with it came a bit of elitism which made one part of the audience hate another for foolish reasons. Amir Sulaiman has been rapping and doing spoken word for a few years, and if the name is familiar, he had been featured on HBO's Def Poetry. He has released two albums, and if you haven't heard him, make 2007 the year to take a serious listen, as he is one of the more gifted poets of our time, up there with Saul Williams, Beau Sia, and Mos Def.

Like A Thief In The Night (Uprising) is a plea for unity and understanding through love, and in fact love is the running theme throughout this album. It is refreshing to hear something like this, because love is not something that is generally celebrated in hip-hop. Or at least, everyone darts around the subject but Amir goes right into it, and it doesn't sound corny. When he rhymes in "How Beautiful", you're taken aback by what he's saying, and maybe that is why he did it, in order for people to stop, take time, and look at the world around us. We tend to get caught up in the B.S., and he touches on that a bit in "Change Gonna Come", where he esseentially shines the light on hatred, bigotry, and racism, and says more or less "now tell me why you're angry at me".

He speaks eloquently, so songs go back and forth between dropping rhymes in a hip-hop manner, and doing spoken word rhythmically. It's two sides of the same coin, but as a writer and public speaker, he knows how and when to say things at the right time, so it doesn't matter if you get heads or tails, you still get some exceptional music. Helping him out on the album are Mos Def (in "When I Die"), Goapele, and Abi Odun of The Last Poets. Like A Thief In The Night is one that must be listened to in full during the first sitting, then listened and listened to many times over.

(Like A Thief In The Night is scheduled for a May 15th release, but can be pre-ordered through Uprising Records.)

- Music For America- musicforamerica.org

Uprising Records, the label that delivered the hugely successful multi-platinum band, Fall Out Boy, is proud to announce the upcoming release of “Like A Thief in The Night”, the national debut by accomplished poet, lyricist, activist, and bonafide recording artist, Amir Sulaiman. The album is described as “A Poetic diatribe spit-like fire over a collage of hard hitting hip-hop, anguished neo-soul, and gritty Portishead-esque dirges.” In a nutshell…this ground-breaking album signals a desired change bringing about a level of consciousness sorely needed in today’s music industry and society in general.




Amir Sulaiman’s new album may well prove to be one of the most innovative, and dynamic albums of 2007. Fusing disparate genre’s with impassioned narratives of tragedy, redemption, and above all…revolution. Boasting guest appearances from Mos Def, Goapele, and The Last Poets, “Like A Thief in The Night” has created a soundscape that could easily serve as the score for a classic Martin Scorcese film. A tour de force of razor sharp lyricism, and innovative sonic stylings. “Like A Thief in The Night” will appeal to both the street hustler, hipster, and intellectual alike. The album features production from Minnesota (Ghostface Killah, Big Pun, Lil’ Kim, and Mos Def).




Starting with Amir Sulaiman’s 2006 appearances on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and the entire national Breed Love Odyssey Tour with friends Mos Def and Talib Kweli – there has been a steady but ever increasing buzz building around Amir quickly gaining the attention of everyone from Kanye West and Russell Simmons (who referred to Amir as “blessed”), to Dave Chapelle, Black Thought, and Pharoah Monch. In addition, organizations such as the ACLU, Amnesty International and Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition have been requesting Amir to be a spokesman on various upcoming campaigns.




Consistently working across the United States and Canada, Amir has shared the stage with artists such as Kanye West, Lauryn Hill, Common, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Pharoah Monch, Floetry, Black Thought of The Roots, Goapele, Stevie Wonder, The Last Poets, Dead Prez, Ghostface of Wu-Tang Clan, MOP, and more.




- Planet Meridian