Win the Sound of Sunshine

I've been aware of Michael since the first joint by Disposable Heroes Of HipHoprisy broke. It was obvious then, that he was somewhat more thoughtful than your average hip-hop artist. Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury was more conscious than any other 3 "conscious rap" albums from that year put together. Just listen to "Television, The Drug Of The Nation" or the "Satanic Reverses."

The evolution into Spearhead was both welcome and un for me. I was a fan, but I thought the music lost some of its grit. Don't get me wrong, there are PLENTY of individual tracks that blew my mind... just as a whole, it was lighter fare. Over the years, I decided that when Spearhead worked, it really worked... but my man Michael takes risks, and sometimes they don't pay off.

The songs "Oh My God" & "Rock The Nation" came out in 2001, and I was happily blown away. The rest of the Stay Human album didn't seem as powerful to me, but I have pretty high standards.

Still, I was happy to notice that he was playing the next summer at Montreux where I also had a gig. Not surprisingly, we met early one morning in the rain as a some artists, press, and DJ types were huddled under some shelter passing around a rather large spliff. He had just arrived and didn't know the town, so I offered to be a tour guide. After the prerequisite guide duties (ATM, supermarket, backstage food court etc.) we wound up hanging out for a couple days. I found him to be a truly amazing person.

The first thing I noticed was that he goes barefoot everywhere. That said, funny enough, in person he was much more hardcore than on CD. While his music had become a bit too light for my tastes, his personality and the comments he made about stuff tended to be much darker and gloomier than I had imagined. It seemed he was struggling with some deep inner battle between wanting to be a light and shiny person and his clear knowledge that shit was hella fucked up and getting worse. 9 months after 9-11 was a depressing time.

Anyway, I saw him many times after that over the years, and noticed him becoming more and more light and shiny. Amazingly so. I remember times when he would wade out into crowds of people and fearlessly hug every single person who wanted to hug him. When the sound system would shut down he would keep playing acoustic surrounded by a throng of fans. I was duly impressed.

However, his fearlessness reached a new height when he traveled to the Middle East and walked barefoot singing and smiling through such danger zones as Palestine & Iraq. If you haven't seen the documentary about his trip, run (don't walk) and find a copy of "I Am Not Alone" (2007) ... I'm serious.

There isn't much I can say about him or his music that hasn't been said ad nauseum elsewhere. So, I won't go on. I will just rap up this comment by saying that there are few people in popular music these days with as much intelligence, insight, love, and light as this immensely loveable, San Franciscan, dreadlocked, dusty foot giant.

Keep shining.