Hip-hop followers around the globe have been shocked this week to listen to the unhappy information that one among California rap’s best innovators of all time, Saafir, died Tuesday morning. As reported in a Post on Instagram of longtime buddy and collaborator Xzibit, Saafir “The Saucy Nomad” handed away surrounded by family members. He was 54 years outdated.
Xzibit was one-third, together with Saafir and Ras Kass, of the Californian rap supergroup Golden State Project, initially referred to as the “Golden State Warriors” till a cease-and-desist name from the NBA group compelled them to alter, beginning a sequence of inner business points, whose years of delay have made the Golden State Project album second solely to Dr Dre’s “Detox” when it comes to anticipated West Coast rap albums that by no means existed.
But Golden State Project and the handful of lauded singles we bought from the trio, like “3 Card Molly” and “Plastic Surgery,” have been only one chapter in one among California’s most compelling rap careers. Oakland native, Saafir – born Reggie Gibson – debuted on Digital Underground’s 1993 B-side “Carry the Way” from the album “The Body Hat Syndrome.” Over infectiously luscious funk manufacturing, Saafir’s verses have been in contrast to something in hip-hop on the time. A completely managed refined confidence over a very unpredictable avant-garde circulate, Saafir was like a glitch in rap’s soundscape that listeners could not look away from. It turned a type of monumental, career-making verses that landed Saafir a take care of Quincy Jones’ Warner Bros. Qwest Records.
The following yr noticed Saafir make two completely monumental and memorable contributions to hip-hop. One was his debut, “Boxcar Sessions,” an extremely left-field report that was nonetheless decidedly rooted in hip-hop, although nonetheless sounding mild years forward of its time. The single “Light Sleeper” got here with a music video that boasted a floating, disembodied head that reached about midway down, creating a picture that had no aesthetic father within the tradition on the time. The observe’s manufacturing and extra conventional however equally stellar B-side “Battle Drill” have been simple head-turners that helped extra skeptical listeners embrace such a special strategy to rap.
Saafir’s different large second in 1994 was being the catalyst for one of many greatest rap battles of all time when, after Hieroglyphics member Casual failed to indicate as much as a recording session for Saafir’s album, pressure escalated into an on-air battle at KMEL’s soon-to-be world-renowned Wake Up Show, a 12-round back-and-forth that started with Saafir vs. Casual and resulted within the Saafir Hobo Junction group tackling all of the hieroglyphics. It’s a battle that each hip-hop historian has traded, downloaded, or streamed, and by unhappy coincidence, its thirtieth anniversary fell precisely in the future earlier than Saafir’s demise.
While Saafir’s 2006 indie comeback album, “Good Game: The Return,” made him a sentimental favourite for underground rap followers to root for, his highest-profile appearances across the flip of the millennium have been in entrance of the display screen with cameos in “Many Men” and Mya’s “My First Night With You” movies. Saafir’s dynamic presence in entrance of the digital camera was no shock to longtime followers, as previous to his rap fame he performed Harold within the 1993 movie “Menace II Society.”
In latest years, Saafir’s well being issues had come to mild. In July 1992, Saafir was amongst these injured within the crash of TWA Flight 843 after an aborted takeoff, beginning a decades-long sequence of spinal issues that his followers hadn’t identified about for years. Further issues included the removing of a tumor from his backbone in 2005 and associated leg issues, which led Saafir to make use of a wheelchair for a lot of the final decade. His final high-profile rapping look was on Prince Po and Oh No’s 2013 observe “U Gia,” the place he proved that regardless of his challenges, his lyrics and circulate have been as refined as ever. Three a long time of cutting-edge rappers praising the affect of “Boxcar Sessions” have turned the album into one of many style’s most passionately embraced cult hits, a not-so-secret society mourning a one-of-a-kind life immediately. loss.
