Interviewing Fatboi Sharif means one thing for sure: We’re getting Chinese food baby! I’ve never seen a store clerk with a bigger smile on their face than the woman at the counter when Fatboi barreled into the take-out shop and announced “I told you I’d be bringing more people here!” In the time since Fatboi and Steel Tipped Dove finished recording their new album Decay Fatboi has continued to come down to Brooklyn with different rap friends to keep both Steel Tipped Dove and Sharif’s new friends at the Chinese spot across the street busy. For how dark his music can get Fatboi could not be a more gregarious guy, putting a smile on everyone he encounters. When we bring our order inside the studio Steel Tip informs me that the Chinese spot is one of the few who has been in the neighborhood as long as he has. He moved from his native Poughkeepsie to Brooklyn eighteen years ago and has been in the same apartment the entire time, meaning rappers were bringing over their General Tsos to record in his in-apartment studio a half decade before they broke ground on the Barclays Center. He first reached acclaim in the early 2010s for his production work with Das Racist and their affiliates like Big Baby Gandhi and Lakutis, all of whom he met on twitter. At the time Dove had no thought of making a career out of producing during the age of Limewire, he just wanted to continually work with better rappers and make better beats. A combination of going to a ton of his friends’ rap shows and being down to record whatever in his studio led him to meet billy woods and E L U C I D in 2013 right as they were in the throes of forming Armand Hammer, which led to him contributing beats to their first two albums. While he’s produced for, recorded, mixed, and mastered dozens of other rappers who’ve passed through his studio it’s the work he’s done for Backwoodz Studioz that Steel Tipped Dove seems the most proud of, and he’s been in complete lockstep with Backwoodz since closely working on woods’ solo album Hiding Places.
Like many of Steel Tipped Dove’s early rap connections, he met Fatboi Sharif in the DM’s. Dove reached out saying he fucked with Fatboi’s record Gandhi Loves Children and was interested in working together. Fatboi had been familiar with Dove’s work with Amand Hammer and could not have been more hyped himself. Pitchforks’ phenomenal retrospective on the label made it clear that Backwoodz Studioz became a success through an unrelenting force of will more than anything. Woods and the team out worked, out hustled, and out rapped everyone on their way to establishing themselves. From their first studio session together Steel Tipped Dove immediately saw not just common artistic sensibilities between Fatboi and the Backwoodz camp but that same tenacious work ethic. Fatboi was working on two other mixtapes while he and Steel Dove were working on Decay, going from Dove’s studio to Lungs’ studio for Cyber City Society sessions then to NoFace’s studio for Preaching in Havana as the day turned to night. That revelation is all the more remarkable given how different the three tapes sounded in the end. His Lungs produced tape Cyber City Society sounds like a collection of ghost stories that computer viruses might tell one another around a digital campfire, equal parts cybernetic and ghastly. His NoFace produced Preaching in Havana meanwhile sounds like if someone found an old songbook of voodoo curses and tried to flip it into a horror movie score, with tracks like the Lungs’ assisted “John Hinkley” sounding as catchy as it did sinister. Decay sets itself apart from these two projects in a number of respects. For starters it is longer at a full LP rather than an EP, and that added time allows Fatboi to explore sonic ideas and lyrical themes that he hadn’t had the room for on previous works. In that respect it is his strongest tape since Gandhi Loves Children, featuring not just spirit conjuring chants but some of the strongest bars of Fatboi’s career.
Fatboi Sharif is the only rapper whose reviews read less like The Source and more like Fangoria Magazine, and Decay is indeed a dark affair, as is immediately evident by the clear decay on the album’s cover. However, as Fatboi was quick to point out, there is light poking out through the back of the windows. Decay is without a doubt Fatboi’s most personal album to date, covering everything from a conversation he had with a stripper about domestic abuse on “Boogie Monster” to dealing with his own mental health demons on tracks like “Scarhead”. To Fatboi, the twin windows on the cover are the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, though you both need to call out for help when you need it and listen to those you love when they call out for help around you. Decay is not a story of giving up, but rather recognizing that while the world around you may be turning to shit at a rapid pace, life is still worth living. The tape also features some of the best vocal takes of Fatboi’s career. He is rapping his ass off on “Designer Drugs” “Brandon Lee” and “Ash Wednesday”. All three are tracks that I can see becoming staples of his live set where he gets in the pocket and flies out of it as his will determines. Steel Tipped Dove’s production work on all three hits the same Dutch angles that frame Fatboi’s sonic universe, equal parts unsettling and hard as hell. The tape’s final act, starting with “The 6th Floor” and ending with album closer “The Farewell Outfit” feature some of the heaviest and hardest hitting tracks of his career both sonically and emotionally, including the aforementioned “Scarhead” and “Boogie Monster”. It reminded me of finishing Neon Genesis Evangelion for the first time, where you leave feeling confused, rattled, concerned, and ready as hell to start the journey back from the top.
I had the chance to talk with Fatboi Sharif and Steel Tipped Dove about their musical careers, how they linked up, and the process of putting together their phenomenal new record Decay. This interview was edited and condensed for clarity, go buy the record on vinyl from Backwoodz Studioz today!
📸 at the top of the article: Brendan Higgins
GSC: What are your names? Where do you hail from? What is your artistry of choice?
SHARIF: Fatboi Sharif of Raway, New Jersey. I am a Lyricist/MC/World Creator/Radio Host.
DOVE: Steel Tipped of Brooklyn and Poughkeepsie, New York. Producer, mixing and recording engineer, and artist.
GSC: Fatboi, I know you came up on grunge and metal as much as you did on rap. Where were you finding music early on in life? Was it all online? I know your uncle Tim, may he rest in peace, was very influential showing you music as well.
SHARIF: Wow, bringing it back to Uncle T, the legend. Music was always in my house. My Grandmother, she listened to The Spinners and Aretha Franklin, my Grandfather listened to Sly and the Family Stone. My Uncle, he was big into Prince, Jay, New Edition, all of that. My Mother, that was the hip hop side. She was into Poor Righteous Teachers from Trenton, Biz Markie, Kool G Rap. My Father was the same thing, Run DMC, Beastie Boys, Slick Rick. With grunge and rock, heavy metal, I was getting that from the radio and television. MTV, The Box.
GSC: Would you ever go full Lil Uzi slash Lil Waybe on Rebirth with the rock album? There’s one or two songs on this record with a guitar lick where you’re leaning in that direction.
SHARIF: I find it highly disrespectful that you’d say I would do a rock record like Lil Uzi or Lil Wayne. I’d obviously actually do it way way way way better.
DOVE: Don’t you actually like the Lil Wayne shit?
SHARIF: I fucked with Rebirth.
DOVE: I fucked with the Linkin Park shit but Rebirth was garbage.
SHARIF: That’s definitely something I’m interested in though. That’s something I will dive into, I have stuff I’ve been cooking slowly of that variety.
GSC: You have family in South Carolina, you’ve talked about having a cousin who showed you 8Ball and MJG. Where in South Carolina? Did you spend time down there?
SHARIF: Pinewood, South Carolina, and hell yea I did. I probably went down there two or three times a year when I was a kid till I was like 19.
GSC: Is that near the beach at all?
SHARIF: Not at all, straight dirt road area like 45 minutes outside of Columbia.
GSC: I lived in North Carolina and love the Carolinas, and I feel like people don’t know you have that Southern influence in you.
SHARIF: Definitely, I loved that time period in Southern music and really connected with it, like the mid 90s to the early 2000s. You can feel the stories they were telling. You can feel the heat in the air, you can see the dirt roads. You can visualize all the stories when they’re talking about different drugs situations, different racial situations that were going down. It gave me a super appreciation for how people need to feel your music deep within them.
GSC: People say you look like Zion Williamson. He’s from South Carolina, are you two cousins?
SHARIF: *Laughs* No, confirmed no relation.
GSC: I just haven’t seen you two in the same room so I had to ask. Flipping over to you Steel Tip. I know you started recording on GarageBand to help your friends who wanted to rap back in the day in Poughkeepsie, are any of those friends still making music in any capacity? Looking back on that era, what do you reflect on?
DOVE: From the original crew, none of them are. Of the stuff we were influenced by a very small percentage is still going, I’ve been able to collaborate with some of the people I was a fan of back in the day who stook around. That has been really cool, getting to work with people I’ve respected for a long time.
GSC: Did you have the ambitions of finding a way to make a career out of it back then? Or was it really just for fun at the time?
DOVE: Yes and no. Moving to Brooklyn was huge. When I first bought equipment it was just a hobby for fun. **Fatboi hands him a Narragansett** make it noted that I was forced a beer.
GSC: A delicious Narragansett Lager.
DOVE: Yes, a delicious Narragansett Lager. But when I moved to Brooklyn, it was to try to get more work producing and whatnot, but I never had the goal of making it a full time job. It was during the Napster and Limewire era, I wasn’t naive enough to think I can make a salary off of this. I was more trying to work with better people. So moving to Brooklyn made me more professional with it but not a full time professional.
GSC: Have you been in this apartment the whole time you’ve been in Brooklyn?
DOVE: I’ve been at this spot the whole time I’ve been here so the whole time people have been coming here to record.
GSC: I went deep in your discography, some of your first production credits were on those early Das Racist solo mixtapes. What did you produce on Wild Water Kingdom? I couldn’t find that credit.
DOVE: It’s with the singer Safe, “Medium Green Eyes“, it’s very melodic. Safe is maybe my favorite singer of all time who’s not currently active.
GSC: How did the relationships with the Das Racist guys and Lakutis and whatnot spark?
DOVE: Every part of my musical career sparked off because of Twitter. I moved to Brooklyn and when I got here I got on Twitter and I just started tweeting at people. I hit up Das Racist, DVS, Lakutis, Big Baby Gandhi and those last three all started coming over to record and shit.
GSC: What was that moment in rap history like? I remember it all feeling like a big deal in high school.
DOVE: It was crazy because the place that Das Racist and Lakutis and Fat Tony were recording at was the same studio that ASAP Rocky was recording at. That’s part of why Fat Tony is on ASAP Rocky’s first mixtape. It was like this whole new era of very popular shit blowing up and underground shit blowing up in tandem. El-P came back and started working with those dudes. Bronson and Danny Brown went on a big tour, the underground had some momentum. That was the blog era technically right? Were they all part of the blog area?
GSC: They were not in that blog era podcast but I remember hearing the Das Racist song with the Billy Joel sample for the first time on GoodMusicAllDay.com, the same place I first heard “Peso”. It was a strong era to say the least. Is there anyone from that era that you feel like does not get the shine that they deserve?
DOVE: DVS for sure. Kemba, formerly known as YC the Cynic. His shit should be plastered everywhere. He hasn’t been recording a ton of music in the past few years, but he’s made music at the level of the respected greats of today in my opinion.
GSC: Right around 2014 you started working with billy woods and E L U C I D. How did those relationships come about? Was it similarly off Twitter?
DOVE: Yes, Twitter. Donwill from Tanya Morgan, you know Don?
SHARIF: Yeah, hell yea. Shoutout to Tanya Morgan, that last album was super fire.
DOVE: Incredible music. Donwill and I were friends, I forget how. He was like I’m bringing E L U C I D and billy woods through to record a podcast. I wasn’t involved in the podcast. I just recorded it. I was like, alright, cool. Then we were hanging out afterwards and I was like, I got beats. So I gave them some beats and they used them for the ARMAND HAMMER stuff and woods used some for his solo stuff. Around the same time, woods and I actually go back and forth on this, we might have met first at a show because our mutual friend PremRock was throwing a lot of shows at the time. There were overlapping people on the bills, people like Open Mike Eagle, billy woods, and Prem’s friends. So I might have met woods at one of those first but we definitely connected heavily at the podcast recording and that’s when I gave them beats.
GSC: That would have been like 2013.
DOVE: Yeah, whenever their first mixtape came out, Race Music or Furtive Movements. I was also on Today, I Wrote Nothing, the woods solo record.
GSC: You’ve grown with them musically over that decade. How does it compare to a decade ago when you were getting started? How does it feel to have grown in lockstep with these amazing artists?
DOVE: I wasn’t working that closely with them till I worked with woods on Hiding Places, but from then on it’s been phenomenal. It’s been incredible, truly an honor of my life working with them.
GSC: Fatboi, since you and I last connected you were on one of the most ridiculous beats of all time, “Haarlem” off billy woods solo album Aethiopes. How did that come together? I can’t imagine any other rappers on earth even attempting to hop on that other than you two.
DOVE: That all happened right here in this studio.
SHARIF: It’s a funny story. So I’m coming here to go through Decay with Steel Tip to listen to the final mixing. Woods was finishing up a session here, recording his verse for “Versaille” with Despot. He’s like I’ll be outta here soon, and I’m like, “no worries, I’m chilling. I just came to listen to the mix, we’re not really recording anything.” We start discussing what he’s doing on the album, and he’s like “I am about to try something on this song” and the “Haarlem” beat comes on. He’s thinking of ideas, this and that, and he sits down and goes “Yo Sharif, I might need some of them crazy sounds or noises from you. Just do something dope on it.” I was like “I gotchu, you want it now?” and we just started writing. He laid his shit down, crazy. I lay my shit down, crazy. We listen back and we’re like damn this shit is dope. He had to run it by Preservation to make sure it was good on his end, cause he co-produced. Preservation calls him back quick, and was like “That shit was fire, who the hell was that?” and that was the first time me and Preservation connected, which was fire in its own right.
GSC: That is a wild story, is that how you remember things Dove?
DOVE: Yeah, a couple other memories from that day, that song is two different beats. The first half of that song was most of the way done, woods had written and recorded it that day. The second half of that woods is co-producer on. There was a movie that woods was a huge fan of and had been tracking down on DVD for ages. It was so funny because right after he found it the movie ended up on YouTube, but he had spent years tracking down this movie on DVD and he got it. He sampled some of the music from the movie, looped it up and affected it a little bit. Then Sharif comes in and he’s like I need Sharif on this, but we need to figure out the co-producer situation.
GSC: One of those mom’s spaghetti moments where you gotta be ready with the pen in the booth.
SHARIF: It definitely would have got cut if it was wack too, it meant a lot he fucked with it.
DOVE: It wouldn’t have happened if Fatboi wasn’t here and if woods didn’t have the idea for the movie part, one of those lighting in a bottle moments.
SHARIF: If his session had gone super smooth he woulda been gone already!
GSC: How did the two of you first connect and how did you know we got to make a project together?
DOVE: I DM’d him on Instagram, right? I said I fucked with Gandhi Loves Children.
SHARIF: The first weekend it came out too, it dropped on a Friday and he hit me up on Saturday afternoon.
GSC: Right after he read the GSC interview about the record probably.
DOVE: I had heard him before from his video for “Smithsonian” that was out, I fucked with that track so I was aware of him before the album dropped. I didn’t like the video because it creeped me out but I fucked with the music.
SHARIF: Of course it creeped your ass out. I was familiar with his work and said I appreciate you showing love.
DOVE: I said come through when you’re ready and let’s record something and he came like right away.
GSC: Like many of your other rap relationships, showing love, seeing that mutual appreciation, and then actually taking the time to get the work in.
DOVE: Yeah, you’re a professional, Sharif is a professional. He was basically like let me know when to pull up. I was like alright, pull up at this time and we just got right to work. We’d listen to beats, he would select them, go home, write, come back and record. From that first session the album was already underway.
SHARIF: One thing that pissed me off on my first trip to Steel Tip’s studio though, maybe my East Coast non-New Yorkers can relate, but I went to the wrong fucking Atlantic Avenue Station. I called him and I was like forty five minutes away like WHAT?? I never will make that mistake again, that shit sticks with you.
DOVE: That is hilarious, I don’t even remember that honestly. Right at that session beats were chosen that ended up on Decay. By the next time you came, you had already had stuff written and then we had our first song recorded.
SHARIF: There was no getting used to one another, like three of the first songs we made became centerpieces of the album.
DOVE: We knew that our sounds were gonna match. Which is funny because it sounds nothing on Ghandi Loves Children. I just knew I had weird stuff, he had weird stuff, and that it was going to work, especially after meeting him for the first time.
GSC: Dove, I know you said in another interview you don’t like sending focused beat packs out because it’s always the last beat you expect an artist to want from you that they end up wanting. Did you know what beats would work for Fatboi from the jump?
DOVE: That’s easier when he’s in the studio because I don’t have to send a pack, I can just flip through them. I had no idea what he’d like, I think one of the first beats was “Brandon Lee“.
GSC: I was gonna say to me “Brandon Lee”, the church bells on “Designer Drugs“, and the piano lick on “Ash Wednesday” all sounded like you had tailor made them for Fatboi.
DOVE: Not at all. Sometimes I’ll be playing beats for other people even and he’ll hear something and be like “lemme get that.” I don’t really tailor make, I just think I have a sound that works well with his sound.
SHARIF: Any tailor making was us going like, we don’t have this type of vibe on the record yet, we could use this kind of track.
DOVE: Yea we’re tailoring the album of course.
GSC: Those three songs I mentioned also really stood out because Sharif, you were in the pocket in a way you aren’t always trying to be on other records. How did you decide like okay I wanna have this many ethereal tracks and this many this kind of track and whatnot?
SHARIF: Dove’s production definitely spoke to me. What is so good about his style is how it allowed me to pull back layers, with different flows and sonic shit and the lyrical side. I would definitely say this is my most personal project. That’s what the production was bringing out of me, from different family situations, personal situations and stuff like that. And it was still dope enough where I can go crazy on some spitting shit like I did on “Phantasm“.
DOVE: We’re two experimental artists who have an amalgamation of influences and things that we want to do on a record, but at the end of the day like this is hip hop so we had to make time for the bars. I like how we went all over the place with the album, which only happens because we both have that versatility.
GSC: Did you always know it was going to be a full record?
DOVE: I think it became a full record really fast. The songs were coming so quickly.
GSC: Were you writing live in the studio Sharif? Because I know a lot of times you’d like to sleep with a beat quite literally.
SHARIF: “Designer Drugs” I wrote in the studio. “Brandon Lee” I wrote in the studio. Everything else was taking it home, playing the beats, picking up on different shapes and colors and bringing it back to the paper. It was funny because I recorded this record, Cyber City Society, and Preaching in Havana at the same time. So I’d leave here, go to Lungs’ studio, then leave Lungs’ and go to NoFace’s, and would have to keep all three records in their own boxes.
GSC: What is the world that you guys were creating with Decay? Where is this record bringing us?
SHARIF: It came naturally where the beats were bringing more personal stories out of me. More stories where I’m digging into witnessing drug addiction, mental health issues, even just what was going on in the world at that moment. People don’t know how they’ll get their next meal, on top of everything going on with the police. It’s a mixture of all that. You look at the album cover and it’s decrepit with children’s paintings on the wall, but there is light through the windows. We’re in the sunken place right now but we can come back from it.
GSC: Dove you had mentioned in your interview with GingerSlim that he took the cover image and there were a couple ideas Fatboi had that became the back cover.
DOVE: The back cover was going to be the front cover, yes. But when I saw Tim’s photo, I was like, that’s the one.
SHARIF: I love that little crack in the window in the back. I was like, you gotta use that for the back. But that tone of the album was set through with the cover. We have a strenuous ride ahead of us, it won’t be an easy journey, but we can make it.
GSC: I wanted to bring up three other songs that are all very different and hear how you each approached them, maybe we go one at a time. “Prisoner of Jesus” has this like cybernetic feel that reminded me of the Lungs tape. “Thinkpieces” meanwhile is this massive spirit conjuring, summoning of the undead. Then “Boogie Monster” is this lurching heavy languid track. How do you make them all fit in this sonic palette?
DOVE: It’s hard for me to say because honestly, like I said, I wasn’t making beats for the record, I was just making beats. During post production and mixing and stuff, you know, I was just taking whatever direction Sharif came up with when he would come through and record the track.
SHARIF: “Prisoner of Jesus”, that was an early beat I heard but I didn’t take it right away. I heard it again and was like “Oh that shit is dope.” So I took it for a month, slept to it, and I’m seeing grains of sand and red dust. It had a hotness to it, 99 degrees, so I put that picture to words. Even the title came from that kind of early imagery the beat had me feeling.
GSC: What about “Thinkpiece”?
SHARIF: That’s my favorite song on the album, and its top five beats from him. That’s one of my favorite beats I’ve ever heard.
DOVE: It utilizes the same sample source material as track one “Phantasm” too, which was incidental but I always find those things interesting.
GSC: I love that you got to use the whole cow on that one.
DOVE: Yea, I always thought that was super dope that he chose both those beats independent of one another.
SHARIF: “Thinkpiece” is my favorite, I think it’s definitely a centerpiece for the album. It’s one of those songs that I want people to have their own opinion on, let me know what you think of that joint. I am glad that I was able to get some bars off while still staying close to the message of the album.
GSC: “Boogie Monster” meanwhile feels so different from both of those two.
SHARIF: “Boogie Monster” was probably like the third meeting, right?
DOVE: Yeah, super early. It’s got a fun swing to it too, one of those tracks with a real funk and swing.
SHARIF: I remember hearing it and thinking “this is a special beat”. We went back and forth on the idea of having a female vocalist on it. I did a lot of pre-production vocal takes to see what worked on it. We knew when we listened to the final mix that it was gonna be a special one.
GSC: You ultimately didn’t have a feature there, when did you realize that this record was going to be a full solo mission with no features?
SHARIF: I look at every album like a world that you build, the film that you’re putting together to show the world. I’m not a fan of just throwing people in your world that don’t need to be there.
GSC: No cheap cameos.
SHARIF: For this particular story, the story of Decay, it needed two sets of eyes, his and mine.
GSC: Did you feel that same vibe recording, Dove?
DOVE: Once we started having no features and it started to sound like how the album was gonna sound there was like no real reason to. Adibop co-produced one track which was fire, and Willie Green mastered, so our tight-knit personnel felt like it matched with the sonics of the record.
GSC: That closing track “The Farewell Outfit“. Its chilling, like you’ve got some like heavy music. That was something that put like a rattle down my spine. How did that track come together and how did you know it was the closer?
SHARIF: I would say that the final section of the album is the most personal. “Scarhead” I am talking about my own dealing with mental illness, my family’s experience with it. The second song “Boogie Monster ” was a conversation I had with a stripper about her abusive father, a deep and genuine conversation that we had. “Farwell Outfit” was the culmination of all of that, where if you don’t make sure to get help when you need it in life, the darkness can swallow you from the light. It’s about reaching out and being there when others reach out to you. That part of the album starts with “The Sixth Floor“.
GSC: What was your favorite work that the other had on the album? Fatboi your favorite beat and Steel Tip your favorite verse.
SHARIF:I love them all for different reasons but the two that stopped me in my tracks were “East Hollywood” and “Think Piece”. East Hollywood he especially went off on.
DOVE: My favorite Sharif performances have to be “The Christening” and “Ash Wednesday“.
SHARIF: “The Christening” might be my own favorite verse on the tape too.
DOVE: There were no stems with that one, “The Christening” was made improvisational on digital turntables. 90% of the time I make beats with stems. Different elements, samples, drums, bass, whatever, but sometimes I use digital turntables and flip through samples and fucking blend them together and do weird shit with the turntables and record it.
GSC: Do you ever break out the guitar yourself? I see you have some here.
DOVE: For “Green Wing Shoulder Padding” we brought in Adi Meyerson on bass, she provided a live bass lick for that one.
GSC: Fatboi, you have really come into your own as a live performer in the past few years. What was it like finding out in the Rolling Stone that you had performed at Elsewhere more than anybody else last year? That must have been wild.
SHARIF: Yes, that was wild. I wasn’t expecting it, I definitely wasn’t keeping tabs on it. Elsewhere is a dope venue, they put on great shows and always show love, great views from that rooftop.
GSC: How do you feel that you’ve changed as a live performer over the years?
SHARIF: It’s an extension of the music and I want people to have a unique and memorable experience. I have had people come up to me like “I saw you live three years ago and I’ll never forget it” that is exactly the goal.
GSC: How could they forget seeing a guy in a medical gown and a ski mask? What is the best thing that each of you has heard recently?
DOVE: For me this year so far, it’s Kassa Overalls’ ANIMALS. He’s a jazz drummer, producer, multi instrumentalist, singer and rapper. A renaissance man. He tours the world with different jazz bands and also has Kassa Overalls.
GSC: Damn he’s got Lil B on this, I gotta check it out. What about you Sharif?
SHARIF: So much dope shit. The new Zulu album, A New Tomorrow. Love everything they do.The new African American Sound Recordings project The Free Flower. The new Backwoodz mixtape where me and Dove have another fire track, how could I forget, that was super fire.
DOVE: Any favorite movie you’ve seen recently?
GSC: I am not a movie buff like Sharif but I like movies. I’d say Everything Everywhere All At Once was a film I really enjoyed recently.
SHARIF: That is a great film. There are two movies that I watched recently that have really been speaking to me creatively, the first was Enter the Void and The Lighthouse.
GSC: Enter the Void is fucking crazy. Do you imagine ever working on a movie in any capacity?
SHARIF: I have a couple of short stories that I’m writing. I’d love to write a movie someday, that is definitely a field I’d like to explore when I have the time and energy to really put my full attention towards it.
GSC: I think you’d have some presence as an actor too honestly.
SHARIF: I’d love to do that too. Shoutout to Brainchild, me and him met in theater class in high school.
GSC: What’s the best thing you’ve eaten recently?
SHARIF: Next to Dove’s crib there is this spot Bogata. I went over there and had a great $35 steak and eggs.
DOVE: Bogata’s is banging but I was home recently and nothing hits like burgers on the grill.
SHARIF: Speaking of amazing meals I went to Herbert von King Park for Large Professor, Dead Prez, and Pharaoh Monch. There was a truck out there called Kiki Tacos. Amazing.
GSC: How’s your radio show Strangers Live been going Sharif? How long have you guys been at it for now?
SHARIF: Shoutout to the whole Strangers Live team, 89, Boogaveli, Kohai. Me and 89th had a college radio show almost 7 years ago. Shoutout to NewTown Radio in Brooklyn, me and 89th circled back on the idea after he found that spot, and we’ve been back at it almost two years now. We wanted to bring it back the right way and I love how it’s been going.
GSC: What is something outside of music that brings you joy?
DOVE: I ride my bike in the park, like five to ten miles a day. You don’t have to worry about being hit by no cars, I can be as high as shit just riding in the park. Board Games too, Catan, Castone, Quantum.
SHARIF: For me I would say I like going to events outdoors, indoors. It means getting put on to new stuff and experiencing life, riding through the city, seeing venues and hearing new musicians. That and strip clubs.
