Homeboy Sandman was among last year’s most unfortunately overlooked. The East Coast-bred Stones Throw signee released a slate of songs last year — via the Chimera EP and the First of a Living Breed LP — which ably demonstrated his wordy yet inviting microphone mastery, not to mention his knack for choosing warmly experimental beats. While those characteristics secured Homeboy a place on SPIN’s Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2012, you won’t catch Sandman sleeping. He’s got a brand-new single out, aptly titled “The Plot Thickens.”
Brooklyn producer Keith Edward provides a backing track that’s both crackly with static and dank with underwater depth. Meanwhile, the MC floats his complex rhymes over the mix with the ease of a Frisbee toss: “I make tracks / Moving and grooving so cats assuming it’s sound / But I mean ‘making tracks’ like moving around.”
A couple of weeks back Homeboy Sandman shared the tongue-in-cheek “Not for Women,” and before that was the Jaylib (J Dilla and Madlib) collaboration “Richardsun.” Stones Throw says he’s got a new full-length coming in the spring. That one’s dubbed Kool Herc: Fertile Crescent.