San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
ALLBLACK: THE OAKLAND RAPPER BREAKING OUT
Remember, early in the pandemic, when positivity pushers were flooding social media feeds with platitudes about how we could use this time confined in our homes to create? That we could write the novel we daydreamed about, or start that fitness kick we’ve been meaning to begin or learn how to make that pasta dish from our favorite restaurant from scratch, the dish that causes you to salivate at the mere thought of it?
Those hope miners loved reminding us about how Shakespeare wrote “King Lear” while hunkering down during a plague. We could do it too, they said, as if the metrics of a master storyteller were something we should measure ourselves against.
Well, we know how this turned out for most of us. Those novels are still just dreams. Our stress was more interested in carbs than workouts. And thoughts of those deft pasta dishes were overtaken by mounds of Annie’s Mac & Cheese. Despite our best intentions, and the encouragement of influencers, 2020 wasn’t the creative awakening we had hoped it to be.
Unless you were AllBlack.
The Oakland rapper whose government name is D’Andre Sams began the pandemic bummed that his world tour had been canceled. He was in his feelings for a minute, then went to work on “No Shame 3,” an album that not only showed stark creative growth but also reaped him national praise that counted it as one of the year’s essential hiphop records. His path began with that simple redirection of “if I can’t go on tour, I can get in the studio.”
So he did, recording 15 tracks for an album with a cover shot that shows AllBlack mugging outside Oakland’s Fox Theater.
“At first, I’m like, ‘ Oh, this should be fun. I can’t wait to see what my pen is, to see what comes out when I write,’ ” he said during a recent phone call. “I’ve been working this whole year. I go in there ( the studio), vibe for four or five hours, and that’s the intro. We were throwing s— at the wall.”
His verses, filled with football references and lessons from a past life pimping in the East Bay, were informed by the feelings of being flooded with constant badnews updates — lockdowns, fatality forecasts and the brutality of cops toward Black Americans. Through it all, the rapper focused on the same thing
those influencers sold us back in March: positivity.
“I call myself the lightbulb. I like to keep things lit,” he says. “I’ve been in the s— y situations and found some green. I’ve always seen a dot of green in a box of red.”
The writing also helped him cope during a bizarre time. “It actually made me feel like I had support.”
That doesn’t mean AllBlack never got lost in the isolation of 2020. He says he spent a lot of time playing video games — “Madden” football — and learned how to make some dishes he craved — ribs that don’t flop like rubber. But while most of us saw those moments of culinary accomplishment as highs, AllBlack had his record, his creative purpose, through it all.
He’s proud of his pandemic record. And despite feeling some notable joy in a year when so many people were drowning in misery, AllBlack doesn’t feel guilt for his good fortune.
“People are running around licking their wounds at the Waffle House wanting sympathies. That’s not going to pay the bills,” he says. “Their struggle isn’t my struggle. Our definition of bad is not the same thing. Our definition of f— ed up and not having money isn’t the same thing.”
His advice for the rest of us as we navigate this prolonged experience of dread?
“Be grateful, bro. Be grateful. I don’t have sympathy, I have empathy. When you lay on the ground, I’m not going to lay on the ground and cry with you. I’m going to give you my hand to help you up.”