\n<\/p>\n
An interview with Saafir showed up on my Instagram<\/a> feed last November. Jason Moran posted it with the caption: \u2018There have been many MCs that I\u2019ve felt artistic symmetry with, but maybe none as aligned as this man.\u2019 When I spoke with Moran more recently, he recalled listening to Saafir as a student. \u2018I could transcribe this,\u2019 he thought. \u2018As a pianist, I was sitting there, writing it down. This was something I could learn from.\u2019 <\/p>\n The knowledge passed both ways. \u2018There\u2019s talent in the Bay Area that motherfuckers don\u2019t even know about,\u2019 Saafir says in the interview. \u2018Motherfuckers with skills like Eric Dolphy on flute and the sax. Motherfuckers like Andrew Hill, all cooking shit up. Hank Mobley \u2013 it\u2019s motherfuckers that rhyme like that.\u2019<\/p>\n Most MCs rap on beat. Saafir didn\u2019t. He swung. \u2018He didn\u2019t rattle off Coltrane or Miles Davis,\u2019 Moran pointed out. \u2018He went: Andrew Hill, Eric Dolphy, Hank Mobley. He\u2019s dealing with the outsiders.\u2019<\/p>\n Born Reggie Gibson in 1970, he was raised in West Oakland, California, the East Bay\u2019s historic blues district, where Lowell Fulson and Jimmie McCracklin held court. That world was swept away when urban renewal sliced through the neighbourhood with BART tracks, interstate highways and a massive mail distribution centre. In schools, music programmes vanished under the twin pressures of Proposition 13 \u2013 which froze California\u2019s property taxes and gutted public education \u2013 and the fading of federal support for arts in schools. Musical kids had to find new ways to improvise.<\/p>\n Saafir got his start as a breakdancer. On his own since the age of twelve, he cycled through group homes and juvenile detention centres. By his own account, he spent all but ten months of his teens in the system, and was behind bars when he heard LL Cool J for the first time and thought: \u2018I can do that.<\/em>\u2019 He formed a hip-hop crew with Plan Bee. \u2018We used to fool with jazz real deep,\u2019 Saafir said in an interview<\/a> in 2006. \u2018I came across a Jimmy Smith record called \u201cHobo Flats\u201d. And the way we was living at the time, we was like hobos. We looked fresh. We stayed crispy. But we was living hard.\u2019 Plan Bee suggested the name \u2018Hobo Junction\u2019.\u00ad\u2018The way it rang,\u2019 Saafir said, \u2018just felt right.\u2019 When Plan Bee was killed\u00ad, shot multiple times in a murder that never was never solved, Saafir kept the crew going.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a stretch of mid-1960s Blue Note LPs \u2013 albums like Blue Spirits<\/em>, Grass Roots<\/em>, Mode for Joe<\/em> \u2013 where the players are feeling their way towards free jazz but don\u2019t stray too far from the pocket. These are the records I think of when I hear Saafir. \u2018Playa Hater<\/a>\u2019 is built around a short, dissonant vibraphone sample lifted from Eric Dolphy\u2019s \u2018Hat and Beard<\/a>\u2019 (itself a tribute to Thelonious Monk). Dolphy\u2019s tune opens in 9\/4 but the rhythm section doesn\u2019t behave, with Bobby Hutcherson phrasing in off-centre bursts. Saafir was rhyming that way on his very first mix tapes<\/a>. <\/p>\n He was newly out of jail, couch surfing, carrying his clothes in a bag, when he stood up for a woman who\u2019d been hit at a party. The next day, Tupac Shakur called:<\/p>\n \u2018I heard you beat the crap out of this fool. Why\u2019d you do it?\u2019 Money B was Shock G<\/a>\u2019s partner in Digital Underground. Shakur was Shock G\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9. Saafir moved in with him and joined Digital Underground as a dancer and as-needed muscle. <\/p>\n He didn\u2019t stop rapping. He made an appearance<\/a> on the first album by Casual, of Oakland\u2019s Hieroglyphics collective. When Casual flaked on returning the favour, the rap battle<\/a> that ensued reshaped hip-hop\u2019s geography. It put the Bay on the map, but there were rumours that Saafir had come to the battle with \u2018writtens\u2019. He had. For Saafir, writtens weren\u2019t a crutch or a fallback; rhythmically, they gave him more room to move. (In another battle<\/a>, he managed to pick Casual\u2019s pocket, mid-verse.) \u2018I focused on the placement,\u2019 he said. \u2018\u2019Cause wasn\u2019t nobody hitting the pockets the way I was hitting it.\u2019<\/p>\n Saafir had a part in the Hughes brothers\u2019 movie Menace II Society<\/em>. He had a verse or two on Digital Underground\u2019s next album and recorded the Boxcar Sessions<\/em> for Quincy Jones\u2019s label, Qwest: \u2018It\u2019s best you let me wander\/Or I\u2019ll\/Taunt you \u2026\u2019 The beat was East Coast boom-bap. The delivery pointed, askew. The words, less a warning than statement of fact. \u2018Motherfuckers clowning me, trying to diss me,\u2019 Saafir said. \u2018Some say I don\u2019t rhyme on beat, but actually I do. It\u2019s just the way that I swing it, it\u2019s hard for you to catch it.\u2019<\/p>\n The phrasing reminds Moran, who studied with Andrew Hill, of his old teacher: <\/p>\n Saafir was eluding the pocket, almost elevating above the beat and then dropping back in, then diving underneath the beat and coming back to where it is on the surface. But he\u2019s never staying with the beat the whole time.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Andrew had a stutter in his speech, and I felt like the way he was playing was just the way he heard phrases. He once told me: a bar is like a bubble \u2013 you can slice it however you want. It does not have to align equally. We\u2019re not in a chef\u2019s kitchen, chopping onions to exact size.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u2018I would listen to a lot of jazz,\u2019 Saafir said. \u2018How John Coltrane would hit it in those pauses. I was like, wow, if I spit a rhyme like that, that would be cold<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n His style evolved, evened out. \u2018I don\u2019t particularly rap like I did in the 90s,\u2019 he said in 2013. \u2018I\u2019m more focused on substance and content, as opposed to how I swing a rhyme. But I\u2019m always going to swing a rhyme with flavour.\u2019 A supergroup with Xzibit and Ras Kass didn\u2019t produce an album. A brief signing to Dr Dre\u2019s Aftermath label yielded nothing.<\/p>\n In July 1992, Saafir had boarded TWA flight 843 from New York to San Francisco. It aborted on take-off and caught fire. Saafir was the first one out, having helped a flight attendant force the door open. He landed on a slide that had not inflated fully, injuring his back, and over the years the bad luck compounded. In 2005, a tumour was discovered in his spine. Surgery was successful until a numbness began in his feet and crept upward. <\/p>\n Shock G<\/a> described Saafir grinding his meds up: \u2018He continues to ride-out the pain (\u201cBlood, I\u2019ma soldier\u201d) while flippin his pain meds for cash.\u2019 By 2013, Saafir was paralysed from the waist down. He gave his car away. Without it, he couldn\u2019t get to physical therapy. Eventually, he couldn\u2019t get out of bed. \u2018Getting into the bathtub \u2013 that\u2019s like a marathon for me,\u2019 he said. \u2018Alone, it\u2019s damn near impossible.\u2019<\/p>\n Garrett Caples<\/a>, a poet and editor who knew and wrote about Saafir, told me he recalled him \u2018living on somebody\u2019s couch and just kind of being tolerated\u2019. \u2018He was a deep guy but very scarred, very touchy. The idea of having to be dependent on other people physically was horrifying for him. It\u2019s just not how he lived in the world.\u2019 \u2018I\u2019m a boss,\u2019 Saafir told Caples. \u2018But I\u2019m an injured player in the game. I\u2019m a very strong injured player in the game, and I can still make plays from my position.\u2019 <\/p>\n A few months later, in 2013, I saw Moran at SFJAZZ<\/a>. His set began with a few skaters on a small ramp, skating to Moran\u2019s interpretation of the Oakland classic \u201893 \u2019til Infinity<\/a>\u2019. But Moran had also thought about staging the Boxcar Sessions, in full, with<\/em> Saafir onstage. \u2018How many times it came into my mind,\u2019 he told me. \u2018I never acted on it.\u2019 At the Manhattan School of Music, he said, he\u2019d carved Saafir\u2019s lyrics into his classroom desk. At the end of the semester he removed the lid and took it home. Saafir died on 19 November 2024. Moran still has the desktop.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u2018Because he slapped Money B\u2019s cousin.\u2019
\u2018Yeah, I know \u2013 but why\u2019d you do it?\u2019
\u2018Because he slapped Money B\u2019s cousin.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
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