{"id":274503,"date":"2026-01-31T23:32:22","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T23:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/274503\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T23:32:22","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T23:32:22","slug":"if-you-care-about-the-world-you-live-in-you-might-want-to-fight-for-it-because-it-might-not-be-there-next-year-a-conversation-with-hip-hop-artist-sole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/274503\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIf you care about the world you live in, you might want to fight for it, because it might not be there next year.\u201d A\u00a0conversation with hip-hop artist Sole"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0World Socialist Web Site\u00a0spoke recently with independent rap artist Sole after the latter published a video on his social media page denouncing the Trump administration\u2019s deployment of ICE in America\u2019s cities and the brazen murder of Minneapolis resident\u00a0Ren\u00e9e\u00a0Nicole Good.<\/p>\n

Sole (Tim Holland)<\/p>\n

Sole<\/a>\u00a0(born Timothy Holland, September 25, 1977 in Portland, Maine) is a pioneering figure of the American underground hip-hop scene, whose work, over more than two decades, has fused experimental musical form with a critique of elements of capitalist society and imperialist war. Emerging at the end of the 1990s as a founding member of the California-based Anticon collective, he helped carve out a new tendency in independent rap that was hostile to commercial formulas, intensely literary and consciously opposed to the degradation of culture experienced in capitalism.<\/p>\n

Albums such as\u00a0Bottle of Humans<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Selling Live Water<\/a>\u00a0(2000 and 2002 releases on Anticon Records) are widely regarded in serious music circles as landmark statements of this oppositional current. In the years since, Sole has combined a prolific musical output with an explicit engagement with generally left-wing views. Our differences with some of those views emerge in the discussion.<\/p>\n

In his response to the ICE murder of protesters in Minneapolis, Sole-Holland speaks bluntly, stating that the US government is seeking to build a dictatorship and likening the population to \u201cfrogs slowly cooking in an authoritarian soup.\u201d He notes that \u201cpeople are getting killed, cities are under military occupation \u2026 you\u2019re not going to be able to just keep your head down and hope everything goes back to normal. There is no \u2018normal.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The WSWS reached out to Sole asking him to speak more about the situation. He agreed, despite recovering from a recent illness. The following is the result of that conversation, edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

Nick Barrickman: Let\u2019s speak a little bit about your background.<\/p>\n

Tim Holland: My dad was a heroin addict; he was an abusive person. Both of my parents owned their own businesses. So there\u2019s something about that trauma, but also having parents who were hustlers, working class people, going from having a lot to being on food stamps. You gotta get kicked to make great art.<\/p>\n

Around age 11, I just started writing rhymes. I heard a Fat Boys song on a video and just something about it sounded smart. I started writing raps. I\u2019d loop beats on a tape dub by rewinding, pausing. Then I would write rhymes.<\/p>\n

I got online in 1996, before the internet was a big thing, and just started trading tapes with people from all over the country and started building up a network with those people. Later, some of them led me to the people who I founded Anticon Records with.<\/p>\n

When I was coming up in hip-hop, it was just before the \u201cbling\u201d era. It\u2019s when rap went from Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions and the politically conscious stuff to the gangster stuff. NWA, who were very politically sharp, actually. But then it just went from there, Puff Daddy\u2013hip-hop became s\u2014, in my opinion, around that time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when Anticon started popping. We were drawing inspiration from indie rock and electronic music and beat poetry and Dadaism, and underground West Coast hip-hop and underground East Coast beatmaking. Just a bunch of weirdo outsiders\u2014mostly white boys\u2014found each other.<\/p>\n

We put together the first collectively run hip-hop label in North America. It was collectively owned and operated.<\/p>\n

After 9\/11, I was in New York on the way to pick someone up at the airport and saw the smoke. The night before, I had this weirdly prophetic dream. So when I saw the smoke, I just had this instinct that now I had to educate myself on history, politics and philosophy. I may have been turned off by where political hip-hop went in the early 2000s, but I needed to educate myself. I didn\u2019t see any reason to just sing about my feelings or to sing about the music industry.<\/p>\n

I sought to educate myself. So you want a revolution? What does a revolution look like? I really have put myself through an educational course and put myself and my music in the interest of revolution, of forwarding revolutionary theory and politics. I like art too, I just can\u2019t babble and I can\u2019t make love songs.<\/p>\n

NB: What were some of the issues behind the response in rap music to these events you\u2019re describing, 9\/11, the Iraq War? These were major turning points in society that impacted culture and yet aside from a few artists, yourself included, music didn\u2019t really become politicized.<\/p>\n

TH: I just don\u2019t understand that, personally. You\u2019re a musician. You have all the time in the world to educate yourself. Some of these rappers just sit around playing video games. So that\u2019s why we started a record label. Are you asking me about Anticon or hip-hop?<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

NB: Hip-hop in general.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Selling Live Water (2003)<\/p>\n

TH: Rappers ain\u2019t about s\u2014, straight up. Ninety-nine percent of them. I wouldn\u2019t want to put myself in the mind of someone who doesn\u2019t care enough to speak on these things.<\/p>\n

I understand you don\u2019t want to listen to a book report. You don\u2019t want to listen to someone reading a Karl Marx book to you on record. You don\u2019t want someone telling you what you already know. You don\u2019t want to hear a college 101. I understand why a lot of artists don\u2019t put their views out there. Once you put your views out there, you have to be able to defend them. So you have to really educate yourself on these subjects. So there\u2019s that and there\u2019s also, frankly, people being scared. No one said s\u2014 about Palestine either.<\/p>\n

NB: Regarding that, there was the Kendrick Lamar-Drake feud, while the genocide was going on, which was so damning about what passes for \u201cconsciousness\u201d in rap.<\/p>\n

TH: I have to mute out 95 percent of what is said in the hip-hop I listen to. I can\u2019t listen to Billy Woods all day and he is one of the sharpest voices in hip-hop. I love the way he navigates personal issues with the bigger worldly issues. He does it in an interesting way that doesn\u2019t sound like a book report.<\/p>\n

NB: Obviously, art has a unique job to do. It can\u2019t replace politics. There are things that art can reveal that nothing else can.<\/p>\n

TH: Sometimes I find myself listening to Santigold. She\u2019s like M.I.A. in some ways. The music has a ska-ish reggae kind of vibe in it with electronic beats and it keeps me moving. I always listen to the lyrics and I\u2019m thinking, well, maybe I\u2019m just imagining that these are revolutionary lyrics, you know?\u00a0It\u2019s vague enough to be empowering and revolutionary, but catchy enough to be a pop song. That\u2019s the power of music, it can put wind under your sails and tell you you\u2019re not crazy. There\u2019s something really important about that, especially right now.<\/p>\n

NB: Speaking of that: the first three weeks or so of the New Year has been a whirlwind. There\u2019s been the invasion of Venezuela. There were the protests in Iran, which the Trump administration has cynically latched onto in order to push for regime change and threaten to more bombing. There are the Trump administration\u2019s threats to annex Greenland, which will potentially bring the US into direct military conflict with another member of NATO. The events in Minneapolis obviously form a part of this.<\/p>\n

Could I ask you to speak about these events and why you made the video?<\/p>\n

TH: First and foremost, if you\u2019ve been following my music, I\u2019ve made it a point to use my platform and whatever art I\u2019m making in furtherance of revolutionary politics, specifically anarchists or anti-authoritarian communism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Art in itself is actually really important. When I\u2019m in my kitchen, I\u2019m listening to music. That\u2019s the only thing keeping me going right now; music. But over the last seven years, I moved back to Maine. I got a homestead. I\u2019m not super steeped in activism anymore. I run a vegan food company. I\u2019m still making music, but I\u2019m kind of on the periphery of the empire. Now I\u2019m a dad, you know, my life is more domestic.<\/p>\n

For me, that\u2019s a really important perspective, because when you\u2019re a revolutionary without kids, your conception of the world is entirely different than someone who has kids. So I feel like, as a parent, part of my terrain of struggle now is like coexisting in a world where there\u2019s like cops and FBI agents and like radicals and parents and different kinds of people.<\/p>\n

Sole<\/p>\n

The conversations I have on a daily basis aren\u2019t with people who want to overthrow the government and want free communism. Most people just don\u2019t want fascism and we\u2019re fine. They were fine with the way things were, and that\u2019s part of the problem.<\/p>\n

As someone who has been organizing, I just feel like our actions are never enough to meet the moment. The issues that are on our plate such as global warming, AI and the massive disruption it will cause to our world. Obviously, police killings and all this other stuff, but these are the things that we should be addressing [as a society]. We shouldn\u2019t be rounding up people living here or have our government attack the cities of every single politician who stands in its way. Now they\u2019re [ICE and other agencies] flooding Maine. People are freaking out. The violence is coming home.<\/p>\n

Trump is just unleashing so much chaos. He is continuously sticking his finger in beehives. It\u2019s like shock doctrine on steroids. If you care about the world you live in, you might want to fight for it, because it might not be there next year, or it might not be there for your kids.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

NB: That\u2019s a strong statement, and it rings true. Trump is the face of the crisis, but obviously the crisis is much bigger than just him. You wouldn\u2019t have had these types of conversations we\u2019re having decades ago.<\/p>\n

The situation has been building up. Trump\u2019s administration is probably the wealthiest administration in world history. Obviously, the government was always controlled in one way or another by the extremely rich. But this marks a whole new level.<\/p>\n

I do want to get a little back into this question, though, about your video. You had mentioned that your children had actually raised this issue with you?<\/p>\n

TH: Well, my wife doesn\u2019t necessarily agree with how I talk to my kids about politics. I don\u2019t hide things from them. Maine is interesting because it was like the whitest state in the country when I was growing up. But part of why I wanted to move back here was when I would go to downtown Portland, I would now see more hijabs, African markets, Arab markets.<\/p>\n

Maine also has a large Somali and African population. So ICE is currently here to deal with [them] and the cruelty is the point, right? But not all my children\u2019s friends are white. They have friends who are from Africa. They have friends who are Mexican. They themselves are mixed. Their grandfather is from Iraq.<\/p>\n

So they were asking me about how these things work and what was going on with ICE. They were saying ICE has been around and they\u2019re having conversations at school. ICE is just breaking the laws, they\u2019re profiling.<\/p>\n

People I found out who voted for Trump the second time, we\u2019re not friends anymore. You\u2019re an idiot if you voted for him a second time and now we\u2019re all paying for that ignorance. The Democrats suck. Kamala was terrible. Biden, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that still would have been way better than living under military occupation and the shredding of the Constitution.<\/p>\n

NB: I would say America didn\u2019t necessarily know what it was getting. I don\u2019t think most people voted for any of this. And, in fact, it shows in the polls. Even Trump\u2019s immigration policy, which he ran on. Obviously, there remains a political disconnect in this country between the depth of the crisis and the revolutionary methods required to resolve it.<\/p>\n

The Democratic Party isn\u2019t a lesser evil, it\u2019s another capitalist party. They work together in tandem with the Republicans. No doubt, what Trump does and what the Republicans do is more openly rapacious. The Democrats\u2019 job, however, is the other side of this, to suppress the population, to misdirect and disorient it, to demobilize it. And, at the same time, to normalize the things which the Republicans then lay hold of and take to the next level.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The suppression of anti-genocide protest started with the Biden administration. The attacks on students for supposedly being \u201cantisemitic\u201d started with Biden. The genocide of the Palestinian people started under Biden. The weapons that Israel used on the children were sold to them by Biden\u2019s administration. Trump, of course, took that and took it further. They work in tandem.<\/p>\n

That even showed in the actual behavior of the Democratic Party during the election, where they were warning about Trump one second and then after Trump won, they wished him well. What about what they were warning about? His being a dictator \u201con day one\u201d and so on?<\/p>\n

The biggest thing the Democrats are concerned about, in addition to foreign policy issues, is that the working population may start to assert itself directly in opposing Trump in ways that threaten the oligarchy, which I think is becoming more and more the case. Nothing frightens the Democrats more than a movement from below.<\/p>\n

The call for a general strike in Minneapolis on January 23 is significant. It has to be the starting point for a much wider movement. There is a widespread recognition that the normal means and the normal channels for confronting Trump are no longer sufficient. It must be developed by the working population and it must develop independently of the Democratic Party and all the Democratic Party\u2019s arms that it uses to try and box in the population. I\u2019m talking about the AFL-CIO, for example, which has not even endorsed the January 23 event. If they do endorse it, it\u2019s to make it as passive as possible, treat it like it\u2019s a consumer boycott rather than a work stoppage. Historically, the biggest hurdle of the American working class has been the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

TH: It\u2019s so hard, man, battling liberalism. Nobody wants to acknowledge that we\u2019re really in this situation where we need to make a new world, you know?<\/p>\n

NB: The population doesn\u2019t come to revolutionary ideas through idealistic or moral searching. They do so based on necessity. I think we\u2019re reaching a point like that now.<\/p>\n

Could you let us know if you\u2019ve got any music coming out in the near future?\u00a0<\/p>\n

TH: I\u2019ve got a new album coming out, with my man Televangel actually, we will have vinyl in a month.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Join the Socialist Equality Party! <\/p>\n

The Socialist Equality Party is organizing the working class in the fight for socialism: the reorganization of all of economic life to serve social needs, not private profit.<\/p>\n

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