Sole (hip hop artist)
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Sole, born Tim Holland, is an alternative hip hop artist and a co-founder of the Anticon collective. Sole is known for his dense, often dark stream-of-consciousness writing style. His verses are often filled with abstraction, metaphor and sarcasm while avoiding or deconstructing traditional hip hop topics. His albums and record label have been featured in magazines such as Playboy and The Wire.[citation needed] Sole is also a producer and releases his self-produced experiments under the alias mansbestfriend, taken from the name of his Apple G4 computer.[citation needed]
Biography
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 | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. (January 2008) |
Sole was born in 1977 in Portland, Maine. He recorded his first demo in 1992. He shipped the demo to Entertainment Resources International. There was serious interest, and he was flown to Florida to record a few songs. However, the record deal fell through, and soon after, at age 15, Sole assembled a new group called "45 Below Records", which included Alias and a DJ, Cuz the Highlander, now better known as Moodswing9, and together released an album titled "Mad Skillz and Unpaid Billz" under the moniker Northern Exposure, selling more than 300 copies. At the age of 16, Sole pressed up his first 12" and gave it away for free at the 1995 Gavin Convention. In 1996 Sole started up a "webzine" and online radio station, run directly from his basement bedroom in Portland, Maine. His Live Poets 12" from 1997 garnered some press and college radio play, selling a few thousand copies and leading to connections with other like-minded artists like Doseone (Adam Drucker), Jel (Jeffrey Logan), Atmosphere, Shapeshifters, and the Sebutones (Sixtoo (Vaughn Robert Squire) and Buck 65 (Richard Terfry)). In early 1998, Sole and [[pedestSole eventually left for California, settling in the Bay Area.
Sole is married to Yasamin Holland. Her name and references to her can be heard scattered throughout his lyrics.
Discography
Albums
- Banquet of Sarcasm (1998) (Out of Print)
- The Taste of Rain...Why Kneel (Sole, Alias, Doseone, and Slug as Deep Puddle Dynamics) (Original release 1999, reissue 2002)
- Paint By Number Songs (Sole, Alias, DJ Mayonnaise as So-called Artists) (2000)
- Bottle of Humans (2000)
- Selling Live Water (2003)
- Live from Rome (2005)
- Exile EP (2007)
- Sole and The Skyrider Band (2007)
- Desert Eagle (2008)
- Sole and The Skyrider Band Remix LP (2009)
- Nuclear Winter Vol 1 (2009)
- Plastique (2009, Fake Four Inc)
- Nuclear Winter Vol 2 (2009)
- Hello Cruel World (2011, Fake Four Inc)
Compilations
- uck rt (2001) (Tour Only)
- Learning to Walk (2002)
- Songs That Went Tin (Original release 2005, reissue 2008)
- The Secret History of Underground Rap (2008)
- Nuclear Winter Volume One (2009)
As mansbestfriend
- mansbestfriend (2002)
- pt.2 "No Thanks" (2003)
- The New Human Is Illegal (2004) - features all but one of the tracks from "no thanks".
- pt.3 "myownworstenemy" (2005)
- POLI-SCI.187 (2007)