While that was going on, the front door of the model home was used by his brothers and Don Quan to walk in and out at their will like Urkel on Family Matters. T3, who sings like he’s straight out of a turn-of-the-century R&B boy band, pulled up to do “Boyfriend.” When he hit a falsetto, a girl standing behind me acted like we were at the Scream Tour. Sah’s other brother, Wikii, showed up, too, as his hype man. Wikii was dressed in a leather get up fit for a Magic Mike dancer; I’m not entirely sure why, but the inexplicable and strange are key to the SahBabii experience.
The highlight of the night was when the lights went dim and SahBabii sat on a stool and shared a memory about the days when he used to hang out and watch TV with his cousins. That was his entry into “Anime World.” At that second, a song about anime boobs had never sounded sweeter and more poignant. The duality of comic and serious captured SahBabii perfectly.
The next afternoon, I linked up with SahBabii in the lobby of his hotel in Brooklyn Heights. He rocked a plum satin shirt and scarf combo, unbuttoned to show the multiple diamond-encrusted St. Peter’s Crosses around his neck, to match the one inked on his forehead. His locs were freshly done before his show the previous night. He spoke in a near whisper and was really observant. He was lanky enough, too, to have been the head of a Jim Boeheim zone defense. We rode over to a photo shoot in Lower Manhattan, where his brother T3 eyed Sah’s poses with the intensity of a dance mom assessing her kid’s choreography. There, we chopped it up about his live show, Atlanta hip-hop, and his Saaheem moment.
Pitchfork: Were you a fan of musicals growing up?
SahBabii: I can’t remember the names of anything, but when I was a kid in school I used to like watchin’ the plays. When I saw Three Little Pigs with my son it made me remember that.
If you had an unlimited budget what would you have added to your show?
I’d want it to be bigger, more actors on stage. What I really wanted to happen was to have a lot of people out there to act like they were standing on the block, servin’ and shit.
That reminds me slightly of a few moments in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance. Did anyone help you put it all together?
My manager had a lot of ideas. I knew I wanted to have the house, to be able to bring my world to other cities. But he came up with the idea to have the squid popping out. I feel like that really set the shit off.
The address pole does a lot to nail down the setting, too. What can you tell me about the cross section of Sylvan Road and Dill Avenue?
That’s the area I grew up in, where I made my first song, where I met most of my friends. Don Quan, I met on Sylvan. My cousin who run the merch stand, I first met him on Sylvan. And, in that house, there was, like, 10 of us that stayed there. I used to wake up to the sound of tattoo needle guns, because that’s what my uncle did. I was 13 years old just seeing butt naked women up in there getting tattoos. I used to clean his tattoo gun tips for $5, then take that money right to the candy store.
Is that where you got into tattoos yourself?
Hell yeah. I eventually got a tattoo from him. He did most of my mine.
Did he do your first one?
Yeah, this Pisces shit right here on my arm.
What did all the kids in the house do to kill time?
It was just them good ol’ days. I got so many cousins. We’d be eating cereal in the morning, watching Samurai Jack, Naruto, Dragon Ball, anything on Cartoon Network.
Did you have an active imagination?
Yeah, on a bigger scale, I’d be thinking about how all I wanted was a big-ass mansion for me and all my cousins to live in. You ever see the RDCWorld house? Something like that. Somewhere for us to just live and play games all day.
I feel like you gravitate toward really bright colors, like pink, purple, and yellow. Is there any specific reason for that?
I know yellow remind me of the sun. But I used to watch Power Rangers a lot as a kid, so I was always into colors. I used to draw a lot, too. I wasn’t good, but I’d be drawing all the WWE wrestlers: Triple H, John Cena, Jeff Hardy. Whenever I get a notebook or some paper, I’ll still doodle.
