Raw Like Soosh*e!
Soosh*e! Reps Sactown Hip-Hop On and Off the Air Words Andrew C. Russell • photo Vincent Vredenburg
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f listening to “My Year,” the latest, infectious single by Sacramento’s very own Soosh*e!, succeeds in shooting you upward a wave of optimism about your current state in life, it should be of special note that when he wrote it, some time ago, the song’s hopeful message rang hollow in his own ears. During a period of some financial struggle and general listlessness, he set aside the general hook and handful of lyrics: “I woke up here this morning and I told myself that this gon’ be my year,” all with a stubborn certainty of a time in the near future when he could spit those rhymes truthfully. Now, by all accounts, that time has arrived. And with a string of profile-raising shows in 2016, and the bookends this year of a triumphant appearance at Concerts in the Park in June (the highest attended in decades) and a role in the highly anticipated second annual OntheBlock party in September, we could very well be in the midst of Sactown’s summer of Soosh*e! Soosh*e!’s role in the Sacramento scene has steadily evolved since he first joined a drumline in his early teens, up through his first stabs at recording and producing his own material, to becoming one of the faces of Hot 103.5. Through it all, he’s consistently pushed community, curation and collaboration within his hometown, whether it’s promoting local shows or using his radio platform to boost the profile of regional talent alongside national acts. While seeming to be everywhere at once due to his rapidfire appearances and social media shout-outs, he once described himself as “not an extravagant person. Just busier than most.” This is what first strikes you about Brandon Shimabukuro, aka Soosh*e!, in person: a rare combination of ambition and perspective. Being able to look at the music scene around him from the inside and out, he has a keen understanding of how developing Sacramento’s musical wealth points the way forward to a windfall for everyone involved, versus the all-too-common “up-and-out” attitude. These days, Soosh*e! is focused on finding a balance to his grind between culture creator and culture promoter. Below, we sit down with him to learn the origins of his “infiltration” into radio, the value of positivity, and the cultural goldmine Sac has in its hip-hop.
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Issue 247 • August 28 – September 11, 2017
How did you get started in radio? Basically, it was one of those situations where a door opens and you go running through it. 103.5 was throwing this Sage the Gemini Halloween concert at Coyote Tap House, where I was the in-house host on Fridays. The event was sold out, but none of the on-air personalities showed up, because at the time they were a pop station. When I got there, they said they didn’t have anybody to MC, so they wanted me to host the rest of the night and just do my regular thing. So I’m hosting it, it’s going crazy, because I’m working with a DJ that I know, the atmosphere is tight. The then-program director for 103.5 is there, because they’re super shortstaffed, and they had to have everybody on hand. I guess Sage said something to her along the lines of, “Yo! Who’s performing right now? It’s going crazy out there.” She was like, “He’s not even performing out there, he’s just hosting the party!” After that she saw me interact with Sage and it was a cool conversation, she could tell I wasn’t a fanboy over an artist, that I could be professional while talking to somebody. And at the end of that night, she offered me a job based on all those situations. Did you come into 103. 5 with a mission? When I got there, I was kind of on the fence with myself, it was one of those things where you feel like you jump ship, because this was like right after 103.5 The Bomb turned into Hot 103.5, a full-on pop station. At the time, I was almost anti-radio. And prior to that, there was the whole Sac Hates Hip-Hop campaign that was going on. But I realized it could be a big opportunity. I didn’t necessarily come in with a mission, but as I was getting in it, I realized there were a lot of eyes on me being
there, and on top of that, instead of the hiphop community shaming me like I sold out, the reaction was like, “Yo, somebody got IN. Somebody infiltrated the system!” From that point on, there was also a cultural shift. Hiphop was becoming more of a mainstream thing. Instead of a station having to be all hip-hop or no hip-hop, you saw all of the major pop stations going hip-hop. Probably the longestrunning DJ from the 103.5 The Bomb era became the program director, and decided we needed to make that shift back as well. I was pushing that agenda slightly by just changing the tone of my voice on air. I went from doing this Ryan Seacrest sounding radio host voice to really letting my roots show. Would an exclusively local hip-hop show have a big impact on the current scene? If we were to do an all-local show, it would cheapen the value of the local. If you were to say, “Every Saturday, this show’s for the locals,” then what’s that going to mean for the person who only gets played on the local show? If you’re a local, then you should aim to get played next to the nationals. That’s when you get a track like Lil Darrion from the north side. He has a track with Sage the Gemini that’s getting airplay from us called “Friends.” That song sits perfectly in a rotation with national records like a Lil Wayne or Drake record. We do what we can to break out of stigmas like that, but you have to do it in a way that doesn’t cheapen the value of what actually happens here. People don’t realize that there’s always a slippery slope to everything, if you put all the locals in one box. If you’re a local who gets played on one station enough that another station has to play it, that’s when you know you’re doing something big. Dive Into Sacramento & Its Surrounding Areas