Sage Francis :: The Best of Times

LI(F)E ON THE ROAD Tour :: Sage Francis w/ live band, Free Moral Agents (feat. Ikey Owens of the Mars Volta) and B. Dolan

Sage Francis began rapping when he was 8 years old. Hidden in a closet in his parents‘ Rhode Island home, he’d rhyme into a cheap tape recorder for hours on end. By age 12 he was sneaking out to battle other Providence emcees, entering talent contests and learning the finer points of showmanship, if not the sizeable advantage that, well, size offers where confrontation is concerned. The kid had a calling, and he wasn’t going to let anything—shitty equipment, stature, homework—slow his roll. Today, at 27, the man has a reputation. Several, actually. You might know him simply as a battle emcee or a spoken word poet. Heart-draining confessionalist or Old School revivalist. Political dissident, DIY business expert, friend, asshole, or one-time ice cream server. Hell, you might even know him as hip-hop’s doom. Or the art form’s redemption, for that matter. Sage Francis is many things to many people—and probably even more to himself—but if there’s anything he isn’t, it’s quiet.

Free Moral Agents is the brainchild of Isaiah Ikey Owens, Grammy Award-winning keyboardist for The Mars Volta & De Facto. The Long Beach, CA-based Owens initially started Free Moral Agents as a solo project. It has since expanded into a group effort, a result of Isaiah’s decade-long career of collaborations with artists as diverse as El-P, Mastodon, Sublime, Saul Williams, and Z-Trip.

B. Dolan began performing in 1999 at New York City’s Nuyorican Poets Cafe, where he gained respect as part of HBO’s Def Poetry Series in 2002, and earned numerous slam poetry championships in the years that followed. 2003 also saw the first release of “The Failure,” [at the time] a two-disc, homegrown demo full of Dolan’s earliest work. After this self-release, Dolan disappeared from poetry slam to pursue more overtly musical projects, as well as his own contribution to the struggle against social injustice.

In the midst of inventing the ragged, breakdown aesthetic seen of his work, Dolan also created and co-founded the Knowmore.org website with former slam teammate and friend Sage Francis.