Urban Vault caught up with Newark, New Jersey-based El Da Sensei to ask him some questions about his latest project XL, with The Bronx, New York-based Sadat X, & more…

Sadat X and El Da Sensei, two of the golden era legends, come together on one album as they bring back classic New York rap and all its facets in the form of, ‘XL’. Known from the legendary crews Brand Nubian and Artifacts, the two emcees are relying on the proven jazzy sounds with banging drums formula, spitting punchlines and trading bars with R.A. The Rugged Man, AG, Nutso and Sa-Roc.

We saw you together back in 2015 in the track ‘We Must Stand’, with 9th Wonder on the production and Dj Iron on the cuts. Three years later you are releasing ‘XL’. How did you decide to team up to work on an LP? What led you to create this album?

El: Well, ‘XL’ has been in the making since 2011 and we’ve known each other since 90! We have mutual friends that one day just said why don’t Y’all do an album together? We said, shit why not? lol. Real easy decision. We leaked ‘We Must Stand’ because we knew we had to show something and let cats know what we sound like, and it was a good idea.

We live in the era of YouTube singles, where a lot of artists release video clips only. Taking this into account, seeing an LP with 22 tracks is not common anymore. Did you decide beforehand that you wanted to release such a long album? Or it simply happened?

El: 22 songs weren’t the goal but with a title called ‘XL’ it had to be that we couldn’t make an L album, lol. All the songs recorded made the album except one. With everyone’s short attention span, we knew all too well what would be said. So we had to make sure all the songs were likeable in order to get that 1 hour and 12 to be accepted.

Following the previous question, it must not have been easy to select beats for 22 songs. We’d love to learn more about your selection process and the producers and DJs you have decided to work with?

El: Production wise is most of our friends on production and a lot of new blood on it as well. From greats such as J Rawls and DJ Spinna, Tony Galvin, to new cats like Divine Drummah, Mentplus, King I Divine, P Original, Internal Quest, DJ Scienz, Kic Beats and also international producers such as D Rec (Canada) & Koolade (Croatia.) All cuts were done by DJ Hush, DJ Kaos and DJ Grazzhoppa. The features came through straight up respect and wanting to be on the LP totally. Bumpy Knuckles blessed us with a request through a tweet. AG is our brother, with RA the Rugged Man we’ve been wanting to work since we started the LP. And we had to have Sa Roc to represent that female aspect, she bodied it too! On a whole, we wanted to make an album a little bit more than what fans expected.

We’ve all been blown away by several tracks, and ‘Power Moves’ is definitely one of my favourites. There you drop great lines, like when you mention that when you started “A Mic in your hand was an extension of truth, and this was validated by proof”. Do you think this attitude of the mic being an extension of truth has been lost nowadays?

El: Well, today is very different because today’s MCs don’t hone skills or practice the craft of lyricism or rhyme schemes and wordplay through vocabulary. In no way or form of what we all knew it took to be an emcee. To battle, to be original. Just the normal qualifications to be dope!

Also one of my favourites is ‘Copy Dat’, where you leave proof that you’ve been in the game for a while now. In the past years, you both have been really active, with Sadat X releasing an album every year for the last three. While some people sort of get tired the longer they make art, do you feel with more energy and need to make music than ever?

El: I feel like if you LIKE making music you will do it, especially if you’re used to a process. Some artists don’t even go to the studio that much if they’re not active or feel like they have a fan base to speak to. Some aren’t that confident with their skills or talent to make records or compete in the industry right now! To be in it today you have to stick your chest out and show you have that energy, especially me and X. We have to prove we still got it! lol.

The album has been published through Vinyl Digital, based in Germany. How did the opportunity to work with them come up?

El: I hit Vinyl Digital about some work, then they saw something on my Instagram page and asked if I wanted to put it out, then I suggested I’d send them some of the songs from ‘XL’ in the early stages and they liked what they heard. Good people over there.

Lastly, are you planning on touring the U.S. and Europe to present the album?

El: Yes, we are starting in 2019 in California. We start touring Europe in February/March.

Thank you for your time and may you carry on making dope, fresh music…

This exclusive interview was overseen by Nico O. S. for Urban Vault UK.

Sadat X & El Da Sensei – XL via iTunes/Spotify/Limited Vinyl
(300 copies only)

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