Collection: Rahim Salaam
Merchandise commemorating the 10 year anniversary of Rahim Salaam's solo releases.
After a music career spanning four decades in Chicago, local underground arts legend Rahim Salaam now takes time to look back. His first label release “The Amateur Method: A Retrospective” arrives July 7th via Sinkhole Sounds and comes in the form of an 80 track compilation spanning the 45 solo albums he’s released independently since 2012.
The prolific artist and producer grew up in Cabrini Green (now affluent Lincoln Park) and came of age during Chicago’s golden era of hip-hop in the 90s and early 2000’s. Performing under the monikers Doctor Who and Rageing Salaam, the helmet-adorning emcee was a member of Blunt Crew, Immortals, and notably had features with Sadat X. While these formative years sculpted his creative process, as Salaam expanded his musical exploration he began to feel limited in his creative expression due to judgment from peers while continuing to reckon with the racist image expectations the music industry places on Black artists.
Deep in artistic conflict, Salaam struck inspiration from Billy Childish, a British painter and musician who once said, “In many ways I like to look at myself as amateur in everything I do. The amateur does things for love and for belief.” From this moment of clarity, the amateur method was born. Rahim took to Studio One, a Radioshack microphone, and a busted laptop in his bedroom to begin a new weekly creative flow. Since starting his Bandcamp/Soundcloud page Amateur Arts Productions in 2013, he has released a full-length album every three months.
This retrospective selects the best of his almost 350 song catalog. While some feature collabs with distinguished producers like Bento, Malci, Joshua Virtue, Annie Burns, Bean Carrots, Ryan Officer, and Drama Foxx, most are tracks that employ his signature hour challenge method - an attempt to channel a creative stream of consciousness to create a mostly finished track by the end of the session.
The amateur method helped him shake the expectations imposed upon him, and his steadfast commitment to this process led to fruitful collaborations with TOOFUNCHILD, Sex No Babies, and currently with electronic hip-hop trio SUPERFUND, securing him as one of the most prolific songwriters in the city. He cements himself as a contemporary Woody Guthrie on this release, staying insightfully topical while simultaneously achieving timelessness. It also birthed his drive to promote Chicago as the arts mecca it is through What About Chicago?!, an award-winning podcast spotlighting local arts, music, and culture events over the last decade.
“The Amateur Method: A Retrospective” explores the meandering creative path Salaam has walked as a lifelong Chicagoan. He strikes a middle point between Westside Gunn, Daniel Johnston, Deem Blunt, and Fiona Apple - an eccentric mix of eloquent raps and earnest folk songs gushing with infectious pop-punk hooks that navigate the sometimes uncomfortable questions surrounding race, love, hate, mistakes, violence, and finding joy. This album is a testament to the liberating potential that Art can inspire within us. The amateur ethos it exudes invites all of us to cultivate a creative process of our own, to create beauty and defend it without fear of judgment, and to make art we believe in, not just for the mortgage.
