Genre-Hopping Rapper ShowYouSuck on Connecting the Dots Across Chicago’s Scenes

Clinton Sandifer is a Chicago local who raps under the name ShowYouSuck. He recently teamed up with Chicago’s own mash-up masters The Hood Internet to form the trio Air Credits, a sci-fi themed project that released their debut LP Broadcasted in October 2016. As part of his recent appearance on The Deepest Dish on RBMA Radio, Sandifer discussed the growth of his partnership with the Hood Internet, the post-apocalyptic narrative behind Air Credits and the vast benefits of playing to different scenes in Chicago.

You recently started a group with Hood Internet. Tell me a little bit about Air Credits.

Air Credits is a project between me and the Hood Internet. The premise of the project is it’s like a concept band in some way. All the music takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where there’s no water, and all the currency is air credits. All the music plays – specifically the project – [like] you’re listening to a radio station in the future. Within that radio station, much like you would listen to the radio now, you hear songs from the past, and you hear songs from the present. Some songs speak on the current situation, and some songs have nothing to do with what’s going on in the current world.

You hear this made up radio station that takes place in the future, and it speaks to things that happen now, things that could possibly happen and definitely things in the past, as well. It’s the first time where I’ve made the music that’s in my head. I’m super excited about it, and really confident in it, and stoked on it.

You’d recorded with and collaborated with Hood Internet before launching Air Credits. How far along in your relationship with Hood Internet did you guys go, “Oh, this is an idea. This is another concept entirely”?

It started from me being a fan of the Hood Internet since 2007. I used to work in a mall folding t-shirts and listening to Hood Internet mixes. It’s definitely one of the craziest things ever to be in a working band with two dudes I’ve been a huge fan of for so long. The first time we collaborated, Steve [Reidell] from Hood Internet reached out to me via Twitter to feature on their first album of original music, which was called FEAT. I was on a song with Isaiah Toothtaker [“Nothing Should Be a Surprise”]. Since then, they made a few remixes for me. We toured Europe together. Then, they produced a song called “Make-Out King” on my debut project, Dude Bro.

That song always got a very specific reaction, as opposed to a lot of my other material. It just speaks to how great of producers the Hood Internet is. I don’t think they get enough credit for that, because people pay more attention to the mash-up aspect of it. That just shows how awesome of producers they are, because they know what sounds great under what, and they have a great frame of reference for things. It’s a dream that I can explain to Steve and Aaron [Brink] a specific sound that I’m hearing by referencing movies and TV show sounds, and they know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’ve been able to pull people who I’ve worked with before into this project as well. It’s cool to have this new thing, but it’s also still so much of the ShowYouSuck that people know, and people have grown to be accustomed to. It’s just on steroids now, which is really rad.

You mentioned references that inspired what you’re going for. The future that Air Credits is in, it’s dark, but the music is bright. What kind of approach did you take with this? What were your references?

We started this project in March. When we started recording, the idea wasn’t there yet. It was literally, “Let’s just make some songs.” There was two songs where we started where it was just literally just me doing random rapping. Then, [we] came across this beat where some really cool synths was added, and it made me think about El-P’s I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead album. There were three songs in the middle where it sounds like a sci-fi epic. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. It always made me feel a rad way about sci-fi rap.

Other than El-P, as an example of that, you have to look into the world of nerdcore. I’m not too keen on a lot of the music that is within the nerdcore scene. Not topic-wise – just sonically, I’m not too crazy about it. When Steve played this specific beat, I thought, “Oh man, this is the chance for me to rap about sci-fi stuff.” It actually sounds cool. I just went for it. It was a song called “Camaro,” it’s the first song on the album. I lay out different facts about this random year – about Trump becoming president and then having enough money to clone himself over and over again, so he never leaves office. There was a mysterious blast, and all the air was taken, and now we have to pay for the air. All these things just came into my head. It was like, “This would be a really cool premise of an ’80s B sci-fi movie.”

The goal of it is to, topic-wise, make something that has a storyline to it, but also make songs that can be played – that can be sandwiched between a Young Thug song and a Gucci song. You can slip an Air Credits song in the middle of there and it won’t sound that crazy.

It’s really fleshing out to become a really big thing. My goal is, I want people making fan-fiction of this stuff – full on, full on. We’re working on really rad visual aspects to it, a novel. It’s really cool. Once you really hear the project from beginning to end, you’ll hear a slight storyline. There are some things that I think that will leave people asking questions about it, which is all that we want. The beat selection is super jamming. It goes all over the board, which is cool.

Tell me how you started making music.

I started writing raps in seventh grade – seventh, eighth grade was me just making stuff without never rapping out loud, just writing it in a notebook. Once I got into high school, I found some other people who also wrote raps and rapped out loud. That was freshman year high school, in a cafeteria, was my first time rapping out loud.

I basically started rapping because I always wanted to start a band, but that required buying an instrument and finding other people who want to start a band. Rapping just seemed to be the easiest because you can do it by yourself. Just all throughout high school, finally rapping around people, started a rap group. Right out of graduating high school, we were, like, full-on, “Let’s pursue the music dream.” I did that grind for a few years, and then I ended up into the world of retail. I met so many different kinds of people from working retail.

I always had music as a hobby: Meeting people, becoming friends with people, and then them finding out about my music, always as a second or third thing, just carried my music through different communities for a really, really long time, which essentially led me to now. Having all these different pockets of people who like Clinton, and Clinton just happens to make music. Just being so involved with a ton of different cultures – working at a skate shop, working at a tattoo shop, working at Finish Line, going to hardcore shows and also rap shows. I met so many different kinds of people. That was what mainly got my music around. The internet became an easier tool for people to help get my stuff around.

You aren’t stuck to one particular format, or one particular sound, or one particular area. Tell me a little bit about how you went from finding yourself in so many different scenes, and how you managed to introduce your music to all these communities when people still knew you as just Clinton.

People just knowing me as Clinton first, made it the absolute most easy way to present my music to them. Because, even five years ago, if you said you were a rapper, people still wouldn’t give much a shit because there’s rappers everywhere – as of five years ago. After someone meets me, and knows my interests and other things that we both connect about, then they find out I make music. And then they find out I make music about the stuff that we all like. It’s an easy win in that sense.

With my sound, I feel like I can go wherever I want because I keep the culture of it the same. I get to express a lot of the different things I’m into in my music without being caged in. I would never say I’m not a rapper, but I don’t necessarily have to make stereotypical rap-sounding music if I don’t want to. The culture of it connects to people and I understand that. I understand what I like about the things that I like, so I can make them.

What is your community in Chicago today? Who do you see as the people that are important to, maybe not your sense of a musical community, but your sense of community in Chicago?

It’s become a lot smaller than in past years. A lot of my life’s focus, if I’m not gone, I'm here. I’m newly engaged, so I spend a lot of time in my apartment with my fiancé [jazz and soul vocalist Lili K.], just watching stuff and listening to stuff. My now-frequent collaborator, Steve Reidell, of the Hood Internet, we spend a lot of time together just making stuff. [Visual artist] Floyd A. Davis, spend a lot of time helping him with whatever he needs help with, or just hanging out and watching stuff.

Someone who I’ve come to see every now and then, is [rapper] Rich Jones – we reconnect every once in a while and catch up with each other. He brings a very good energy, I enjoy Rich a lot. Westley Parker – someone who I’ve known for a really, really long time, who’s doing some awesome things. I often like to just pop up on him and just make sure he’s still sane, in this crazy thing we're all in. There’s tons of people who I love to see when I’m out, but definitely when I’m home, I definitely keep the circle very, very tight. It’s mostly spent sitting around, and gathering inspiration.

One of the many things that I like about you and your music is that you can play a rap show, and you also play a rock show. You can play with a rock band, and you will play a comedy show. Who have you bonded with through these experiences that you might not have met had you not made an effort to actually go and do all these different experiences?

Honestly, every single person. That’s literally how I meet people. I often think of my life as the Jim Carrey movie, Yes Man. I just say yes to everything, within reason. It’s often the shows where on paper it doesn’t seem like it would be a big deal or the guarantee isn’t that high. Sometimes there is something in my head that goes, “Dude, just do it. If you’re not doing this show tonight, you’re going to be on the couch. Go do it.”

I always end up meeting somebody crazy, or getting this crazy offer for something else. Doing a comedy show at Virgin Hotel led me to do my voiceover work – things I never foresaw. You just got to say yes to stuff, within reason. Everyone who I’ve come across, I've met people who I've looked up to tremendously, all because I said yes to an opportunity that another rapper passed up. Thanks to all those other rap dudes who pass up on stuff.