If you thought Fort Wayne rapper Sankofa was prolific, you haven’t seen anything yet.

There’s no doubt the man with 52 releases on Bandcamp loves what he’s doing, and he shows no signs of letting up.

“I just want to make stuff,” Sankofa said during a recent chat with Whatzup at one of his favorite places in town, Bravas. “I want to have fun with my friends. If that is what my legacy is … ‘He had fun with his friends and made dope stuff.’ … fine. This year, every month an album, it’s because I have that many opportunities.”

That’s right, just like the 10-plus mile runs the pre-K teacher takes, Sankofa is all about the grind and going that extra mile. But as he says, it’s his huge circle of friends and collaborators that keep him going.

“There’s like this childlike glee of, ‘Look at this! Look at this!’ ” he said of his music. “But instead of my mom and me being a kid, it’s me making music and sending it out to friends.”

Friendships

Whenever Sankofa prepares for a new release, it’s his friends and supporters that get priority. When physical merchandise arrives before the digital release, that group gets dibs.

“It’s important for me to have a physical release, to have something tangible,” he said while sipping on a Mr. Pibb. “Ideally, I like to get stuff out to those people so they can hear my stuff first before anyone else can hear it digitally.”

For his first of 12 releases this year, Sankofa wrote on his Bandcamp page that he ordered 50 CDs for January’s 12 Crows on a Wire, but only 10 remained after he sent some to collaborators and snuck others into T-shirt orders.

For this month’s release, Most Anything of Value, he switched things up by releasing the jazzy single on Jan. 26, “Blue Skies, Black Eyes.” The idea for this came from one of his collaborators, one of the many people he says he learns from.

“He was explaining that streaming is more of a discovery platform,” Sankofa said. “I always had this idea of, ‘Once I’ve done preorders and released preorders on Bandcamp, I should just drop the whole thing on streaming.’ I thought, ‘I’m not going to do that this year.’ 

“For the most part, I have three or four singles from each project, and if you want the rest of the album, guess what, ‘Pay me.’ Now, I am not in this for money, but I am also not in this to enrich someone else.”

That “someone else” would be the streaming services. Those he does want to enrich are his friends, and not exclusively by monetary means.

“This is not a money-making endeavor,” he said. “I used to buy a whole bunch of shoes. I will not say how much I spent on shoes each month, but it was an inordinate amount of money. I’ve been fascinated with shoes since I was in high school, and high school was a while ago. I realized I had been supporting all these independent brands, these boutique brands, and I thought, ‘What if I spend that money on the things my friends and I make?’

“If I take that money and spend it on music that my friends and I are making, that’s communing, that’s friendship, and that is making something. There is more fulfillment for me in making something than there is buying something beautiful that is sitting in a box.”

Influences

Sankofa is definitely not someone you can put in a box.

The rapper, who goes by Stephen Bryden off stage, released his first tape, Jonah’s Saucony, in 1999. On his Apple Music bio, he cites his top three albums as Alice in Chains’ Dirt, Ice-T’s The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech … Just Watch What You Say, and Slayer’s Seasons in the Abyss.

While Ice-T and Run-DMC played major roles in his musical upbringing in Australia, his introduction to rap came from a group you have likely never heard of.

“The first rap song I heard was actually a spoof group doing a Beastie Boys song,” he said. “It was Morris Minor & The Majors, a British act (doing 1987’s “Stutter Rap,” a spoof of “No Sleep Till Brooklyn.”). I didn’t even realize until later who The Beastie Boys were and that they were riffing on them.

“Shortly thereafter, I heard ‘Parents Just Don’t Understand’ (by DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince) on American Top 40 while I was still living in Australia. I was just transfixed by music unlike anything I ever heard.”

Upon arriving the U.S., his eyes were opened to much more than music — NBA basketball. His love for the sport is evident in his songs, where he will drop names of long-forgotten players such as Cedric Ceballos, Chris Dudley, and Mateen Cleaves to name a few.

“A huge touchstone for me when I moved to The States was basketball,” he said. “It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, they have basketball on TV?’ 

“My era was that era (in the 1990s). It was Richard Dumas, it was Cedric Ceballos, it was Anthony Mason. I have a song on Most Anything of Value, it’s called ‘Dreamin Hoops,’ and it’s about all these basketball players that I enjoyed watching who are now dead. It’s not meant to morbid, but when I listen to it has this melancholy undertone to the beat.”

Right at home

Along with NBA references, Sankofa does not shy away from sharing his social viewpoints and love for his adopted home of Fort Wayne.

“I think it’s important for people to recognize where they are,” he said. “Invariably, there’s a form of insecurity, like, ‘Oh, I’m from this place, but it’s not this place. It’s not Chicago, it’s not L.A., it’s not Philly or New York.’ 

“I don’t subscribe to the sense of needing to feel like I’m not something. I’m me. I’m comfortable in my skin and I have no qualms about saying, ‘This is me. This is where I stand, and I happen to stand in Fort Wayne. This is what I believe in.’

“I don’t know if I got to an age where I just gave less thought to what people thought of me and was just more interested in being myself. A huge part of myself is Fort Wayne. Fort Wayne is my home.”

Among his multitude of Fort Wayne references is Bravas, which he actually included as “featuring” on his song “Armored Food Truck” on last year’s Kung Fu Buffet.

And it’s more than the burgers he enjoys. Sankofa was inspired by the hustle Bo Gonzalez put into turning the hot dog cart into a food truck, then into a brick-and-mortar store.

That inspiration came at a time when Sankofa was not sure if he was finished with rap as family responsibilities were mounting.

“What they did was so inspirational,” he said of Bravas. “I wrote a song about it, and that marked my comeback into making songs. Up until that point, I was fine. I thought, it might be a sabbatical, or I might be done. It just snowballed.”

That’s gone from a snowball to an avalanche. 

And if releasing an album a month sounds overwhelming, Sankofa said there could be even more than 12 released in 2024. But when you’re having as much fun as he is with his friends, you never have to worry about him burning out.

“I’m not stressed,” he said. “I know what I’m doing. If I ever feeling like I’m rushing, I slow down.”