"This solo thing I'm doing here is real to me/The most serious thing in my life, I can say up to this point/My reputation is at stake/This is were the men are made/Seperate me from the sons/Put me with the big guns."

"When I rhyme, I try to think about what people would expect me to say and try to do the exact opposite,"

he unassumingly says. On the group's seminal All For One (1990), Sadat stood out with his solo excursion, "Concerto In X Minor," where he spoke on police brutality and the manifestation of racism within the scope of New York City's heated climate.
The classic "Slow Down" saw X taking a keen eye to the crack problem that still plagues the inner-city. Brand Nubian came to the stage as is, no gimmicks or tricks, just knowledge and lyrics. Quite simply, no other group made social commentary palatable at a time when acts like Public Enemy approached the cusp of being passe. In 1994 Brand Nubian released Everything is Everything, which featured "Alladat," Sadat's solo that was lauded by critics and street dwellers alike as the album's apex.

"Give the question/I'm tired of brothers guessin'/The nubian name brought the X a lot of fame/but wouldn't be a shame if it all up and ended?/That ain't the plan I had and shit like that ain't intended for the slick headed wonder..."

Sadat X "Allah U Akbar" From In God We Trust (Brand Nubian 1992)
"I'm still Brand Nubian, and we're definitely gonna do this reunion thing," makes known the 26-year old artist, who was born in Manhattan and grew up in the Bronx and New Rochelle . As a youth, Sadat first began preparing himself by being immersed in diverse forms of music. " When I was real small, I used to listen to James Brown and Parliament Funkadelic," he recalls. Sadat's father was an avid listener of jazz, exposing the youngster to artists such as Dizzy Gillespie, Horace Silver, Oscar Peterson , Stan Getz, and Lonnie Smith. "But then I used to like all the breakbeat jams, early rap records, and shit like that," he confides. "As far as the rap side, who influenced me was all the old school crew like Jazzy 5, Fantastic 5, Cold Crush Brothers, Zulu Nation emcees, and Ikey C...I can remember, when I was small, shuttling back and forth between New Rochelle and the Bronx for all the old school parties: Rooftop, Latin Quarter, and Union Square. We were there when KRS-One did the video for The Bridge Is Over." But before that reunion can come to fruition, Sadat who has appeared on records with Diamond D, Lord Finesse and A Tribe Called Quest, as well as becoming a staple on over-and-underground mix tapes with scintillating freestyles and unreleased cuts such as "Come On Motherfuckers," a duet with The Notorious B.I.G. and "Loud Hangover," from Funkmaster Flex's the Mix Tape: Volume 1, is about to unveil his solo debut album, WILD COWBOYS on Loud/RCA Records.

On the album, X, in the spirit of a wild cowboy, continues to expand his horizons and explore uncharted territory. As Sadat sees it, the days of "Cowboys And Indians" are through: horses have become luxury cars and the frontiers are ever changing. "Five years ago there wasn't an Internet like there is today," he says. " The way it is now, you can shop and everything like that by computer; imagine how it's gonna be five years from now. It's gradually happening right now, everything is gonna be done by scanners...it just pays to know this stuff. I wanna learn how to use all these computers and stuff. I don't want anyone to have an advantage over me. I wanna be prepared."

"On WILD COWBOYS I took a lot of the street elements to reach brothers," says a confident Sadat X .

"Cause these young kids only understand this street stuff , I need to use a language that they can understand. Everybody that's successful in rap, and have been in it for a long time have been able to adapt to each different style and change with what's going on; nobody's been able to stay exactly the same. This is a change in style, but it's still a progression and it's still gonna be teaching, cause that's my job."

Sadat X's old school rearing comes to the forefront on "Stages And Lights," a raucous party starter produced by Showbiz (of Showbiz & A.G.). On the song , X claims "I ain't never been gold, but I got the platinum fame." The track lets listeners know that "I'm the same on the stage as I am on the street,' says the rapper. True to this ethic, Grand Puba trades verses with Sadat over the melodic xylophones of "Open Bar," declaring that "Me and Sadat go back to the days of the sandbox."

Sadat spreads his reality-tinged educatory on "Move On," a pulse wave-driven headnodder produced by Diamond D. " Move On' is talking about different situations in life," X explains. "From having to pay child support, car tickets, student loans, to your kids growing up, and all that's coming around you and your just trying to get out of that, maintain and live. Diamond D also comes through on "Older Women," a hypnotic mixture of an acolian undercurrent , cushioned percussion and elegant strings. "That just touching on older women-younger men relationships," asserts Sadat. "Y'know, just trying to vary things up, and bring new topics into the form." Ogee (O.C.) concocts a waterfall of cascading notes for "Sauce For The Birdheads," which X says, warns people "don't sleep cause you might slip." For the "Lump Lump," where the rapper observes different characteristics of women, blooming production magus Buckwild provides his sparse, drum-ruled best. Also contributing to the production on WILD COWBOYS are X's long time collaborator, DJ Alamo, Minnesota, new comer Father Time, the venerated SD50's and X himself.

"I put everything into this album," declares Sadat. "Because I knew that this was that joint; this is what I'm gonna stand on. This is me.

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