Explain who you are for those who don’t know
I’m a rapper and producer from the DMV but I don’t really claim that DMV tag cause I’m so not like the frontline artists blowing up in the area right now.
How did you come up with your name?
Lee’s the first syllable of my government name so I just stuck with it. Sahir is in reference to Sahir Ludhianvi. That’s a poet and songwriter from India I’m a fan of and I fucks with Indian culture off music and their approach to spirituality so it just felt right when I created the persona. Lee Sahir sounds cool so fuck it.
Where are you from? What’s it like growing up there?
I was born in Frederick Maryland but moved to Hagerstown when I was 5 or 6 so I just say I’m from here. It sorta depend where you at in the city. Hagerstown got people who get a new whip for their birthday and they parents got boats and they a few blocks from gang members and drug dealers and shit they don’t know nothing about. I’ve lived in both areas cause we moved around the city growing up so my experience has been all over the spectrum. I hear shit all the time how we’re turning into the new Baltimore but I don’t know how I feel about that. We have some music talent in this city though and I’ve been focused on that more than I been really paying attention to the shit that’s happening societally.
How did you get into music?
When I turned six, my whole kindergarten class from Frederick came to Hagerstown and we put on a Peter Pan show in my house and I had such a fun time doing that, I did theater for the better part of the following 10 years. In high school, I went to arts school and they had music production equipment on the vocal floor but they didn’t have a class to actually learn how to use it for making beats, they just used it for some other shit like piano composition which was cool but it wasn’t what I wanted to do. At the same time, I stopped doing theatre because the theatre teacher at that school didn’t like me and didn’t cast me in anything. So I wasn’t going to lunch with my friends, I was locked in that room teaching myself how to use the equipment and I figured shit out over time. With rapping, me and my Kenny (Kennece The Menace) starting rapping not as anything serious, like we really didn’t see longevity in this shit when we started, but we just realized over time like “…shit, we kinda nice” and nobody we were rapping with was at the same level we were at lyrically and content wise. So my senior year, I got a used MacBook for Christmas and a old homie left his mic at my house and just never came back to get it so I used that for a while, set up a studio in my parents basement, started recording us and other local rappers and singers and once we peeped our competition we were like “alright, we gotta do this shit forreal cuz these guys are some some shit” and this was years ago.
How are you different than other artists?
What makes me different than artists locally and on a larger scale is the fact that I produce the vast majority of my songs, I record and do the engineering work for all of my songs, and what I rap about is different than what a lot of other rappers do. I’m versatile as fuck. I don’t know anybody who raps about living in the hood, then raps about a shordy he talking to, then raps about meditation and Buddhism and the importance of spiritual tranquility and is making their beats on top of writing complex songs.
What’s next for you?
I have a lot of ideas bouncing around my head right now, but it’ll be tight once the product hits the market. Videos and shows soon.
Anything else you would like to say?
Shoutout everybody in my area I fuck with that’s doing they shit. Kennace the Menace and Left Leg, Haydo and Malott, Skies, D$taxXx and Lil Dre, all them. Elgiiin, Swiiift, Ukno, and Kyng K. It’s too much unrecognized and unappreciated talent. @LeeSahir on everything, videos and shows coming soon.
soundcloud.com/leesahir
twitter.com/leesahir
instagram.com/leesahir
