Sabac

Born John Fuentes in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, the angst-ridden and politically minded rapper Sabac, also known as Sabac Red, spent his first four years on the island before moving to Brooklyn alongside his Italian mother. Hip-hop culture gripped him by his early teens, sharpening his skills into those of a formidable MC. While attending high school he joined multiple street promotional crews that championed acts such as Big Daddy Kane and Greg Nice, even as repeated encounters with law enforcement punctuated those years. After completing a two-year recording-engineering course he took a position at the respected hip-hop imprint Wild Pitch, where he served as director of college radio promotions. His introduction to Ill Bill, later Non-Phixion’s frontman, occurred in 1995. The quartet’s underground debut, The Future Is Now, waited until 2002 for an official release. Working independently, Sabac enlisted Ill Bill’s brother and Non-Phixion beatsmith Necro to handle production on his first solo album, Sabacolypse: A Change Gon’ Come, which appeared on Necro’s Psycho Logical label in 2004. Although Non-Phixion dissolved in 2006, Sabac maintained his alliances with both Ill Bill and Necro, contributing tracks to projects on their respective imprints. In subsequent years he issued several mixtapes, among them the Collabo Collection series, whose second installment in 2007 carried beats from the duo Blue Sky Black Death.