What can I say about this song that isn’t going to get me in trouble?

The three verses are about three specific fictional characters and the chorus is an interpretation of a song that is relevant to those characters. If you know the what these characters are from, you get this song. If you don’t then you probably think I’m a rapist.

In 17 years of writing lyrics I’ve never dabbled in horrorcore. I did do some horrorcore style production on a couple of The Rawhide Kid’s songs. There are quite a few horrorcore artists I really enjoy (including a good percentage of Rawhide’s discography) but it was never anything I wished to emulate. Hip-hop has been an outlet for my depression more than anything else. That and an opportunity to brag about my dick. Lots and lots of dicktalk. However, I came up with the concept for “Psychopathic” and thought it was Rootbeer enough to cross that threshold without losing authenticity.

The Voice

Delivery is always important but it was a bigger focus on this song. Obviously my regular voice wouldn’t suit the lyrics or the theme, but the gruff, Violent J-esque thing is played out. I didn’t want to try to sound scary because it’s very transparent. Fear isn’t the goal of the rapist character. He’s recalling stories of his escapades. He does not feel shame or remorse. So I used a very soft, excited voice which made the character believable and also helped the song stand out on the album as well as within the horrorcore subgenre of hip-hop.

Fun Fact (based on a very liberal definition of “fun”)

I know the first hip-hop lyrics I ever wrote were written on hotel stationery in 1999. Then from 1999 – 2001 I wrote a number of songs and never recorded them. At some point in that two year period I remember writing a song called “Psychopathic” intended for the first Caucasian Invasion album – which was a group I was in with my friend and former rapper BullDogg. We ended up starting over from scratch after a brief attempt at turning the project into nu-metal so the lyrics became lost to time. However, I never forgot that title and now, 17 years later, I’ve made use of it. There was one other time I reused a song title from that 1999 – 2001 era of lost lyrics and that was “Toad Voice” on my 2006 release Obey Me.

Commentary

More often than not I write lyrics in a notebook first, then copy them to Microsoft Word. In this case, it seems I wrote almost everything in Word first. Opening the lyric doc for the first time in a while, I see I actually titled the verses with the name of each victim and had a list of facts about that character to include. Instead of my usual commentary, I’m just going to block quote all of the lines that are direct references to the characters.

Saw her on the beach being dowsed by a supersoaker

her brother’s a freak psychology-cal-ly

As my stale breath hit her neck I swear she said “give it up to me”

Playwright with an attitude, always has her blood rushing
But she’s an actress, I bet this is practice, she’s bluffing
She collects scissors to cut things
But has she got a tongue ring? I’m just wond’ring
Cuz she’s got one on her eyebrow, I like how that adds spice

She accidently ass-dialed her spark as she sparred me
He thought that something happened to his little harpy
Grabbed his jacket and went to start his RV
But fortunately I’d foreseen it and thieved his car keys

Can’t risk meeting her father, he is a cop

And do the slut just like her best friend’s brother