It’s 4am. I’m sitting in an airport waiting for a plane to fly me to a city I’ve never been to. I haven’t slept.

A lot of rappers tweet like the above while they’re on tour. My trip is for business, but it has nothing to do with music. In fact, my presence here writing this blog entry is the very essence of Fear of Success. I’ve chosen the 9 – 5 life, but there are parts of my dreams I can never let go. Hip-hop will always be in my blood, like white cells, fighting what ails me.

I’m going to read that metaphor tomorrow and think it’s much less clever.

And if hip-hop is the white blood cells, then the red ones…they, well, they look kind of like Pokéballs don’t they?

Ever since I was gifted Pokémon Blue on my 10th birthday I’ve been, to an extent, obsessed. My entire circle of friends at college, including The Rawhide Kid, was addicted all the same. It’s a beautiful coincidence that I get to write this Rootbeer Report at the height of Pokémon GO’s rise to popularity.

In fact, I’ve got my phone on the chair next to me, keeping an eye on the airport gym, making sure it stays in the glory of Team Valor. Dammit, someone just took it. When Dan shows up I’ll have him watch my luggage so I can get it back.

Anyway, you didn’t click on this post to read the ramblings of my overtired brain, though you should know by now to expect it so you get no sympathy if you are thus far bored. Now I’m going to actually discuss “Battle Rap.” This was a concept I sent to Rawhide when I first told him I was working on a new album, though I did worry that if it went viral my music would instantly be written off as a gimmick. I then decided a viral gimmick wouldn’t be the worst definition my music’s been given.

Fact Checking

Normally, I tell Rawhide a concept, he plays me or sends me beats he’s already made that best suit it and we tailor each other’s work from there. With this song, Rawhide crafted the beat specifically for the concept with the exact sample I had in mind. We started writing to it on the spot. We got through maybe the first verse-and-a-half during that early 2012 listening session and finished it over a year later. We double-checked every reference to make sure each Pokémon we chose had a proper moveset.

Aerodactyl actually couldn’t learn Earthquake until the second generation of Pokémon games so while this line is accurate, the game from which I captured the Pokémon footage in the video (Pokémon Stadium) is a Generation 1 spin-off title. While brainstorming what to do for that part, Andrea came up with the idea of stealing a scene from San Andreas. I happened upon a Blu-Ray copy on Black Friday for $10 so I picked it up, watched it and identified the perfect scene to integrate.

Is it just me or is the video really shitty?

To film, we borrowed my friend and coworker Karina’s camera (which I still haven’t given back) and went to the field near my dad’s house. This was an ideal location, not only because it is private property so we wouldn’t be disturbed, but because it was balls hot outside and my dad’s house was nearby and available for us to takes breaks in air conditioning. Andrea Malatesta, who also created the single cover and the album cover, operated the camera.

You may notice there are a couple scenes where Rawhide’s hat is on frontwards. This was initially an accident but after noticing it, we decided to keep it in as a sight gag. It’s a video of two white guys rapping about Pokémon. A well-made video wouldn’t have done the song justice. It isn’t that the video is bad. It has a finely-tuned balance between being professional and not taking itself too seriously. It’s “Strategically Shitty,” as I like to call it.

Pancakes

You know how on Arrow Oliver keeps revealing skills and connections as the flashbacks show where he first got those skills or connections? This is like that except instead of surviving on an island, I was recording a childish music video. As I write this sentence I’m sitting in Chicago Midway Airport having just watched my coworker, John, eat some pancakes. Flashback to the song now, which ends with Rawhide and I getting pancakes. That is actually a reference to a reference. Rawhide got pancakes at the end of his song “Kung Fu You” which was totally my idea. That idea, which was mine, was inspired by the Prince sketch on Chappelle’s Show where Charlie Murphy ends his story by saying Prince made him and his crew pancakes.