Releasing a new song every week was my way of building up to a grand finale: and by that I mean my birthday. I turn 31 today, and In/Stability: The Ultimate Ending is Rootbeer’s birthday gift to Adam Wells. Your gift to me can be listening to the album on the platform of your choice.

The last song, “Home 2 U,” which is the only song that had not been released prior to today, also has a lyric video I made myself using a GoPro that was taped to five dog food cans stacked on one another.

I’m not kidding.

Also, if you haven’t checked it out yet, Emcee Graffiti and I wrangled a bunch of local 518 artists and dropped a remix for “These Things Happen” on Friday so go check that out too!

Finally, I’ve written up a long, heartfelt post about the album, with some extra focus on “Home 2 U.” If you hate reading, there is a near-verbatim recitation of it in Rootbeer & Rawhide Rate Rappers Episode 19, which has just been uploaded to Soundcloud. You can listen to that below, or scroll just slightly further down to read the commentary.

If you’ve been listening to the song releases every Friday, you’ll be familiar with the album by now, except for the last song, which this post is going to explain. First, let’s go way, way back to when I first started rapping. The most common question I was asked by my family and friends was: “why?” Why did I want to make music?

The answer I always gave was: “to have my message heard.” Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely sure what that message was for a very long time. I was figuring it out as I went along, and figuring myself out too. Hip-hop was therapy for me. I think back to songs like “Twisted Thoughts,” “Alone,” “Suicide Note,” “Esperanza,” “How Ya Feelin?,” “Loose Ends” and “Alone with Myself” and find that they detail the struggle of someone who hasn’t fully come to terms with his depression.

I suppose, then, that depression fueled me since before I was even conscious of it. Now think back through the songs on In/Stability. Name one instance where I mention depression. You can’t. Sure, there’s some self-deprecation, plenty of awareness of personal flaws, but even at the points of deepest scrutiny, there is always perseverance.

Every song on this album represents an element of my life falling apart:

1. Place Beyond the Pines: environment
2. These Things Happen: the music industry
3. I Suck: self-esteem
4. Old You Back: interpersonal relationships
5. Girl of my Dreams: sense of reality
6. Let Love Die: love
7. I Can’t Tell: hip-hop
8. S.W.A.T. II: society
9. Dat Atdo: judgment

“Home 2 U” breaks the trend. 2013 was the worst year of my life. I had lost my will to live, but the small shred of sanity left within me – the “voice in the back of my head” if you will – challenged me to work on myself. This song is about that voice, the one and only indication that I was “in stability.” Suddenly that slash in the title makes sense. The song, and the album by proxy, are about being okay despite losing so much because I never lost my sense of self.

Thankfully, my struggles were not coupled with substance abuse. However, I recognized that mental health is a primary cause of alcoholism, so I thought back to when my mother stopped drinking. She was tasked with writing a list of things she liked about herself. I could not remember how many things were on the list, but I figured it was somewhere between 25 and 50, so I challenged myself to make a list of 40. The first 20 were surprisingly easy and I wrote them all down in one sitting. The next ten came slower, over the course of weeks. The final ten, and especially the final five, took months of personal reflection.

When I finished the list, I decided to turn it into a song. “Home 2 U” is that song.

Not only is “Home 2 U” a result of my mental health progress and the story that In/Stability has told over this three-month rollout, it’s the conclusion I had been unable to reach since I wrote my first rhymes on a hotel notepad in 1999 – twenty long and eventful years ago. Those songs I mentioned earlier, where I hadn’t yet come to terms with my depression…they are the first act.

Fear of Success, my most depressing album, particularly the songs “Lost in my Depression” (obviously), “Ghost of my Past,” “Perfect for Me” and “PTSD” details the struggle of someone who recognizes the depression but for whom it has become too heavy. That is the second act. Well, if you want to get technical I’d say being not-depressed for a while in college was like the second act and then Fear of Success was more of a climactic third act.

In/Stability: The Ultimate Ending, and the subtitle is important, is the final act. Making this album wasn’t therapy for me like the others were, it was a way to share the revelation of what really mattered. Once spoken, hip-hop was no longer needed as a vessel for the message, and I could move on. Therefore, I chose to make the song and the album end with the music cutting in and out, like a radio station losing its frequency the further you drive away from it.

As you may be able to guess by my use of the terms “final act” and “move on,” this is my final solo album.

I felt so good about this decision…and yet as I sit here typing this post my face is getting tighter and my fingers don’t want to touch the keys. Please don’t mistake this for retirement. I am committed to making Whiteout! 3. Any time Rawhide needs a guest verse from me, I will do it and I’ll be really excited about it. If Emcee Graffiti tells me he needs an opener for a show he’s booking, I’ll be there on stage. If, down the line, a whole song comes to mind and it’s not meant to be a collaboration, I’ll record it, but I’ll put it out right away.

I feel, at present, freer than I have felt in quite some time. Fear of Success and In/Stability were in the works, concurrently, since 2012. Even since 2002, there hasn’t been a period of more than a few months where I wasn’t working on an album.

If you’ve known me personally, you may have seen me walking with my head down, oblivious to your presence even if you call out to me. That’s because I’ve always had a beat in my head. Literally, I feel like I’ve lived “to the beat of my own drum.” With that ever-changing beat in my head I was always constructing songs, verses, hooks. But the music stopped a while ago and I don’t miss it. I feel so very content with the body of work I’ve developed over the past 20 years and the personal struggles it has allowed me to overcome. It will always be here to provide support for anyone who is going through the same mental health journey. For me, though, I’ve gone from “Twisted Thoughts” to thoughts of starting a family. So thank you, hip-hop, for bringing me “Home 2 U.” To Adam, that is.

And thank every last one of you who has read this post. I hope you enjoyed the album, though I didn’t really make it for you.