Transition

I love an album that’s as much a bipolar mess as I am. That’s why it made sense to jump from a low like “Lost in my Depression” to a something as silly as “Integrity.” However, I didn’t want to take away from either song with an immediate, drastic change in mood.

Having client calls is part of my job so I wanted to reflect that on the album somehow. Between “Lost in my Depression” and “Integrity” was perfect for a skit because it lets the listener cleanse their pallet. Skits on rap albums are pretty much an endangered species at this point, but it made sense in this case. It’s tailored to the album theme, introduces a song, is slightly funny and gives the engineer a voice. That’s Dan Bouza on the other end of the line, by the way. Shout to him for recording the whole thing.

Overview

As I mentioned in my Fear of Success post, this was an early concept that made it all the way to the final product. For the fourth week in a row, the instrumental was one I brought home from Rawhide’s in early 2012. The filename he gave it was Project 23. Who the hell knows what that means?

Role in Fear of Success

Part of jobs – hell, part of life is doing things you aren’t comfortable with. Maybe you’re working with a client in a vertical that challenges your worldview. When you have enough love for what you do you’re willing to forfeit some integrity and do the work that makes you hate yourself so you can continue to do the other 80% of the tasks listed under your job title that give you purpose. The hip-hop equivalent of that is writing radio records.

Commentary, with lyrics I had to rewrite because I can’t find the finished lyric doc for the life of me

Money taller than a sumac, sumac
Who dat? Who dat? Yeah, Root back, Root back

Direct parody of Iggy Azalea.

Bruno Mars, Charli XCX
Sia, Ne-Yo, Teddy Pain
Usher, Future, Trey Songz
Rihanna, Chris Brown, Akon

If this truly was a radio single I’d have outsourced the hook to someone on this very exclusive list of artists the industry agreed to make superstars. I can’t afford any of them so I just read the menu.

Got more cream than a bag of Oreos

I built the entire section of the second verse around this punchline and it’s not even very good. It’s appropriate, though, because I’m pretty sure Desiigner built an entire song around “Gorillas they come and kill you with bananas.”

Goin’ home wit’ a bitch I met on the Internet, Ctrl+F her
Take control, F her

I dropped a reference to office work on every song. This one was a little more cryptic: Ctrl+F being the keyboard shortcut for “Find.”

No merit, you old like Bo Derek
Bum stickity bum, I flow cuz I wrote lyrics
Stick my thumb in your bum, your bum in my face
Make you sweat like you done wit’ a race and runnin’ in place

I’ll admit I didn’t get the appeal of Danny Brown at first. Everything I heard was about Molly and eating pussy. After he did a couple guest verses I liked – “Tick Tock” on the Man with the Iron Fists Soundtrack comes to mind – I finally checked out XXX and was pleasantly surprised. Still, his voice is unique so I wanted to parody it. It is the “Freshest Form of Flattery” after all. One thing I will say: I don’t know how the hell the guy does entire songs with that open-throat flow. I did four bars and I was in pain.