Archives for : Rootbeer

Rootbeer Report #14: “Midnight Snack”

Posted by :Rootbeer On : September 25, 2016
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Wow, we made it. Fourteen song synopses. What am I going to do with all the extra time I used to spend writing blogs? Probably catching Doduos in the park.

For Promotional Use Only?

I know I said “PTSD” was the first song written for Fear of Success but that’s not entirely true. It was the first song written that was specifically intended for the album. Actually, all three verses of “Midnight Snack” were written before Whiteout! was released. They were three completely disparate verses I didn’t know what to do with so I was going to make a promotional track rhyming over the “Beamer, Benz or Bentley” beat – hence the reference to that song in the third verse – but we ended up having to scramble to finish Whiteout!. We didn’t finish it until the night before the album release party at Hurley’s in Potsdam so needless to say there wasn’t an opportunity to create promotional tracks beforehand.

As I was gathering concepts for Fear of Success I stumbled on the lyrics which were, and are still, in a file called “Cynical critics can sit on a dick and pivot.” They’re very good technical verses and, although they don’t really have an overarching topic, they’re a lot of fun. Basically, they’re the stereotypical white rapper verses. I knew “PTSD” was too heavy to be anywhere on the album but the very end. It represents the part of the day where you’re trying to fall asleep but your brain takes the opportunity to recall every trauma all at once. Yes, I’ve ended many nights that way, but throughout the Fear of Success creation process, it became less common. I didn’t want the last thing the listener hears to be “That’s me in the corner” and it wasn’t fair of me to leave everyone bummed out before the CD loops back around so I added a final chapter: those verses.

“Beamer, Benz or Bentley” being a couple years old by that point, and six years old by the time the album was released, the verses needed a new beat. The Will Spitwell produced one I went with had the perfect vibe to it. I recorded the verses over it but their presence in the Fear of Success album concept needed justification. When Rawhide came to visit and we recorded “Battle Rap” and “Standing Around,” I also had him do the skits between the verses to tie everything together. This is how I pictured it: As I was laying in bed overthinking everything, Rawhide calls me, says he’s outside and we’re going joyriding. By this point I’m exhausted, but like he convinced me to go to the club just a couple songs earlier, I get in the car and he gets me to start freestyling.

It’s because of all of you…

The album ended on a high note and my life was in a better place than it was when I started. That being considered, it felt appropriate to thank some people at the end. I certainly didn’t want to pull a J. Cole at the end of 2014 Forest Hills Drive. Hearing nine minutes of appreciation one time is more than enough so you’re likely to pop out the disc instead of letting it play through, and I wanted to release a project you could keep in your car for months. I told myself I’d thank as many people as I could in the time remaining with the beat at its current length. The guests and Dan were obvious choices, the rest helped me more than they may know.

The bad thoughts block out the counting sheep

There were times the thoughts in my head were so agonizing to me that I’d rather die than think any more. To a lot of people that might sound idiotic, and to an extent it is. You can never fully empathize with someone who is depressed unless you suffer from it yourself. Maybe you don’t understand and maybe a handful of the people I thanked don’t understand either; but they supported me. They answered my text messages at 3 o’clock in the morning and took my plight seriously. Whether they helped guide my mind back to a place of stability or they just helped me think about something else until I stopped crying, they all had a hand in making sure this album got released because I’m not sure it, nor I, would be here today without them.

Thank you, I love you all.

Alternate Ending

There was a short time I considered having a completely different ending to Fear of Success but I didn’t have the resources to make it happen. Since then I’ve actually written an entire album around that concept so prepare yourself for my next full-length project In/Stability: The Ultimate Ending.

Rootbeer Report #13: “PTSD”

Posted by :Rootbeer On : September 8, 2016
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“PTSD” takes struggles in my life, addresses them and then challenges my inability to cope with them. The first verse being my parents, the second being my romantic dependencies and the third being my depression.

Pre-Traumatic Song Development

When I left college I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep rapping. I’ve never been an eggs-in-the-same basket type of guy. I’m confident in my writing, but I’ve always been afraid to succeed. I release a project and as soon as Interscope Records doesn’t magically find a copy and sign me, I get discouraged and start working on another. I wasn’t sure how to break the cycle, so I decided to see where I could go professionally. Within a month of graduation I got a job in my field, a month after that I bought a car and about seven months after that I moved out of my parents house. It was the most I’d ever grown up in the shortest amount of time and with growth comes reflection.

I was in my at-the-time girlfriend’s kitchen in late 2011, early 2012 and what became the first verse of “PTSD” just came to me. They were the first hip hop lyrics I had written since college and they were some of the heaviest I had ever put to paper. I had never written about the part of my childhood before because I never let myself feel the impact of my parents’ drug use and subsequent destruction of one another.

Preparing the Sonic Demands

Reading the verse over to myself again and again inspired me to write even more and eventually arrive at the 9 – 5 concept Fear of Success is based around. Then-girlfriend A/K/A “Perfect for Me” told me on Christmas 2011 she’d lease me three beats from Ill-iteracy so a few months later, after I got my beat pack from Rawhide and decided which concepts still needed the right beat, I chose the ones that would become “Rush Hour,” “Midnight Snack” and “PTSD.”

A couple of years later, once the lyrics were finished and I finally recorded the first verse, I actually broke down into tears during the first take. That’s still on my hard drive somewhere.

Plus those Stupid Dependencies

The second verse is about a girl who had a role in the “Perfect for Me” relationship ending. I did not cheat, but I baled the straw (do you bale straw?) that broke the camel’s back. For the slow, the camel in this case was the already strained relationship. Once said relationship failed, I transitioned a lot of emotion to this other girl. I was very sick. I had been in a relationship so long, I had forgotten what it was like to come home to an empty house. I still had not learned to follow my own path to happiness and instead dedicated myself to living for a woman, hoping desperately, and incorrectly, that would in-turn give me purpose. The verse was written as I came to terms with that so while it is about her, I am more critical of myself. “I can’t end this shit, I am pathetic.”

Commentary

I was never broken up over a broken home

I never wanted sympathy for this. Quite frankly, I was happier with my parents separating than I would have been with them trying to force a relationship and allowing it to remain abusive.

But you don’t know about that Easter
When I woke up early, ran to the stairs and heard you beat her
You was accusin’ her of lyin’ I don’t know fuckin’ why
But the truest excuse was that you were drunk and high

I’m not even sure my parents know I was awake the Easter morning I heard my father beat my mother, though I’ve given both of them physical copies of the album so they probably know now.

Me and Steve, at least you never beat us

Despite the above, my parents were never physically abusive toward my brother, nor toward me.

But I’d be crushed the week I would leave from Aunt Tita’s
Mom was gone with no word day after day
Then I learned she’s in rehab and may have to stay

I would visit my Aunt Tita for a week every summer because she has a really big house in Westchester County. When I was 11, my mother and I were living with my grandmother because we had been evicted from our apartment (I would later find out this was because my mother was spending all her money on booze). That summer I went to Aunt Tita’s like I always do and when I came home, no one knew where my mother was. I went to live with my father, a situation that ended up becoming permanent. A month went by before I heard from my mother, who had gone upstate (well, further upstate) to get clean. This confused me because she had been attending AA for some time and had gotten her one year coin. The truth was she had been drinking the whole time, though you probably could have guessed that since I said we had gotten evicted because of her drinking.

And I’m proud of her now that the past has been shrouded in clouds
But I cower the day the haze lets the sour things out

And that day came before I wrote “Cold Turkey”

On that bridge in ’07 seventy feet from the ground
Police drove by before the would-be messy show
Convinced the hospital psychiatrist to let me go

This was one of the last parts of the song I finished writing. I kept tweaking it but it was impossible to relay in three bars, let alone an entire verse. It’s a true story. In high school – actually the same night I saw that abomination of a movie Spiderman 3 – I ended up threatening suicide. I walked to a bridge and just stood at the edge of it, leaning on the guard rail. The featured image for this post is a picture of that bridge. I never intended to jump, but in previous relationships I had threatened my own life as a very unhealthy way to win a drug I was addicted to: sympathy. The girl I was with at the time, who would go on to be the subject of “Perfect for Me,” was not too keen on the immaturity of that behavior. Eventually the police drove by and refused to leave until I agreed to go with them to the hospital and get a psych eval. The hospital psychiatrist, who they woke from a sound sleep, was ready to commit me as soon as she put on her shoes. After I explained where my head was at and the situation that night really opened my eyes to how unhealthy it was, she cleared me. I stopped threatening myself after that night.

I might have had a place in the playpen
But all I’ve had is rap since age ten

Hip hop has been an outlet for me since 1999. When I hear Joe Budden talk to his depression for six minutes on “Whatever it Takes,” I see it as an invitation to do the same. Some may not see it that way, but his place at the top of XXL’s Greatest Mixtape Series list gives some clout to that flavor of self-expression. It’s sort of like how Nyquil is supposed to help with cold symptoms, but it also helps you sleep. Maybe I didn’t prescribe to hip hop to fight against social injustice, but I found my way into the focus group and it helped my symptoms. This song, I guess, is describing my metaphorical cancer to justify chemotherapy. Please understand I’m not trying to appropriate anything; I’m just taking the drug that works for me.

Rootbeer Report #12: “Perfect for Me”

Posted by :Rootbeer On : August 21, 2016
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I kind of Rootbeer Reported this song already when the video was released so if you want to learn more you can read that post. To summarize:

It’s my favorite song I’ve ever written. My opinion hasn’t changed in the…oh wow exactly three months since I said so. Every line in the second and third verses rhyme. I fully intended it to be a love song but I wrote it at such an emotionally heavy time that it gets more and more delusional with each verse. By the end, it’s almost as if I’m trying to convince myself that she’s perfect for me. Coincidentally(?) the day I finished writing it was also the day that relationship ended. I used a beat Rawhide made called “Stars,” and here we are.


Can you spot the cameo from my piece of shit cat?

Commentary

You address me like an enemy so I stress eat
And then you resent me further cuz I’m hefty like red meat

I’m starting to realize I mention food a lot on this album. Hell, the very first song starts with me going to the refrigerator. Then there’s doughnuts. Now this?

Yes I’m a dead beat but you’re a pain in the ass when you call
During a match of Smash Bros. Brawl

A lot of love songs, especially in hip-hop, are very generic. This is done for relateability; so a maximum number of female listeners can identify themselves as the subject of the lyrics. I’ve done that before, but with this song I wanted to instead get very specific with the details. I don’t want anyone else thinking it’s about them. These were the experiences shared between one specific person and myself. The song gives you a window to that, like something Eve 6 would do. Side Note/Fun Fact: Even though I’m a super hardcore rapper, Eve 6 is one of my favorite bands.

Put that finger in the center of a ring just like a circus

Only super hardcore rappers quote Britney Spears.

You chose my ass over a polite, lustfully buff guy

What’s manlier than a lustfully buff guy? This is hip-hop.

Our love is like an open wound but what when the blood dries?

In all seriousness, though, I’m particularly proud of this line.

Rootbeer Report #11: “Standing Around (The Club)”

Posted by :Rootbeer On : August 12, 2016
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Almost every song on this album has some depressing backstory, rendering the Rootbeer Reports unenjoyable. This song is the exception. Every memory surrounding it is fun or hilarious.

That fateful night

The song was actually inspired by one specific night. You might not be able to tell by looking at us, or listening to the song about Pokémon, or considering the fact we have a song about Pokémon in the first place, but Rawhide and I don’t exactly party. A typical evening for us in college was him trying to listen through the wall to our other roommate having sex and describing it to me while I play Wind Waker and tell him to take his ear off the wall and get back to watching reruns of The Nanny.

So one weekend the semester after I graduated, but Rawhide was still in Potsdam doing student teaching, I took a trip up to visit. Rawhide had just survived a traumatic break-up, so a bunch of us decided to take him out to a club. Not sure why a group of people who had collectively stepped feet in clubs fewer times than they had feet seemed like a good idea, but it’s what we did. And while there we did exactly what you’d expect a group of people like us to do: we stood in the corner and made comments to one another when the DJ played something we actually liked. At one point a girl came up to us and just started rubbing her ass on us. She was a little heavier (so my type) but I wasn’t single at the time so I just stood there frozen until she went away. She tried to get at least three of the guys in our group to dance before giving up. Of course, when I wrote the lyrics I exaggerated her size and made it the focal point of my verse.

Eventually we all walked swiftly back to campus after a growing need to take a shit led to the discovery that the men’s bathroom had no doors on its stalls. Six months or so later I would include the concept for “Standing Around” in the first message I sent to Rawhide about the in-progress album. Shortly thereafter I selected a beat he had produced called “Dubstep” for the song.

Mike Larry Draw

I met Mike Larry Draw when he did a show in Albany, NY. It was in the back room of McGeary’s Irish Pub for a fairly small crowd. In settings like that, the majority of the audience is comprised of real hip-hop heads. Mike went on as the fourth of four equally-billed acts. Two of them were Knowle’ge and Hired Gun – both brilliant artists I’ve had the pleasure of working with. Mike, and I don’t think he would disagree with this statement, was a bit of an oddball by comparison. Songs about scooters stuck out like sore thumbs on the fists pumping for Hired Gun’s “Arrest the President.” The crowd was a little confused at first, or at least I was. Then he performed “Get Lite.”

Suddenly, an audience that was listening intently to the politically-charged lyrics of the previous acts had begun raging. I knew I needed a feature from this guy. I reached out to both Mike and L One Crackeriffic about “Standing Around.” Mike got back to me first and, no offense to L One because he had a dope verse on the “Rush Hour RMX,” I’m really glad he did. Not only did he turn the verse around in just a couple of days, he renegaded Rawhide and I.

I had the pleasure of seeing Mike perform recently at the 8th Annual Beatshot Festival and, instead of rapping, he played some of the beats he produced and invited everyone to get onstage and spit their best 16. We had a nice chat afterward.

The Rawhide Kid

Rawhide wrote and recorded his verse when he visited me in Schenectady in 2014. Since he had the final verse, he was going to be the last of us to want to stay at the club. As such, his plan was to spend 14 bars discussing how awesome the club is, then let the most minor occurrence completely ruin it for him. There was a point where he suggested a girl say to him “eww, no, this club is no-creepers-allowed” and I asked him who he had in mind to recite that line. Halfway through my question I realized who I was talking to so, yeah, that’s me rejecting Rawhide’s sexual advancements like I do off-record at least twice a week.

During that visit, Rawhide and I also recorded the interludes. I said last week that it’s an unspoken rule Rawhide has to re-record his adlibs until I laugh so hard I have to leave the room. You’ll notice I don’t say anything else in that interlude after he says “Have another Utica Club” because I literally had to cover my mouth and walk away after that. I had no idea what that was at the time. As he would explain to me, and I would later see while visiting him in Boonville, is that it’s a Central New York beer. No one outside of his Trump-voting, tractor racing section of the state would get the joke so naturally, the duo who brought you “Upstate Upbringing” would keep it in the song.

Utica Club
Rawhide holding a six-pack of David Duke’s favorite brew, probably

Easter Egg

I actually did record a chorus for this song but the pitch has been lowered and the interludes are recited over it. Can you figure out what I’m saying?

Rootbeer Report #10: “Workplace Hot”

Posted by :Rootbeer On : August 6, 2016
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The most misogynistic song on Fear of Success was conceptualized by a woman.

It Was Meant for the Stage

This was the last song to be added to Fear of Success. Originally, Track 12 was going to be a completely different song with some specific guests but – despite agreeing to do the song – they could not commit. I could have just released the album with one less song but doing so would have upset a balance I intended from the very beginning. The section of the album represents the evening, the free time where you’re around friends who distract you from the racing thoughts. It’s the “fun” part of the album. Having only “Battle Rap” and “Standing Around” did not feel like enough positive weight against the depressing midday (“Cold Turkey,” “Ghost of my Past”) and the depressing late night (“Perfect for Me,” “PTSD”).

I thought about what else I could do and then recalled something that had taken place more than a year prior. One day at the company where I work, a few minutes before a call with a client, I went to my coworker, Jen’s office. She was in there with someone else, laughing, and then shared with me an idea for a musical she was conceptualizing about office life. She rattled off a few song concepts, including a token rap song about a girl all the guys obsess over, despite it being more of an attraction based on proximity and comparison. She is the most attractive person you see on a regular basis, so there is a certain perception of attainability.

Misogyny for Everybody

When I say misogynistic, I mean it perceives the subject as a trophy to be won. That subject, in this case was assigned the female gender by me, a heterosexual male. However, this phenomenon is one almost anyone can relate to and applies to people across the board. I made sure to mention that in the second verse:

Ladies, don’t let it offend you
The concept affects men too
You ever see a fella dressed in his best suit
A 10 in his vest, anything less: 2

As with many workplace distractions, we never discussed the musical again and eventually Jen left the company. However, we remain friends and I knew she wouldn’t mind it if I borrowed the concept, especially since it fits so perfectly on Fear of Success. She has heard the song and thinks it’s hysterical.

Getting to Work

I searched my hard drive for beats to write to and selected one titled “Wavelength” that Rawhide had sent me for a completely different project. A few weeks later, I drove out to his apartment and we recorded his parts, as well as his verses for “Being Offensive” and the “Rush Hour RMX.” This was the last real recording session for the album, with the only work left to do being mixing and mastering with Dan. As such, “Workplace Hot” was definitely infused with that album-almost-done excitement.

As for the lyrics, there is nothing to unpack nor any deeper meaning to any of the words. With Rawhide’s interlude before the second verse, I did have him improvise it a few times. For moments like that, it’s an unspoken rule that we re-record until he makes me laugh so hard I have to leave the room. The banter on “Standing Around” was no exception, but that is a story for next week.

Rootbeer Report #9: “Battle Rap”

Posted by :Rootbeer On : July 29, 2016
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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.

Rootbeer Report #8: “Psychopathic”

Posted by :Rootbeer On : July 24, 2016
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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

Rootbeer Report #7: “Ghost of my Past”

Posted by :Rootbeer On : July 17, 2016
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This song represents the transition between the end of the work day and the beginning of your free time when, occasionally, you reflect on what you’re doing with your life, who you are as a person and how that compares to what you expect of yourself. Very few of us are the perfect image of what we envisioned as a child. We consider the events and the people who “corrupted” us. Maybe you don’t have these thoughts, in which case you’re stronger than I. Then again, I think the maximum number of pullups I’ve ever done at once is three so I’m not much to compete with.

Overview

The instrumental came from the original pack I took home from Rawhide’s in 2012. I don’t have its original title because I believe I asked Rawhide to extend it when it wasn’t long enough. An interesting fact, however, is that Rawhide had the “Album” field filled out and it was labeled “When I Get to Hell.” That means that, at some point, he intended for the instrumental to be used on his When I Get to Hell EP and he either couldn’t find a purpose for it, or I stole it out from under him.

It actually looks like the last time I touched the lyric document was April 12, 2014, which makes it the first song on the album I had my parts done with. Dan and I mixed it, which you can infer since I already said we mixed every track together. Another point of interest is that this and “Cold Turkey” are the only songs on the album that are “clean” by FCC standards. Neither was intentionally created that way.

Let Me Dickride Knowle’ge a Bit

I first saw Knowle’ge my freshman year at SUNY Potsdam. The Black Student Alliance hosted a talent show and I decided to check it out. Knowle’ge ended up winning, starting with a high energy track and then slowing down into his song “Can’t Do This Again.”

The way he criticized his persona in the song but couldn’t seem to stop his abusiveness was like a sound mind trapped in an unsound person. It really resonated with me. I found out a little later that Knowle’ge grew up in Albany, the county right next to mine.

By that point my album Alternate Ending was just about done. Around that same time, Rawhide and I became friends and allies and from that relationship I crafted Cracks on Memory Lane and together we made Whiteout!. I considered reaching out to Knowle’ge to be on both, but neither of them had a song that fit his style.

Early in the process of creating Fear of Success I had written “Ghost of my Past.” There was a short while I was calling it “Ghost of my Own Past” but, eh, that sounded superfluous. As soon as I finished my two verses and chorus, I knew it was the song I would finally ask Knowle’ge to grace. I must have told him I’d send him something “soon” for two years before I finally recorded my parts. He took a little while to perfect his verse but sent it back flawless. Even Dan, who went to Potsdam and knew Knowle’ge said “holy shit” when he heard it. The way it goes from this rapid, panicking flow to a gradual acceptance was nothing short of genius artistry. Then again, I’m the guy who knew this was the perfect song for him so I’ll take a small finders fee of your credit, thank you very much.

Commentary

Found my first white hair from a fear of success

This line inspired the album title, not the other way around. My first white hair, however, inspired the line. Now they’re all over my head.

It reveals a lot but not as much as a scrapbook
Flippin’ back through the pages to decipher the path took
Take a look at my life with dispassionate cataracts
Other than these brown eyes, that Adam is shattered glass
As a matter of fact that’s me, the kid in the picture

I was going for imagery of me flipping through a scrapbook of childhood photos but instead of reliving the memories fondly, I’m trying to figure out the exact moment that light in my eyes flickered out.

Feel like a ghost of my past
This and a joke when I ask if I can go the way back
No, I’ve chosen my path, but who is this?
This don’t seem like the same kid you grew up with
No, this is a man who’s been chewed up and spitted out
Till he put on a show, forgot to know and couldn’t figure out
Who he is like it never was bred-in-the-bone
Only time I see the real me is when I’m alone

I know I said “Perfect for Me” is my favorite song I’ve ever written and I stand by that, but I think the “Ghost of my Past” has the best chorus I’ve ever written.

Evidence is that I acted black, adapted an accent
But it sounded unnatural, listen to my tracks from the past when
I tried to be gangsta, an album called Target Practice
Now I got every last print stashed under the mattress

Here is Target Practice. I’ve come to terms with it. It was 2004, a year I had completely lost myself. I was fifteen years old and, save for a couple of songs, I wasn’t making music to share thoughts and experiences. I was doing it to seem cool, popular and be accepted. It resulted in none of those. I was wearing fitted hats everywhere, sometimes even with a bandanna underneath if I was going somewhere I didn’t think it would cause a scene. I even trained myself to speak as “black” as possible and, to this day, there are still some words I pronounce differently.

I moved back into my childhood home right around the time I finished it and, after reacquainting with some friends, I realized that I didn’t need to look, sound or act a part to be “hip-hop.” This stemmed from the fact that my clique wasn’t comprised of hip-hop fans at all. Most of them were metal heads. I didn’t have long hair or a Dimmu Borgir shirt, but I fit in. So to be “hip-hop,” I didn’t need to look like a ghetto survival story, I just needed to be passionate.

I began work on Obey Me with the intent of keeping the few songs on Target Practice that weren’t blatant culture-jacking and erasing everything else. For a long time I really did have a folder under my bed with print outs of the album artwork. It wasn’t until 2014 that I put it on Bandcamp because I was so proud of how Fear of Success was coming along that I realized it was kind of an important artifact of my growth as an artist. It was an impressionable time for me. Now I’m trying to make an impression.

Before my mom brought coke home in a Ziploc baggy

Babysitter found her sniffing it in the bedroom. There was a certain level of shock to this line but then I posted the “Cold Turkey” write up and now you just expect this.

Rootbeer Report #6: “Cold Turkey”

Posted by :Rootbeer On : July 12, 2016
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Sorry for the late post. I’ve been trying to get a Rootbeer Report out every Thursday or Friday, but here it is, the following Monday. Truthfully, the reason I hadn’t posted is because I couldn’t decide what I wanted the featured image to be. I’ll explain later. Anyway, this post is about “Cold Turkey,” which was not a song originally planned for Fear of Success but it found its way on the project anyway.

A Dive into Darkness

Writing this is painful. Remembering what was happening in my life when I wrote the song is agony. May – June 2013 was easily one of the most stressful times for me emotionally and the most challenging for my sanity. Everything was going wrong all at once and when I reached a point where the suicidal thoughts got worse than they had ever been in my then 24 year old life, I did something I’ve only done enough times to count on one hand: I prayed. I got on my knees, crying and whispered something along the lines of “I’m not sure if I’m being tested, but if I am being tested for something then I don’t think I’m the right person for it because I can’t take much more.”

I believe organized religion is the foremost issue in our society, yet I wept to the ghosts around me as if they were sacrificing my first born to some vengeful deity.

Like, when I say on “Midnight Snack” that this album was made during one of the darkest times in my life, this was the epitome of it. The people I thank on that song were there to talk me down at 4:30 in the morning. But this post isn’t about “Midnight Snack,” it’s about “Cold Turkey.”

Every Woman in my Life with Animosity Toward Her

As I said in my Fear of Success post, it took two failed relationships for this project to get done. This song actually isn’t about an individual person. It started out being about the girl in the first relationship, but she was the same one who was the subject of “Perfect for Me” and I didn’t want to dedicate too much of the album to her. For quite some time, it remained a half-written song that I didn’t know what to do with.

It was the second breakup that caused me to finish the song and though that relationship was much, much shorter, its ending was more painful. She was, in many ways, all I had. I was told my mother has dementia and was given ten years to live, maximum. These would not be ten quality years either. She would deteriorate and eventually require institutionalization. Then, on April 30, 2013 I had to drive my mother several hours to a mental health facility so she could get her medications straightened out. This is a woman who had battled with addiction all her life, but who had also made AA her family and had found release from alcohol’s hold over her. So I have a mixed reaction whenever my mother is considered “clean and sober.” Being alcohol-free since 2000 is an impressive accomplishment, but replacing it with pills is, in both behavior and intent, the same problem. We blame the addiction, not the addict, though at some point the whole situation becomes so taxing that the support no longer has the strength, resources or willpower to help.

While my mother was the mental health facility, my grandmother had a stroke and wound up in the hospital. Between visiting my grandmother as often as possible because I wasn’t sure when the last time would be, to answering delusional calls from my mother trying to con her way out of the mental health facility, and lest we forget the open wounds left over from a five-year relationship that ended only a year prior – I clung to the only comfort left in my life. Unfortunately, that was a recent grad school graduate whose time consoling my needy, overly forward-thinking and idealistic ass would have been better spent making moves professionally. The first time I saw those decisions being prioritized over me (despite how logical it was to do so), we engaged in a conversation we would not make it out of. I could describe the nuances, but I’d rather not relive it.

Back to Writing

My father found out a day or two after she and I called it quits and wanted me to stay with him for a couple days. I did, but unfortunately there wasn’t much to distract me in the Pocahontas woodland paradise that is my dad’s house. I was pacing back and forth, hoping she would call and that maybe we could work things out. That’s when I realized…it was the same hallway I was pacing in while writing “The Best Nightmare” which inspired the line “up in the hallway pacing, pacing.” So I started writing “I just realized I’m in that same hallway, pacing.” That’s the hallway in the featured image on this post, which is something I had to drive all the way to my dad’s to snap and why this post got delayed.

Before long, I had the first verse of “Cold Turkey” and a few stray couplets written. Thematically, they fit really well with the song I had started long before – the one about the first breakup. After a bit of fine-tuning, I had the three verses. In fact, the last time I touched the lyric doc was only five days after the breakup. I thought about a hook and decided against one, reasoning that it would give the song too much of a processed feel. I just wanted bursts of raw emotion. I told Rawhide this and that I needed a beat. The following was his response:

I worked on a lot of this last night and since like 2:00 this afternoon here are 15 beats that may work for your song (and maybe even the other one you messaged me about) There’s quite the variety here; most of these are the most recent beats I’ve made during the Reason to Believe production process, making them really good, full of live instrumentation, really full of emotion, kind of experimental, and some of my favorites. Also be aware that almost every single one of these is unfinished; in that they’re a work in progress and shortened by a verse or two. But if you like one let me know and I’ll work on extending it and making it fit. I really hope you find something that you like here otherwise I’m like a frat boy’s t-shirt at a beer-pong party with five finger death punch blasting in the background: tapped out. haha

P.S. My vote goes to the beat I named “Gently.” I think something really special could be created with that, I just haven’t been able to do any justice yet with any of my songs.

But I didn’t go with “Gently.” I went with one called “deeper” which he then extended and perfected. To this day I’m writing to some of those other 14 beats he sent, some of which may appear on future projects. Eventually I laid “Cold Turkey” to tape and Dan did the mixing.

Closure?

We didn’t think my grandmother would recover, but she did – as well as you could expect anyone in their 90’s to recover. As for my mom, she’s had additional visits to the mental health facility for abusing prescription medications since then and, in the process, we learned that the dementia was a misdiagnosis. She had done so much doctor shopping that she ended up on anti-psychotic medicine and a bunch of other substances we weren’t aware of that had completely invalidated the previous tests. She was tested again, which came back negative.

Commentary

Some of us have a Jonah Complex and keep stalling

A Jonah Complex is a fear of success.

I can’t focus even though I sit at my desk

Here’s the line that ties it to the 9 – 5 theme.

She don’t put me down like you, no mercy

This is a reference to Joe Budden’s “She Don’t Put It Down Like You.” I used to download a bunch of albums when I would drive the several hours to visit Second Breakup at grad school. That album, No Love Lost was the first album I listened to on one of those trips, though, ironically, the line itself better reflects First Breakup.

Rootbeer Report #5: “Integrity”

Posted by :Rootbeer On : June 30, 2016
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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.