Songs About Women

After a four year hiatus I find myself in the process of making another rap album with my good friend and collaborator Elon.is. I don't really know how it happened. We were just hanging out one day I guess and he said "I have some beats" and after he played them I found myself inspired. Next thing you know we have a dozen songs laid down.

Not that a dozen songs an album makes. Songs about various subjects with wildly varied sounds and vibes can not be forced together. They have to come from a similar place, all fitting together like chapters in a book. There has to be some sort theme involved.

As I listen to the rough mixes of what we've already recorded, the theme in the beats is obvious- all the music is emotional but steady, mostly down tempo with a real funky pocket that makes them easy to write to (I try not to use the word funky too often but in this case it's appropriate). Listening to the songs, one after another, the theme of the lyrics reveals itself as well- they're all mostly about women.

There are a couple of pumped up little rap song about rapping (I try to steer away from those but in this case, again, it's appropriate) and another about zombies playing "Words With Friends", but the rest are all about women. In fact, it's a little deeper than that, the songs feel haunted by women.

A person making art for the purpose of making it shouldn't necessarily go and try to figure out why, but I can't help but look closer as I search for a theme to this new project. Why have I written about women so much? I look at my own life, my "real" life outside the vocal booth, and I see women, but not the way they are portrayed on this album. In my own life women are my closest friends, not mysterious and distant like the one's in these songs.

I realize that many of the lyrics were written long ago, some as far as three years, and even then I was looking back, analyzing my past and the women that inhabited it. These songs are about memories and even though I'm making lyrics, often times to be taken literally, the words are really about the feelings these memories cause.

There's bitter songs, songs that take on an argument that was never really finished, and songs about longing and loss, along with a good time here and there. This is what music is for, to work out all that shit you never got around to working out, that is the fuel that powers the engine. Ask Roy Orbison- all his songs were about women too.

Not that Roy Orbison was a huge influence on this new record. Truthfully, when I think back on what I was actually listening to during the time I was writing most of the material, I’m reminded that it was mostly women, all from another era: Skeeter Davis, Connie Francis, and Patsy Cline were in heavy rotation. Did that effect what I was writing? Are those the women haunting these songs? Many of their own songs are bitter, harboring the loss of good times and lamenting their brief stay in their lives. What I’ve written are almost reflections of those feelings, along with my hip-hop influences like Ice Cube and Kool G Rap.

In fact, if you were ever wondering what would happen if Ice Cube and Patsy Cline had a baby and that baby made a record then I think I may have the album for you. A little weird, sure, but I think you might be intrigued.

11-13-13