BEHIND "THE KILL ROOM" TRACK 6 - ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
This song was originally the title track for the album. I had already written this song before I even got the beat for "The Kill Room," which made me decide to change the album name. That definitely didn't mean that I wasn't going to still use this song though. Being slept on, overlooked, doubted, underrated, and disliked is nothing new to me. And that goes way beyond hip hop. That's pretty much been my life story. Growing up with mostly Native and black friends, I had to prove myself all the time. Not necessarily to my friends, although a few of em I had to bump heads with before we were cool, but to their brothers, or their cousins, or their other homies I didn't know, or the rest of their family, or their enemies. So, as a kid, it's safe to say that I did a lot of stupid and crazy shit to fit in. But as I grew older, and got more in touch with who I was, what I was about, and what really mattered to me, I no longer gave a shit. I built strong bonds with the people who really gave a shit about me, and left behind the ones that didn't.
It's been the same journey with hip hop as well. I started rappin when I was 15. Wrote my first verse over Spice 1 - "Strap On The Side." Loved that beat. Pretty much jacked his whole style, and content matter, but I wrote a whole 3 verses and a hook to it. It was by no means a good song, but it was the start. Then I started freestyling at parties with the homies, just wanting to be the best in the crew - and I was. That was my first taste of gettin hated on for rappin, by people with less talent than me. I had dudes who couldn't even rhyme shit tell me that my flows were weak. lol. Or somebody would tell somebody else that I rapped, and they'd laugh and be like - yeah right. I'd spit some bars and they'd either be all on the nuts, or play it off and give it a slight nod, like - that was okay, but I'm not impressed. But I could see that I caught em off guard. I eventually molded my craft to fit me, and who I was. Whether good or bad, who I was just happened to be someone with a chip on their shoulder. I never expected to ever do anything with it, it was just something I loved to do, and I was pretty good at it.
It wasn't until me and Jairus Wiley started getting real tight, that I ever really started thinking about doin music. I met him in 9th grade. His family had moved from Chicago to Kelliher, a very small town about 45 miles north of Bemidji, and then him and his brother started going to Bemidji High School. We started kickin it a lot, later in my high school years, and then there was a span of a year or so after high school that we didn't kick it. I had gotten into some trouble, went to treatment, and then basically isolated myself for a while, trying to stay sober. It didn't last very long, we started kicking it again, and our bond got real tight after that. Jairus was one of the best dudes I met in my life. Really good person. Jairus could sing…….I mean REALLY sing. He could flow too. All around musically talented. He was a huge impact on Demo as a singer as well. Demo got a lot of his soul from singing with Jairus. He soaked up a lot of game. Shit, I did too. Jairus and Demo harmonizing together was the most beautiful sound I ever heard in my life. It would literally give me goose bumps every single time……..no matter how many times they sang together. We'd hit up parties, freestyle, sing, scrap, whatever. Then we started talking about doing music together.
Brace yourselves kids - at this time, the internet was just a baby. Not many people had it, and it was slow as fuck. There was no massive abundance of instrumentals, like today. Even if there was, there was no way to get the music to disc at the time. Shit, we used to take dual tape decks, play a tape, and then record our flows over the flows of Master P, or whoever's song we were using at the time. lol. At-home studios were expensive, not the quality of today, and something we couldn't afford. I had a friend who had his own little studio, but we weren't that good of friends, and he was the type of person to take full control of the project. I've never been down with that. I will own my shit. Always. I couldn't afford a studio, but I had a Playstation 2, and they came out with the Funk Master Flex MTV Muisic Generator 2 game. I got that and started making my own beats. I had to get one of those big ass dual CD burners, where you put a CD in one tray, a blank CD in the other tray, and you could burn the CD with music on it to a blank CD. There was an optic output that I could connect from the Playstation 2 to the CD burner, and the CD burner would allow me to record the beats in real time, digitally, on to the blank CD. That way I wouldn't get any of the hum that would come from the AVI plugs from the Playstation 2 to the TV. I would literally hit record on the burner, then start the beat, and then hit stop once the beat was finished. Now we had some beats.
We chose two beats that we liked, and wrote two songs called "Stand Tall," and "North Pole." I wrote the hooks for both the songs, and I rapped em, Jairus added his own singing additions to the hooks, and we both had verses. We didn't have anything to record them, but we could perform them now with the beats on CD……and we did……a lot. I'd carry a beat CD with me everywhere we went, and we'd perform at countless parties, some open mic events, and even at a couple 18+ shows (we were like 19 & 20 at the time). A lot of people loved those songs, and we'd get asked to perform them a lot at parties. One of my favorite performance memories to this day was at some random house party, me and Jairus standing in the kitchen, spittin our shit, and the entire house, packed around us with their hands up, jumping around, standing on counters, homies screamin the hooks and shit. "This the North Pole, let us get a few things clear / Fuck how you do it over there, this how we do things here / It's been a long time comin for the Pole to shine / So sit back and watch these muthafuckas blow your mind," haha.
Don't get me wrong, I had haters back then too. And quite a few of them came from my own circle. A lot of it came from dudes trying to do music shit too, and mad cuz Jairus was messin with me and not them. I'd hear about people sayin that Jairus was the one that made the group, Jairus' shit was dope, but mine wasn't - shit like that. To be honest, I felt the same way. Jairus was a star. I was already years into my alcoholism and addiction. I barely had any self-confidence at the time. Just enough to get out there and do it. I doubted my skill. I was the one who drove us by making the beats, coming up with the idea for the songs, and giving us a starting point, but he was the one that drove me, by believing in me. He told me I was the dopest lyricist out there, nobody could fuck with me. Any time I doubted myself, he pushed me to say fuck it, and keep going. He was my crutch. There was never a scenario in my head where I would be doing music without Jairus. I couldn't do it without him. We had started writing a couple more songs. We even had started writing a song with Demo, where those two were harmonizing on it. Shit was real dope. I moved to South St. Paul to go to MusicTech College, so I could learn how to record, and get us into the studio, so we could drop those songs…….then Jairus Wiley - AKA - JW Smooth died.
Jairus died in a drunk driving accident. He was a passenger in a car that rolled into the ditch, and I believe he got ejected from the vehicle. Definitely one of the lowest points of my life. He was my best friend. The only person that I truly trusted or could fully open up to. I probably wasn't his best friend, but he was mine. And to make things worse, my dream died with him. I remember the night he died, I was in Bemidji, visiting like I did a lot, and we were drinking at my ex-girlfriend's mom's house with some friends and family. We had talked to Jairus on the phone, and he was supposed to come over. It was taking him forever to get there, and somebody asked me to perform "Stand Tall" and "North Pole" because they were getting sick of waiting for him, and I told them no, I'd never perform those songs without Jairus. Then, I remember getting woke up, really early in the morning, hungover, by my ex girlfriend's uncle, and he was at the door crying, and he told us that Jairus was dead. I just sat there numb for a while, like trying to get a grasp on that reality. My mind started racing through memories of my friend at light speed. But I still couldn't cry like everybody else. I still feel guilty about this to this day……..and I don't know why……maybe because to me it feels like such a selfish thought…….but It wasn't until I thought about the music, and how it was lost forever, how nobody was ever going to hear Jairus sing those songs we made, how I would never hear them recorded, how I would eventually forget his lyrics (which I did), how I was never gonna make it without my friend………that I started crying.
A lot of bad shit was happening around this time. A month or two before Jairus died, my girlfriend's aunt was murdered by her boyfriend with a steak knife. I watched her die trying to help stop the bleeding. A month after Jairus died, another one of my best friends, Cheyenne Devilin, fell 20 feet working at a construction site, unharnessed, and died. Cheyenne died the day I was supposed to go up north and visit him. He was good friends with Jairus too, but he was in jail for a few months, and they wouldn't let him out for the funeral. I hadn't seen him for a while, and got the call shortly before I was leaving to Bemidji, that he had fallen. So instead of going to see my friend in Bemidji, I drove to Fargo, where I watched them shut off his respirator that night. I quit school shortly after that, and moved back to Bemidji. Not long after being back, I violated my probation, got arrested, and went back to treatment. Somewhere in between Cheyenne dying and me going back to treatment, I recorded 5 songs with Demo, Brett Wade (Brayzay at the time), and Soco (D-Range at the time). That whole point in my life was a big blur. I was faded almost every day. We spent $50 an hour to get those songs cheaply recorded, mixed and mastered, and then I went to treatment. I spent 28 days in treatment, then 60 days in a halfway house. It really came at the perfect point in my life to help me deal with all the loss and pain in my life. I think it kept me alive, but unfortunately, it didn't do much to keep me sober, because I relapsed the day after I left. I went right back to the darkness that I took a momentary break from. Although, it was a little less dark than when I left.
After I got out, Demo and I recorded two more songs. One of those songs, "From Me To U," was a song Demo and I made in memory of everybody we lost, but mainly my two best friends - Jairus and Cheyenne. I made the beat, wrote the hook, and Demo added his part of the hook with something he had come up with for a different song, but worked out perfectly for this one. At the end of the song, Demo sang the hooks for "Stand Tall," and a song called "Oh No," that me and Jairus were working on before he died. Those 7 songs I did after their passing were the best way that I could cope with what happened. The only positive avenue I had for releasing some of the grief and anger. After that, I got complete writers block, and had no drive to do music any more. I tried at different points in that time period, but nothing would ever come out. Those were the last songs I would write and record for years. I would still make beats on occasion, but I couldn't write any lyrics.
It wasn't until I sobered up, when I was around 26, that I started writing again. The path to me finally deciding to get sober and actually getting there is a story of it's own, maybe for a later date. This thing is too long as it is, so here's the short and sweet. I was living in St. Cloud, when I decided to sober up, working for an inventory service there. Things went south, I decided to sober up for myself, and my boss, and now close friend, Tim, allowed me to stay with him for 2 years, while I got back on my feet. I was trying to turn my life around, stay out of trouble, move forward positively with my life, and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my time on this planet. The only thing that kept coming to my mind was music. All I did was work, write music, work, write music, work, and work for those 2 years. I could write again…….all these ideas started coming to me……..my mind was clear, and creativity was pouring out. I had around 70 old beats that I had made to work with, and I started picking my favorites, and writing songs. I had written like 20 songs to my beats during that time, but I didn't have my studio yet, and I didn't want to release them until I had taught myself how to record, and could release them how I wanted them released. I had no knowledge on how to do any of that, and so I just sat on them, and would perform for a select few people, like my family and close friends. My plan was to save as much money as I possibly could, purchase my own studio, and get back on my feet, and Tim allowed me to do that. I'm forever grateful to him for that. He helped me start my career.
I've received a lot of hate doing this rap shit, and my whole life at that, so it's something I've been accustomed to. But when you get it from people that you grew up with, and literally fought for, it's pretty difficult not to take that personally. I had gotten a call from my sister, and she told me that she was partying with an old friend of mine. He made beats, and we had kicked it a lot back in the day. I used to stay at his crib almost every weekend at one point, and i showed him respect when a lot of people didn't. She told me that she was playing "From Me To You," at the party and that he started talking shit about it. He basically said it was wack and not a song "he would try to blow up wit". Like I wrote that song, trying to get a record deal or something. Like I wrote that shit for some props, and not the fact that my best friends fuckin died, and that was the only way I could deal with it. Like he didn't lose the same supposed friends. He grew up wit Jairus and Cheyenne too, they were supposedly his friends like they were mine. I even shouted out his brother's name in the song, who passed away a few months before Jairus, out of respect. I talked to a mutual friend, and he told me the exact same story as my sister. I was fuckin heated. I initially wanted to beat his ass, but I was trying to change my life for the better, he was hours away, it would have been an easy whoopin, and I knew it wouldn't make me feel any better about the situation. I couldn't let it slide though. I figured since he was talkin shit about my music, and he supposedly makes music, and I needed a way to get this aggression out, what better way to do that than a diss track? Plus, an ass whoopin is a one time occurrence, time goes by, people forget about it. He'll forget about it. A song can last forever. Like I said way at the beginning, I had a chip on my shoulder.
So I took an instrumental from the internet, don’t even remember what song it was from, and wrote the song Unleash The Beast. I was still working on getting my studio, and I had nothing to record on, so I took a camera, and just spit it through live, and put the video on my Myspace page. It sparked me to do some more as well, just to display the bars. So I took some other instrumentals and did like 3 or 4 more videos as well. I got some love from the videos from friends on Myspace, and it inspired me to decide to write a Mixtape and release that before I decided to work on my actual album. I didn't have my studio yet, but I could write and have songs ready to go ahead of time. A different ex-girlfriend at the time made me a painting with a Tiger's head biting a microphone. On the painting she wrote "Unleash The Beast." That was the video I got the most love for too, and so I decided that my first mixtape would be called "Unleash The Beast."
I had stacked up enough money for my studio, but I had no idea what I needed to get, or what would be the best bang for my buck when it came to studio equipment. I had gone to Musictech College for a year, but with all the drama in my life at the time, and all the heavy drinking that I was doing, I didn't gain much knowledge there. I knew that ProTools was the industry standard for audio production, and that Macs tended to be more multimedia friendly than PC's, but more expensive. I didn't want to play around though. I wanted dope shit, I didn't want a half-assed studio. I was hoping that the quality of the equipment would help mask the lack of knowledge that I had when it came to recording. I had no one to help me out either. Nobody I knew had any recording history or knowledge. Then, my mom mentioned that she had a friend who's son is a recording engineer in Memphis, so I had emailed him and asked him if he'd help me out. He said yes, and helped me out a little bit, but in all honesty, almost everything I got was something I had to research on the internet and make a decision on, myself. I ended up getting a MacPro, ProTools MBox 2, some KRK Rokit 8 monitors, a Rode NT 1000 microphone, a Samsung computer monitor, some Sony headphones, mic stand, a mic cable, pop blocker, and Reason 4, which I never once used, because I wanted to learn how to make some real beats, but I never had the time. I had to teach myself how to record. If I had known Garlic Brown at the time, I would have made some wiser and more cost effective decisions on some of the equipment I bought, but I did the best with the knowledge that I had…….very little.
Recording, mixing, and mastering, are all techniques in themselves, and I'm not going to get into the technical aspects as far as what it took for me to learn these things, by myself, but let's just say it was a lot of trial and error, frustration, and patience, because I'm a perfectionist, I had a good ear for music, and nothing was sounding like I wanted it to. I was still living at Tim's with him and his family, and there was internet there, but there was no wireless, so it was downstairs on Tim's computer, wasn't always open, and it was hard to watch tutorials, soak up all the info, run upstairs, remember what I just watched, and apply it to what I was trying to do. It was a slow learning process, and I got some recording done at Tim's, but not a lot. Not to mention the fact that I was living in somebody else's home. Yeah, he was like a brother, but it was his family's home. So I didn't want to overdo my stay, which I felt like I was already doing, by screaming rap lyrics throughout the house day and night. lol. I had a lot of songs written though. During this time, Demo was actually in treatment in St. Cloud, and I picked him up a couple times, and brought him out to Tim's, and we had written some hooks together as well. We'd go out to Tim's garage, smoke cigarettes and write. It reminded me of the times writing with Jairus. It felt good.
I had started going back to Bemidji, making little trips here and there, to visit some old friends and family. I hadn't been there in years, I was a year or two sober, and everyone I knew liked to drink. I had felt like I was strong enough and my path was set for me, so that I wouldn't be tempted to relapse. I won't lie, there were plenty times when I was tempted, and still am, but my new mission on this music was so strong, that it held me true to my sobriety, regardless. I think it was Demo who initially put me on to Nate C, musically. I knew a couple of his older brothers, and we had met before, but he was younger than me, so we had never really kicked it much. He had a sick flow though. I liked what I had heard from him. I don't remember how we got in contact with each other, but we decided to get together and record a track over at his place, on his studio. I went over to where he was at and wrote a verse with him. I dropped my verse and had to bounce. There wasn't a hook yet, but eventually he sent me the track back with a hook, and a verse that Zack dropped later. They named the song "Nowhere To Run". Dope track. That was the first collab I had done in years, since I started doing music again, and the first song I was ever on with Nasty Nate C (now of Lobotomized Geniuses) and That Maniac Zack.
I barely knew Zack Suratt. I had only met him a couple times in my life. I knew his brother Nick (RIP). He was one of Demo's close homies. But they were 4 years younger than me, and Zack was a couple years younger than them. I hadn't lived in Bemidji for years, Zack had moved to Florida for a few years and come back, and our circles didn't run together much. When Nick passed away, Demo and Zack became extra tight, and Demo kept telling me we should collab with Zack. After hearing his verse on "Nowhere To Run," and a solo track he did called "Psycho Ballad," I was convinced to give it a shot. I liked the rawness in his flow. Straight to the point. In your face. It wasn't until I really kicked it with him for a while, that I realized, most importantly, it was real too. It's hard for me to explain, but the way Zack flows, the words he uses, the pain behind the voice…….it all evokes experience. His style has greatly evolved since then, but as dope as his rhyme patterns are, that's not what I really like about Zack's flow. It's the content. By far the most underrated lyricist in Minnesota. Maybe because it's too fast for people to catch. Maybe because he doesn't have a solo project out. I don't know. He wasn't even That Maniac Zack yet. He didn't have a rap name. His name was just Zack. How fuckin real is that? lol.
Where Zack was staying at the time, there was a studio in the basement. So one night, when I was up north visiting, I happened to go over there with Demo, and Zack showed me this track he was working on. It was off the instrumental for a Bishop Lamont song called “Feel On It.” I think Focus produced the beat, but I’m not 100% sure. Zack only had a verse written for it, and no hook, so me, him, and Demo sat down and finished writing a song for it. It became a fighting track, which we called “U Don’t Really Wanna C Us.” The hook was hilarious, and we got a lot of love, and hate for the hook alone. It went - “You don’t really wanna see us / whether scrappin or the rappin we the meanest / we know you got a little penis / like a grown man fightin wit a fetus….” We literally offended the shit out of little penis muthafuckas everywhere. lol. That was the first song the 3 of us ever wrote together, and we released it on its own, but we ended up throwing it on “Unleash The Beast,” later on. The chemistry of us together on a track really worked, and it lead us to writing three more songs for “Unleash The Beast,” and many more after. Zack’s first line on the song goes “It’s that maniac, go Zack…..” That eventually lead up to him finally choosing his rap name - That Maniac Zack.
I had known Michael Donnell - AKA - Wardog, a little bit when I was younger, through mutual friends, and run-ins here and there. He was always real respectful, and we always got along when we were around each other. He had a reputation as a hustler, and somebody who was always on his grind. I knew he did music too. He had done some tracks with a mutual friend, Tommy Tibbetts, before he passed away. In fact, at one point, when I was still having writers block, I had talked to Mike on the phone, and he had asked to do some music with him. I told him I was down then, but it wasn’t until this point that I finally hit him up on his offer. I had seen that he was still doing music through Myspace, and so I hit him up, and met him up in Red Lake one night.
I had been up to Red Lake a few times, but it had been years, and I didn’t know my way around, so he had to meet me up at the local IGA, and followed him out to his place. We chopped it up, I admired the dope studio he had set up in his basement, and he told me about what he was doing. He had a group of artists that he was working with from Red Lake called 100 Souls. He told me he was working with this dope younger cat named Baby Shel, and showed me a track of his. Shit was dope. It wasn’t the automatic choppin Shel that we know today, but it was good. Then he told me that he was working with the best producer out there…..a dude who calls himself Garlic Brown. Now……..I’m not gonna lie……I was doubting Mike to the fullest when he said that. I made beats, and I had heard a lot of supposed “dope” producers, and most of them sucked. lol. Then I heard a couple beats. I was impressed, but it took me some time before I truly felt the way that Wardog did then. Those couple dope beats could be a fluke. lol. I’ve heard a dope beat from a producer, only to find that every other one he did was garbage. It wasn’t until I really heard GB’s full range that I was sold that he’s the best around……anywhere. Anyways, Wardog showed me this track he was working on called “Lyrical Breath.” He had a hook for it already, and we both did a 16 bar verse and then split the 3rd verse with 8 bars a piece. It was the first collab I ever did with Wardog, and the first Garlic Brown beat I ever wrote to. That song has still never been released to this day.
A few months later, Demo, Zack, and I were at some MMA fights at the Northern Lights Casino, supporting a friend of ours, Brandon “Savage” Rossbach. We ran into Wardog, Baby Shel, Garlic Brown, and his brother, Divewire, there. That was my first time meeting the rest of the crew. They were throwing a little show at the American Legion, in Cass Lake, after the fights, and everybody was going to celebrate Brandon’s win there. They asked me if I wanted to perform. I said that I was down, and asked Demo and Zack if they were down as well. They said yes. I had a few of our songs that we had done on a CD, and we performed for our first time, and the first time I had performed on a microphone since Jairus passed away. It was also our first time performing with 100 Souls, and was the beginning of a lot of shows to come.
I’m going to leave this story here, and continue with the rest some other time. This has already turned into a much longer tale than I initially wanted for this song, but once I started, it was hard to stop, and pick up later. I felt that to truly understand the tone of this song, and to really feel where I was at with writing it, you first had to understand what it took for me to get where I’m at. And this is all 4 years prior to me even writing this song. I haven’t even touched on what it took for Rez Rap to get recognized, all the hard work that was put into that, or the struggles we had to go through as an entire group to even be taken seriously as a legitimate rap group in this state. The way that every time we showed up to a show in Minneapolis, everybody expected us to suck, we stood in the background, got up to the stage, and shocked the shit out of everybody. And as bad as 100 Souls had pressure on them, NPC3 had it worse being the white group on Rez Rap, and as bad as NPC3 had it, I got it worse being the “leader”, the most vocal out the crew, and just being who I am.
I brought a lot of that heat on to myself. Like I said before, I had a chip on my shoulder. But there’s much more to it than that. I’m not a disrespectful person by any means. Anybody who really knows me knows that to be true. I do have a temper at times, and sometimes that can get the best of me. I don’t politic well, or bullshit with bullshitters. I also use my writing to vent, as a release of all my negative aggression in a way that keeps me free, and I always speak my mind in my music. I made a pact with myself from day one, that if I write it, and it works, I’m dropping it and releasing it, regardless of how some might feel. I’m also good at reading people and their intentions. Not perfect, but I’m pretty fuckin good at it, and if I feel like someone’s coming at us incorrectly, then I have nothing for them. I keep my circle tight, and if a certain line gets crossed, then you don’t get to be a part of my circle. Some people don’t like that very much, especially if they can’t get what they want.
As soon as GB showed me this beat, I knew that this was going to be the beat for “Elephant In The Room.” I knew I was going to have a song titled that, I just needed to find the beat to write it. This beat just had that boom bap, hit you in the face, early 90’s Juice feel to it. The first verse was just punchlines and shit talking. I wanted to display some of my verbal skills, and slap anybody who doubts those skills. The second verse was just me thinking out loud about and going through every illegitimate reason people have for underrating me or telling themselves and others that they don’t like me, or they can do better. The third verse was actual bullshit I’ve had to deal with from rappers, or people who pretend like they can rap.
I literally had a rapper try to punch me because he was faded, a female told him he was fake, and he wanted to prove that he was more “real” than me. I ducked his punch, hit him a couple times, and then he got pulled out of the bar. I left like an hour later, he came back after I left, ran into Demo, started talking shit, Demo squared up with him, and then he told cops who came running over that Demo’s brother, “Dave Moberg,” sucker punched him, and Rez Rap was Native Mob affiliated (completely false). I had cops coming to where I was staying at for the next week after that. I literally had a rapper create a fake Youtube account, pretending to be me, and have an argument with himself (me), on one of his garbage videos, trying to make me look racist and stupid, ruin my credibility and to get some views. He literally said “This is the last thing I’m gonna say, and then I’m done.” And that was literally the last comment on the video. lol. That shit really happened. Rappers are some of the biggest bitches I have ever met in my entire life. Obviously not all of them, I’ve met some real talented artists, and good people doing this, but not a whole lot of them. I can’t stress this enough. And that’s not even talking about the lack of talent that many of them have, or don’t have. So for me to go through everything I’ve gone through, and to be downplayed and overlooked by a lot of these phony, garbage rappers is the reason that this song was even created in the first place.
I’ve mentioned a couple times that I’ve been an artist with a chip on his shoulder, and coming up, that’s been true. Now days, I don’t feel the same way. I’ve grown to become grateful for any adversities I’ve encountered, because that’s what kept me motivated, and pushing forward, when things got rough. Nothing has ever come easily during this music journey, and nothing ever will, but I’ve lost a lot of the hostility, and turned it towards positive motivation. I’m not saying that the chip is completely gone, but it just doesn’t effect me as greatly, and serves a different purpose. It allows me to brush off any negativity and not fear rejection. It’s given me a confidence that doesn’t need the bravado to prove itself, but keeps me content in knowing that I have a vision and talent, and knowing that there are people out there who will see it for what it is. The ones that don’t see it don’t matter. I will always do things my way, and my goals are all about catering to the needs of the people who feel my music, and nobody else. As I continue to grow as a person, so too will my art grow. But art is feelings, and this song is exactly how I was feeling at the moment.