#dearcl

[dearcl113]

021 - Beast In The Woods, Epic literature & Slavic folklore

Above is a list of my top countries on Soundcloud currently - this is my new SoundCloud that I activated when I released 'I'm a ghost 2' so this is since 2022. I do all my own marketing generally, so this has been interesting to watch.

At some point in time my music caught on in Ukraine, then other Slavic countries around 2021-2022. My biggest listeners for along time were from a variety of random countries ranging from there to Vietnam to Pakistan, return listeners at least. Especially around Kyiv. I was really confused why this was happening - I'm sure there's a lot of reasons but when I researched Slavic literature past the mainstream stuff I've heard about I learned that in it's folklore there's often an anti-hero who is imperfect who conducts good deeds. This is pretty much my music especially around the Light trilogy. Back in the day I ghost-wrote for some artists in Eastern Europe, but I don't think it's that. It could be bots, regardless doesn't change the inspiration. Europe is a really cool place, over the years talking to people from there I generally learn a lot. It gave me something to study for sure, so when I sat down to write 'Beast in the woods' I was thinking of writing something that was reminiscent of an old Knight epic where they slayed the dragon. There's a lot of stories in European folklore of villagers banding together to slay monsters in the woods - I wanted to do my own version for my European audience as almost a thank you I guess. These stories represent overcoming adversity and what scares you, to achieve something better. The song performed decently on it's own without much push, but Fiji's verse I think really solidified it as a 'good' song in my eyes. The energy he puts onto the song really captures how hectic I felt during the final days of recording 'The Long Dark' and the pressure I put on myself to put out something decent. Throughout The Long Dark I shift through different timelines as I play with the 'Ghost world' theme. I do have ancestral backgrounds in Europe, which is what I thought of while I wrote this - there's a lake named after my family I guess, on top of some royal grounds we used to own. Another life that I only learned about because I researched my family history. There's also the repeating theme of this 'epic' poem, aka slaying monsters, becoming the hero. The Beast In The Woods is, to me, the maximum representation of that theme - the story is told so that these songs can be pictured as thoughts of the main character as they go throughout their day at work, then into the night at the party, and there-after. The main character (DEARCL) silences these thoughts by thinking of these fantasies. Sort of a play on day-dreaming.

[dearcl113]

028 - Spotlight, Plays & the TV studio

In high school the TV studio I hung out in a lot would give out jobs sometimes to some of the students. It consisted of filming town meetings, special events for the school, or plays that the drama club put on. I did this a couple times, especially filming drama. I think being around something so creative was fun to me, I wasn't really used to that outside of my friends in my neighborhood but I never really wanted to act. I did a documentary on a play my senior year, it was a recap video shot similar to how a lot of the extras would be set up on DVD's back then - the whole 'behind the scenes' process thing. This was a year after I started doing lighting and sometimes filming the play for the prior semester, Little Shop of Horrors. These events would be huge for the whole town, people of all ages would come and pack into the auditorium until it was basically full other than the crew area up top where they operated sound, lighting, everything else and back stage. I liked how creepy the story was despite it being a musical - musical's definitely aren't my favorite type of music but for story-telling purposes and world-building they work well. The song goes through my background working lighting and everything, but then sort of diverges from real life. I definitely never dated anybody in my high school drama club even if I had some crushes. In a way it's a fantasy song because of that, I pictured how I felt back then and what I could imagine for my life even if my background was different. In a sense it's a homage to the musical itself, more of an interpolation definitely inspired by 'Suddenly Seymour'. I don't listen to musicals most of the time, but I appreciate any theater honestly even if being a theater actor is like a nightmare for me. Every night after school there'd be that same electric feeling I got at Field of Screams. I tried to do a drama class once, but couldn't really get over this one exercise they made us do. It was weird, we all stood in a circle and in a line had to scream as loud as we could in front of everybody. I couldn't really do that for some reason. I get it that it's an exercise to break stage-fright, but it just felt off to me. I think over time I've gotten over that, especially since my live music I scream my lyrics a lot sometimes to give it more energy. I like Spotlight, it's a jazzy record that has this blend of Bounce/R&B. It's funny how Ghoul went from a dark record in the beginning to now a relatively fun, light record. I went through three to four drafts of this song, which this one being my final. The original versions were a lot more depressing and less structured - it was intended to be a depressing song about feeling like an 'outsider' but it ended up as this weird jazzy funk song. I didn't really feel like an outsider there. I felt like I had a job to do and that job belonged, and I was in a place where I could learn things I had always wanted. Like the sound-boards, or the spotlight I had to physically move. Doing these jobs allowed me to use the auditorium to film basically whenever, which was good for my sketch show. And in a way, it helped me get over my stage-fright. Who knows, maybe some day I'll work a show again.

[dearcl113]

040 - T, NEIT, and early 2010s RI hip hop

Tonight I was reminded of T, another rapper from Rhode Island that died far too soon. I never met dude but I have met someone he was friends with, who is a close friend of mine, who routinely reminds me of the story of T. A general good lyricist whose life ended far too soon. I wrote this after being out all night, so it may be a little choppy. I don't really give a fuck though too be honest, it doesn't matter. The writing comes as is. RIP.

The first hip hop show I ever went too was a small event in a Veteran's hall right on the border in Connecticut where I brought my stepbrothers and other people, where only 30 people max showed up - most of them were from the college I went too. It was awkward, the sound echoed and bounced instead of that deep bass energy needed to really rock a stage. But the sound, it was classic underground hip hop - the vibes, the people on stage, there was no direct innovation in sound other than that old Masta Ace flow that Swann Notty shows a little later in the video. In 2012 I watched this video for the first time in my shed studio after my friend B asked me to put it on. I didn't think much of it other than it sounded like typical RI hip hop but she really liked it. The people in the videos seemed so surreal to me, like it was another world apart even though I only lived 20-30 minutes south from where they filmed the video. But it seemed important, like a benchmark. Today the rappers in this video that are alive don't live in Rhode Island, they live across the country but at the time they represented RI hip hop to me. When I recorded Manic All The Time I'd show my friend Eddy the drafts basically every few days, he'd come by to listen and we'd go through it sitting outside in the car near Rochambeau while smoking a blunt or something. Just having that person to share that draft with was crucial to me, especially someone who was a fan of my music. He'd also tell me stories, one of them was about his friend T who was featured in the video above. The same person I saw in 2012 in the video, just from a different context. My friend Edibles knew T well, so much so that they'd hang out together and he basically taught eddy how to rap. Eddy and I went to NEIT around the same time even if he's a couple years younger than me at the moment, in the Audio/Video production program that taught us 2 things according to what Eddy said last night. We could either work for the local news, or go get lucky working in Hollywood, or we could use it for own devices even if we didn't make the revenue work. A lot of these rappers back then would be everywhere, they had heavy promotion online and their videos would do views. This generation of rappers was post-Fedd hill, but I can hear the influences of the hill still even if these rappers weren't all from one area. But business wise the industry was fucked up and ran by a bunch of middlemen who would inflate costs or push pay-to-play models of ticket selling and other things for stage performances. This would lead to most hip-hop shows being 10+ artists on a bill each performing for an audience that was only here to see one of the acts.

I know across the country the pay to play model has it's benefits in different areas, areas where they isn't as much of a built up scene or where there isn't an over-abundance of venues. Rhode Island's hip hop scene really was birthed in the 2000s, it's still learning to walk and establish itself after the wave of pay to play performers have basically disappeared from the scene. I had my first experiences with them from 2014-2016, watching as most hip hop shows seemed to bring more drama and controversy. I watched promoters and artists cancel shows last minute with other promoters I knew, pocketing the advance given to do the show. Or, at some point after or during the show some fight would happen causing it to break up and ending up in arrests. The city weaponized these events to shut down problem clubs by giving no leeway if any event happens, even if it was just a fight where no one got hurt. My rapping wasn't the best by the time all of this came to a halt, my production was just basic beats. I'd listen, look, and learn from a community that I felt didn't accept me whether it was because of what I look like or where I'm from, southern RI was isolated then. My friends putting on their own party shows booked metal and electronic music, so I came into a scene where I booked hip hop shows at strictly rock clubs and continued that for years. Doing that opened up the idea of hip hop is safe from club owners, that it could be shown in their clubs without the problems of other shows. It's crazy the little things that we can do that push us forward.

[dearcl113]

037 - EP

When I was 18 listening to blog websites for new hip hop projects, you'd get an hour-long project at least for each artist each time they would drop. This was normal, and what I grew up with as a kid listening to hip hop albums - especially Ludacris's first few projects. The hour was seen as being of high value, basically better bang for the audience's buck.

When I was recording another artist's projects in my shed studio, this was also the vibe. Local Rhode Island rappers would create longer projects, 15 or more songs that would serve as the back-drop for promo releases. They'd promote a couple singles from the project, then the others would basically be B-Sides. RI was definitely not unique in this aspect, this was the blog era and people were looking for new things to listen too outside of commercial avenues. Still, a lot of the extra songs on projects sort of seemed like throwaways. I really enjoyed Dom Kennedy's projects for basically having no-skip worthy tracks on most of them, but this was relatively rare.

Working on my next project the past few months, I wanted to do something that was more of an EP. I've been used to making longer projects for a while - except for Manic All The Time which ended up an EP length when I was finished with it. Sometimes though you have to walk out of your comfort zone to find where you want to go.

For this reason, Return To Sender will be an EP. It follows a specific story, something I've been sort of working with since the start of the year - anchoring around themes of loneliness, with multiple characters. I've been going to a studio to record it for the past month and a half, when I started I was basically just recording in the dark. I had a list of 20 or so songs, which eventually grew to a list of over an hour's worth of content. The past couple weeks I've condensed that, creating a half hour worth of songs I've been working on every day. Music has become a job for me, one that doesn't really make me a ton of money but it helps me fill my time and stay productive. The Long Dark & Ghoul had a lot of tracks, even if I tried to break down and condense the story. I think this is just normal though, even as a kid I remember hearing stories of DMX and other artists recording hundreds of songs each album and then only choosing the best ones. I never really understood that process until recently. I think that's the real story behind Return To Sender, outside of the narrative I wrote in it - the progression of really trying my best with what I have and seeing how I can make it grow.

I was shooting in the dark for most of this project, hating what came out of it and trying my best to just keep going. Baby steps of one to two songs a day trying to figure out the best flows. But mostly, I've been trying to take it easy. Slow and steady. Return To Sender started as a trap soul project, but I hated it, so I scrapped it for something more traditional. More boom bap.

When I was younger these things seemed too hard for me, working for a while on a song. Working on music even when I didn't feel inspired. I was the kind of artist who'd capture a moment and then have a hard time getting the same essence again, but I don't have this problem anymore. Maybe it's because I'm finally treating the music like a job.

Along time ago when I almost worked at a recording studio, the engineer there said 'why are untalented people always so confident?'. It's been a year since I started this music journey, thinking nobody would see what I was doing so I was just having fun posting, treating this like a job. I was overly confident about how good my music sounded and my own capabilities. But it never the plan to turn this into a job, I never thought I'd still be at this a year later. It was just for fun, and to feel good about myself for the first time in a few years. But then it became my life. Even though I struggle a lot with depression, I've been digging out of the holes I've dug for myself since. Focusing on myself, my spiritual growth, my mental health. I'm in a much better place than I was last year. Next time I update this I'll talk more about the project, but either way whoever reads this, I hope you have a good week when you get this. - DEARCL

[dearcl113]

036 - Hip Hop Taglines, Content Era & Stories

March 2025 Going from thinking you have no future for basically your whole life to suddenly being presented with peace and the opportunity to move on, it's pretty difficult. I could never make a long-term plan because my situation would change by the time I really got started in whatever I wanted to do, whether it was because I didn't have money, people changed, things shifted. Now being presented with the opportunity to tell that story, it's weird to me. Stories have become the tag-lines of hip hop. The go-to marketing phrase that is attached to an artist's name when they're mentioned, that helps the listener decide whether or not they want to listen to the music. This has been a blooming trend for over two decades, I'd say 50 cent really honed this skill. As a kid listening to his music I'd hear the story of him getting shot 9 times so much, like others would use it as validation that this was 'real shit' we were listening too or something. It's hard for me to really tell my story in a tag-line - it's hard for a lot of artists. It's become a critical part of the piece that promotes you, that pushes you - that helps others identify with you. I believe we're in a new era currently media wise, I like to call it the 'content' era because of how quickly content/music is pushed out, and consumed by it's audience. I've only released The Long Dark two months and two weeks ago but it feels like I released it a decade ago in terms of how quickly media has evolved and grown. Stories have always been important in hip hop, obviously it's a story-telling genre. I appreciate the unfortunate fact that it's roots come from songs sung by slaves basically spoken in code, to tell stories and plant feelings that would spread. These stories were precious, carried upon by generations and then grew into blues, and other genres. It's a seed that still grows today, even if many stories are told differently. Even before 50 stories played a role in how an artist would be marketed - it just started out simple. You could just say 'I'm from Los Angeles' or something when marketing your music, then create your story in between that. The freedom for the artist to really craft their story pre-internet was unrivaled I say. I think this is why most of these artists have long-lasting staying power, the freedom and control was kept to them. The gatekeeping of those eras was kept to the story, if an artist didn't fit the bill - the story didn't stick. This I understand, what people want out of stories nowadays - I don't if I'm being honest. For most of my life even if I've sort of given up on the idea of being anything, I've always thought about my story. How it would be told if I had the chance too, how it'd look in media - I'd put myself in a celebrities shoes in whatever scandal they had even if I wasn't doing anything remotely close. Just to get an idea of how I'd feel - as I grew up the loss of control of stories just seemed to get worse. So I stopped really telling mine outside of my friends. You can't stop telling your story though. It's either you do, and that is the narrative you are able to present, or you don't and people will fill in the holes you haven't told. There is no stopping discussion and I don't think you should honestly, but you should have control of your story. How you tell it - how it's represented, how it grows. I want to bring more literature aspects into hip hop, even if I don't really want to be a writer. I still feel that hopeless feeling a lot if I'm being real, it's hard to shake a habit you've had your whole life basically. There's so many ways to tell stories, and the content era we're in is a perfect time to do so. Even if it feels like it's there to be told under a microscope sometimes.

[dearcl113]

039 - Godzilla, 2025

I beat myself up a lot, this has been the story of my life. Never stopping to smell the flowers basically because I'm too worried about the Godzilla sized monster destroying the city aka anxiety. In life you're supposed to take moments to enjoy it, but I always seem to get in the way of that. It makes it so I can never enjoy any of my accomplishments, as everything seems miniscule in the size of the monster rampaging through the countryside. I surpassed 20k plays on Ghoul in a month without any outside or paid promo, but it didn't make me feel anything because I've been too distracted. I wake up every day with a goal of managing myself, but struggle against the weight of myself, to the point where it's just easier to give up and be bitter. This bitterness has fucked me over in life many times, mostly preventing me from fully enjoying moments until those moments are gone. My last article was about this, towards the end of my living in the city I didn't see the goodness in events anymore. Every Monday I'd schedule a slot for me to play at the open mic, only to cancel it last minute or just not show up at all. I'd ask Nate if I could play, then later on cancel with him, feeling that disappointment but not recognizing I was the one getting in the way of myself. This was different from how it was when I first came to the city, finding any or all opportunities to put myself there despite the challenges logistically. I'd spend hours on the bus for a ten-minute set, travelling around the entire state basically to end up at Kennedy Plaza then walking where I need to go. Over the years I had a lot of discouraging moments, growth that seemingly only I could see while I screamed my lyrics on stage. I was surrounded by music, by different musicians - different egos, people working through their own problems and taking out their bitterness on others. People like me. I'm a firm believer in karma, what you put out into the world then comes back onto us - and because I didn't let go of my negativity that I still held from whatever trauma work that wasn't addressed, it came back to me. And I internalized it. There's always something to be mad at if you're growing and living your life. Especially if you come from trying to control your situation, working hard to get somewhere only to feel like it doesn't in the end because the ten stories tall monster is stomping on your village house. The older I get, the more futile it feels to even try to control anything. To set any goal, any guideline. The less things I realize that I can control out of life.

At the same time, criticism played such a big part of my life. Being in a community of artists, of different egos and different standpoints - being exposed to the world at large by these critics while having yourself be ignored. I get reminded of this period of my life through specific people, though this list is growing smaller. But I have to let this go. This is just a part of life. Life has never worked how I want it too. I've never been able to stop and enjoy the moment because I've always focused on the screaming Godzilla in the distance. It's made me root for the other ten stories tall monsters that could defeat it, not knowing that these things would cause just as much damage to the village. It's hard to not be bitter at life constantly, to be caught inside your own trauma. But at some point, you have to let it go. I can focus on the critics and people who seem to think how I react to Godzilla is bad, or I can get out of the way of the monster. In RI they run ads on the buses, like signs on the interior. One of them is 'The future is yours to build' for a local college, but still the message runs true. Maybe someday Godzilla will destroy my village, but in the meantime I have to live my life. I can't go about life in fear of what will, or could, happen, missing out on the moments in between. I can't manage Godzilla, I just have to learn to live with it the best I can.

[dearcl113]

038 - A revolving door of clubs, understanding this song years later

I'm old enough that the clubs I grew up with, basically aren't around anymore. Clubs used to basically be where I'd go to just relax, be alone, catch my bearings after whatever I was living in the day. Where I could just be myself, just they were dive bars and other small venues that would serve $3 Narragansett (now $6) and host weekly open mics. I watched over the years as they shut down, first The Spot in 2016, then the Fat Squirrel, then Firehouse 13. I watched as Askew opened from Firehouse 13, Alchemy grow from a tiny club in what was formerly a hip hop club, and Dusk shut down a little after I left Providence. When I left the city I was so apathetic about everything, but honestly, I miss it. Not much happens where I am. Now Askew is closed, and there's really just two clubs left from that era. Alchemy and The Parlour. The song above was something that really defined an era of time for me, even if I didn't realize it at the time. I became friends with Nate, and looked up to him for how he organized Madcap Mondays. When I found the event, it was a synchronistic moment for me - as when I was younger I was really into Syd Barrett once I learned of his music. It lined up with the album 'Madcap Laughs'.

In 2015 I didn't live in the city, I still lived in Mishnock but would spend basically all of the day away from the house either working or recording at my producer's. Over the years my friends have helped me out a lot in terms of getting away from my house, but that doesn't last forever. People grow up, change their priorities and directives, things in general change. Nate told me that when he opened the open mic, it was a golden opportunity. He had started it basically a few months prior to my first appearance at the Spot. Even through my negativity, it sort of broke the tension over me - I can't relax the same at other events as I can at an open mic. It's so real, it's so raw and so human. He had moved from overseas a few years prior where he wrote a lot of the music he'd perform, as he was host to the event, and I'd hear this song a lot. It became a benchmark moment for me, when I'd hear this song I'd know I was in a 'safe' place even if I wasn't truly friends with everyone there. I didn't realize what this song was about until this year, about the journey of shadow-work and everything in between. It was simply just a good song to me, but one that always stuck with me. One day I was at the event with Nate and he talked to me about the next generation of artists, aka us, who will one day take his place. He's not around anymore, he's still alive but like me he returned to his roots I feel like. The last club that's still open from my era is one ironically, I never went too despite living right near there. They never had an open mic when I lived on the Eastside, so I never went. There's something about just having an audience to test ideas, to play music like a scientist and being free to make mistakes or grow. Where songs like this exist and play and define so much about the time period for so many people. I'd listen to Nate, bring my little journal, and just write out my feelings in what seemed like the only environment that I could fully do that with. Sure maybe it was the alcohol too, but a lot of it was this music. Music perfect for shadow work. Music is performative therapy, and sometimes I miss the little things being so caught up on the big. You never know when it'll be too late to experience something for the last time. We all build our shadow, and must work through it to become the best we are. Thanks to Nate for all his work. I really appreciate being apart of this time period.

[dearcl113]

GHOUL: A ghost story

Check out my first published album on soundcloud & bandcamp early today, released on all platforms tomorrow.