Hey, y’all.
First things first - huge thanks to everyone who has supported the Super Dope release with the purchase of a digital download and/or the pre-order of a physical copy. Even if you just gave it a listen - thank you. The first notification of a purchase I received had the name ghost_slap attached to it, so extra special shouts going out to ghost_slap. I also want to thank the bros from Atmosphere who gave me a nice little push in the hours before the album dropped. That means a lot, a lot.
So let me break the album down for you a little bit.
The only thing I didn’t do myself was the mastering. The great Deeskee handled that. The master is pretty loud and in-your-face, which is exactly what I was looking for. I kinda wanted the album to sound like it was recorded off the radio. When I was a kid, most of my hip hop listening came in the form of radio tapes, so that aesthetic is burned into me. In a sense, it’s how I expect hip hop to sound.
The album is packed with references, both musically and lyrically - to baseball, 80s wrestling, old TV shows, b-movies (kung fu movies especially). There’s a line in “A Gift From The Sky” where I say, “watching movies on the Tubi app…”. Tubi has tons of low budget movies in its library. I love it (they’re not paying me to say this). Pretty much every day when I was writing, I had kung fu movies on Tubi playing. I ended up sampling a few things.
Speaking of all the references, my friend Matt Bomarr (who you might know from Restiform Bodies) made this collage of all the cultural figures I mention on the album. It’s nuts! Check this out:
If you’ve heard the album, I’m sure you can see how it has some things in common with King Of Drums. A lot of the same aesthetic is there. There are more “songs”. I’m thinking you’d agree it’s more focused. It’s tighter. Maybe it’s a little more aggressive? But like I did with King Of Drums, I had a lot of fun making Super Dope and I think that comes across.
Let’s get into it track-by-track.
“Turf Rider” - This is one of a handful of very fast songs on the album. Before this, I don’t think I ever had songs in the 120 bpm range. I was always more of a slow beat guy. Before I did any work on the album, I listened to tons and tons of old hip hop. It kinda surprised me to realize that many of my all-time favorite songs are super-fast. So I made the conscious decision before I made any of the beats that I wanted to do some fast stuff. It’s really fun rapping to those tempos. I’m sure I’ll do more of it.
These days, when I want to say something in a song, I usually try to do it in a single line, if I can. The thing I wanted to say in this song is in the line “…today’s rappers are heartfelt…”. It’s a thought that had been on my mind for a while. Basically, it’s about how back in the late 90s and/or early 2000s, me and my peers were often labelled ‘emo’ and dismissed for it. Now every rapper is emo, pretty much.
“Mono No Aware” - I didn’t exactly “write” this song - like, not on paper. I wrote it in my head when I was out for a walk one day and then scribbled it all down when I got home. The drums for this one come from a record that I had been looking for for years and years. I finally found a copy back in January and went to town on it right away. I’ve been getting a lot of comments about the Metallica line.
“Challenge To The Underground” - This one seems to be a lot of people’s favorite, so far. I was in a weird zone when I recorded it. I kinda surprised myself with the flow but I really like it. I’ll probably mess with it more. The lyrics contain a reference to a movie that has been called the worst ever made. Did anyone catch it?
“Super Dope” - There’s sort of an alternate version of this song. I wrote the original verses and then came up with the chorus some time later. I knew before I wrote this song that the album was going to be called Super Dope. So when I came up with the chorus and realized this would be the title track of the album, I decided to take a second look at the verses and ended up re-writing them completely. Maybe I’ll share the original version one day.
The one line I’ll shed a little light on is: “Full send. Gary Young. Dirt Brothers”. Gary Young is a street BMX rider. He’s kinda old, like me. He came out with a new video called “Forever Young” when I was working on the album and it was very inspiring. Gary’s riding is extremely aggressive and fearless. Cool to see an older dude going that hard. I wanted to capture the same spirit with this album.
“Evil God” - I did some crazy science in the production of the beat for this one. I’d never be able to explain it but I’m very happy with the results. The drums sound programmed/MPC-ish, but they’re not! It’s a straight break. So, so nasty. This is the song I wrote while watching Frontline on PBS. I had all these images from the war in Ukraine flashing in my eyes. It took me a while to work out a flow for this beat. I like how dense it is. I refer to the Minas Basin. That’s a place in Nova Scotia - where I’m from.
“Endless Counter-Attack” - When I was making the beat for this one, I kept making changes to the time signature. It was a fun beat to make but when it was done, I thought, “how the hell am I going to write to this?” I decided to take on the challenge and I’m glad I did. I don’t expect this to be anyone’s favorite song but it’s probably the one on the album I’m most proud of.
After the first little verse, I cut up the phrase “oh shit” for a couple of bars. I recorded those cuts right after I caught a guy taking a piss on the side of my house. I was really mad and took out my aggression on the turntable.
“Train Music” - Another fast one. I refer to JB Mauny right off the top. Do you know who he is? He’s a cowboy. They say he’s the greatest bull rider ever. I watched a documentary about him and like the Gary Young video, it really inspired me. In the second verse of this one, I challenged myself to do something I hadn’t done before - rhyme one sound for the whole thing. In this case, it was the ‘-ash’ sound. I’m usually more into multi-syllable and internal rhyming but it was fun to do something different. It doesn’t really sound like me. It’s good to break out of the comfort zone sometimes. Kinda came out sounding like Kool G. Rap or something.
“Breach The Wall Of Smoke” - I mention Vaughn Squire and a certain Divine Styler show. Vaughn Squire is Sixtoo. The Sebutones played a handful of shows with Divine Styler back in the late 90s. At the last show, we really did light a turntable on fire. Then we smashed it. Sixtoo kinda lost his marbles at one point and tried to eat it. I also mention Maren Jensen (no rhyme intended). Another thing I watched a lot of when I was writing this album was Love Boat. She was a frequent guest. I remember her from the OG Battlestar Galactica way back in the day too. I love the breakdown in the middle of this song.
“Overthrow The Surface” - The key thing with this song is that it samples a hip hop song from Halifax (the city where I came up) from back in the ‘80s. I think the only person in the world who will recognize it is Jorun Bombay. It’s a little tribute to the roots, I guess.
There’s a line that goes “…chasing down a page-one-er with a raygun like Blade Runner…”. There’s no reason why anyone should understand what I’m saying here. Over the years, I have compiled a master list of drum breaks. Every drum break is given a score out of five. The list is arranged by score, best-to-worst. So all the illest ones are on page one of the list. The line refers to hunting those top-rated drum breaks. I think I have only three more (of 250) from page one to get.
“Passport To Infinity” - I love this beat. I think of it as having a DITC feel - like something Lord Finesse might have rapped on back in ’90 or ’91. The drum break might be the most obscure on the whole album.
There’s a line that goes - “…who gave Shante the 4 at the seminar?” This refers to an infamous moment in hip hop history. There used to be a yearly event in New York called The New Music Seminar. In its heyday, there were MC and DJ battles that were regarded as the most important on the planet. In 1985, Roxanne Shante entered the battle. Those who know will tell you that she was THE GREATEST battle rapper in the game (some would say all time!). She laid waste to the competition that night and it seemed obvious that she should win. But one of the judges gave her a score of 4 out of 10. The story goes that he later said some sexist BS about how he couldn’t allow a woman to be regarded as the best rapper in the world. This burns me to this day because I’m a huge Shante fan. She’s a major inspiration.
“The Forbidden Words” - I love the flow in this one. I think it’s some of my best rapping. The beat is so, so hard - especially when the drums change at the end. Holy shit. That’s another very, very obscure drum break. Near the end, I say, “I know what I’m doing with a 42-inch vertical…” You may find this hard to believe, but I really did have a 42-inch vertical jump back in the day. In high school and college, I could dunk like a maniac. It was kinda like a super-power. I went so crazy with it that I eventually destroyed my left knee. I wish so bad that I could still jump like that. I deliver the line in the present tense because I was basically channeling my high school years for this whole album. That’s the main thing. I just wanted it to capture high school in the late 80s.
“Shoot The Invader” - The production on this one is pretty bonkers. I love the drum switches and the breakdown in the middle. I had the idea early on to do the thing that happens at the end of the first verse - where I sample and trigger my voice. It turned out pretty cool. I just wanted to come off hard and really fuck shit up on this one.
“A Gift From The Sky” - Heavy nostalgia vibes with this one. The beat came together so nice. I bet this one would be fun to perform live.
In the first line, I say, “I used to watch trains closely…” I grew up near train tracks and live near some again now. In the room where I wrote most of these lyrics, I can see the tracks and the freights as they rumble past. It’s a constant graffiti art show. Pretty inspiring.
Lots of childhood memories in the first verse. In the second verse, there’s a line where I say, “…it’s two-hats-wearing season…” That’s a reference to the rapper Curtis Plum, who passed away last year. He had a song about wearing two hats at the same time.
“The Monster Anarchy Zone” - I had this wacky idea to cram 100 drum breaks into one song. Okay, it’s not 100 but it’s a lot. Each one demanded a different flow so the challenge was to adapt with each switch.
I mention reddit. Are y’all on there? I’m lurking every day.
The hardest line to write in this one was the “Kenny Lofton” line. I knew I wanted to say, “I’m like [blank] - maybe not a hall of famer, but an interesting career…” I made a list of great retired baseball players who aren’t in the Hall Of Fame. Then I found myself pouring over stats on the Baseball Reference website, trying to make the perfect choice. Here are some of the other names I considered:
Don Mattingly
Bo Jackson
Dave Stieb
Keith Hernandez
Roger Maris
Dale Murphy
Dave Parker
Dick Allen
Bobby Grich
I went with Kenny Lofton partly because I had the chance to meet him and work out with him at a baseball training facility in LA called Beach City years ago. It was one of the thrills of my life. I told Kenny that day that he should be in the Hall Of Fame. He liked that.
Hey, in the last post - with all the lyrics - the formatting came out weird. Everything is all mushed together. I’m sorry about that. I tried to fix it was wasn’t able. I copied and pasted the lyrics from a file in my computer into Substack and something went wonky in the process. I still might try to fix it, so check back in on it.
Quick question before I get out of here… Is it important to you that I eventually put this album on streaming services? There’s not a ton of incentive for me to do it because I don’t see any money from it and there are other potential snags that could come up. The main purpose is so that you can listen in your car or on your phone, right? But if you buy the album on Bandcamp, don’t you have the files on your phone anyway? Maybe there’s something I’m overlooking. I suppose that if you’re tight on money, you can’t afford to buy the album and you’re already paying a monthly bill for Spotify or Apple Music or whatever… I can see that. So let’s put it to the poll…
As I mentioned before, there was quite a bit of material left over from Super Dope. I’ve already begun organizing that material and logging other ideas. The plan is for that stuff to come together for another album. I’m challenging myself to finish it and share it before the end of the year. I already have a title for it. I imagine work will begin in earnest in September or thereabouts. Between now and then, I’m working on another project with some friends. That’s coming along nicely. I’ll keep y’all up to date.
Talk soon.