Early on in my music career I wrote this song called Jimmy Says about my brother based on a real story.
It was catchy and for about 8 years no matter what I dropped the attitude was, you can’t beat Jimmy Says, no matter what I did with the next drop. In that song I start off nearly every second line with “Jimmy Says” and tell you a story through the words he said.
Basically it was a catchy earworm over a weird beat that arguably down to my adlibs I tried harder on.
Along the way, as nearly a decade passed I started to wonder if I could beat that song. Was I really destined to have the 5th song I wrote seriously be the highlight of my catalogue?
Then I created Lose Weight and everything changed.
My artist journey had me going in weird directions for a long time
Like many of my peers, practice drove me to more complex and out there material.
I have written songs that frankly no one can relate to, no one wants to quote and outside of a scattered group of 16-20 year olds who may stumble onto it looking for the raw and real, no one cares for it. During 2012-2014 I performed a lot and know I wrote some amazing music, that I can still perform today if I wanted to.
From 2016-2020 I did not perform a lot of my music to audiences. I built my own home studio and stopped recording with an engineer. I got lost in myself spending hours and hours working on a single verse.
When I listen to that stuff now I cringe a lot. I feel my earlier work was more palatable and said more. When I was heartbroken before Bonnie on my fuckboy shit, I wrote some super relatable music.
Inevitably I realized my path to success was never going to be based on writing “better” songs.
My focus shifted from technique to communication and this impacted my practice
Around 2020 I should point out I went to an End of the Weak Quebec BBQ and saw Monk.E freestyle.
Then I ended up on the End of the Weak proper Zoom and saw how important freestyling was. I don’t think I’ll ever come at people with the bars most expect, but I can rant with rhythm quite well. You can’t accuse me of not saying anything, it’s just the something may be a lecture on starting a not for profit or something.
Either way I freestyle a whole bunch of songs during COVID to get better. Through that process I got a lot better with flow, and hooks. I started realizing you need hooks all over the song and started thinking more about writing quotable lines.
While it’s fair to say most of my shit isn’t quoteable, if you follow the progression of my writing from 2020 until today, the weirdness comes more in what I choose to write about and less how I say it. A few hundred people see pickles and think of me now.
As I continued to practice and seek our new topics to write about I started to figure out how to consistently ignore my ego driven impulses to make better music.
I spend so much time editing my flow now where once I bragged about being a 1 take Charlie.
Inevitably if you keep at it opportunity will strike and you will be ready
As I send around an unmixed sample version of my verse off the upcoming song “Bonjour-Hi”, I am getting wild praise.
From the beat selection, to the hook, to how I finessed my verse a few people are calling this my best song. I think back to when I feared I’d never beat Jimmy Says, and now I’m able to beat stuff I wrote recently with my latest work. I kept working on multiple angles of improving my craft and now I’m able to write more in a way that people can relate to.
Instead of fighting the pop tendencies, I’m embracing being 36 and trying to make music people actually want to hear, while saying something they actually want to connect to. English Montrealers in my city will feel this one. I spent over a week just figuring out what I wanted to say and over another week just playing with syllables and flow to make it nice.
I’ve never been a natural so to speak, but I can edit my way into some fire ass shit when I’m done with it and perform the fuck out of it live.
You’ll be able to see the first live performance of my part of Bonjour-Hi on Sep 21 at Goldenstar Oka.
Until then…
Live Long and Prosper Everyone
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