6. IYAM
6. IYAM
November 27, 2014 0 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving yo.

I have feelings about Williamsburg, man.  Feelings.  Sentence lived in the heart for a long time.  Before that, one of my best friends Matt (and our original manager) lived there too.  I've spent a lot of time there.  Now, not so much.  But as an impressionable young-20's dude, I had my fill.

I hate how the term hipster is used.  People use it to mock kids for the way they dress, or for the music they listen to, or what they read, whatever.  That's never felt right to me.  Do a combination of these things make someone a hipster?  Is there a limit?  It took me like five years to come up with my own definition of a hipster where I felt I could make sense of it all, if only for my own sake:

A hipster (to me) is someone who needs to pause after ANY experience and decide based on other factors if they enjoyed the experience or not.  Does that make sense to anyone else?  Like, they might hear a Taylor Swift song that is a perfectly written pop song that everyone else in the world likes and initially they might enjoy it too.  Because, again - perfectly written pop songs are to be enjoyed by basically everyone.  But instead of going with that, they think: 

1. It is not cool to like Taylor Swift

2. It has not become cool, in an ironic sense, to like Taylor Swift

3.  As a direct result of #1 and #2, I do not like this song

That reasoning, to me, is what makes someone a hipster.  They cannot read a book and determine on their own if they liked it.  They first must WEIGH THE FACTS.  My little discourse here has little to do with anything.  I'm just proud of my hipster definition and wanted to get it down on paper before I forgot it.

The beat for IYAM was based on a beatbox I used to do to make my first son laugh.  Fact: my two sons both experienced their first full-on-laughs to an MC Squared beatbox routine.  The same one.  He used it to win an episode of Showtime at the Apollo.  I have video of both events, and it's the fucking best.

The beat started off super simple.  Then M. Stine got his dirty little hands all in it.  I think it's one of the more intricate things on the album.  So beautiful to me.  It's a microcosm of what we were going for with the whole record - detailed enough that hopefully you can hear new things on the tenth listen, but hard enough to shake your fucking car if you feel so inclined.  

I thought of the hook on a train ride home from Williamsburg.  I had drank, in the course of like two hours, an entire bottle of whiskey with my before-mentioned friend Matt.  We were just in his apartment bullshitting too.  No idea why we went that hard.  That's just to say that when I got on the platform I was already in an emotional state.  Haha.  I was feeling angry and loving and smashy and sad and all the wonderful emotions that wash you out when you're really, really drunk.

As I rode the train, I was mesmerized by everyone around me.  I couldn't stop thinking about how hard everyone was trying to stick out just enough from the crowd.  It felt so weird to witness.  WHAT IS MY TWIST ON THE UNIFORM SON.  I grew up in Jersey, too.  It's not like I haven't changed the way I dress since I've moved to Brooklyn.  My jeans are tighter.  Haha.  But in my head I couldn't stop repeating "I am not like you.  I am not like you".  Like I said, I was in a state.

So the song is sort of a yell into the void.  The hook is a declaration of independence.  The verses are an admission that of course we still define ourselves the same way these kids do - with the music we listen to, the books we read, the movies we like.  It was a cathartic exercise to sing (rap) lyrics that have meant so much to us for so long.  SFR family are in there.  How could they not be?  Every line in the verses is taken from someone else.  It's a collage of music that made us who we are.  And then a scream that we are STILL UNIQUE, MUHFUCKAS.  The lawsuit on this sucker could be tremendous.  

School's out for summer.  School's out forever.  Run and scream.  Kill the king and rail at all his servants.  Make time stop and leave you stranded in the year of the snake.  Because I've been face to face with the serpent.  Thirteen is my lucky number.  You got bad luck.  Metermaids.  Brooklyn.  Live and uncut.  It's all over now, baby blue.  It's been some rocky ground.  Sure shot.  Dead to the world.  Bury me now.

If you got the money, honey, we got your disease.  Number nine should have been number one to me.  You can't hurt me.  I'm banned in DC.  Because the piano's been drinking, not me.  I'm waiting in my cold cell when the bell begins to chime.  Trade in my hours for a hand full of dimes.  Because I'm wanted dread or alive.  Nowhere to hide.  Smoke on the water.  Fire in the sky.

I am the only one to ever feel like, look like, do it like this.

No man's an island.  I am a rock.  Pop goes the weasal.  The weasal goes pop.  With a freestlye like that, you're bound to get shot.  One hand on my dick screaming fuck the cops.  Sing a song of sixpence, pocket full of rye.  Half of me is ocean, half of me is sky.  I ain't ever gonna die.  I ain't ever gonna die.

Where do you go from here my blue eyed son?  Staring down the barrel of a gun.  Son of a gun.  There's nothing that you could ever do that can't be done.  They lifted up the son.  A spoonful weighs a ton.  Mother you had me, but I never had you.  Stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues.  The angels all want to wear my red shoes.  Anyway you cut it you lose.

I'm hiding out in the big city, blinking.  Leave your ass stinking.  What the fuck you thinking?  Bye bye Miss American Pie.  Whiskey and rye are what the good old boys are drinking.  Marvin was left with a hole in his chest.  The boombox is dead.  It's seen its best days.  The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves.  The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves.

I am the only one to ever feel like, look like, do it like this. 

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