Upon Further Review: My Dope Is Doper than Your Dope PART 1

i had been working on this album for a year. seriously. the original title was Hellogoodbye. then i hit a wall and decided to focus on a new Junkeez album. then me and Mista Chaos' schedules conflicted so that plan had to be 86ed. this album didn't have the running theme of Child Support's Kicking My Ass so i could record more sparsely. over the next few days i'll give ya'll a peek inside my thought process of making this mixtape/album.


1. Quixiotic Trance
the original opening song, "LeBron James", didn't come out like i wanted so i scrapped it for this track(just recorded last Saturday). i know the real word is Quixotic but i just liked the extra syllable lol
i've always loved Digable Planets. their first two albums were so dope to me back in the day. i always wanted to flow to "Pacifics" but i could never figure out a hook as live as the original's. its a simple sample of "New York is RED HOT" over and over again but i ain't from New York so that idea was over before it started.
another song i've always loved(and is my favorite Kanye beat. yes....more than Jesus Walks, Golddigger and Takeover)is Alecia Keys' "You Don't Know My Name". the version i sampled isn't Alicia's however. a girl named Ashley Serrano (whom i've never met)is the voice you hear.
she's amazing. YouTube neo-Aretha Franklins and hipster rappers before hipster rap was called hipster rap sounds like a weed song to me. ha!

2. A Long Time featuring Mista Chaos
this song means so much to me because Chaos is the first person i ever rapped with. we've been best friends since the 6th grade. the song just fits from title on down because we have been doing this for a long time. we actually wrote this the night before we went to the studio. he was in town for a few days so we took advantage of the time. my boy G.I. Joe made the beat. he's a real cool cat. he's deep into the church but his favorite music is anything Lox-related lol

3. A New 12 Months
this is another song that i've been wanting to do for a while. the pinball machine song was my favorite thing from Sesame Street when i was a kid. it was just so funky. "1-2-3-4-5..6-7-8-9-10...11-12". that was my shit. =]

i think its pretty fair to say i'll rhyme to anything. Steely Dan, Hank Williams Sr., Erykah Badu or Run DMC, it doesn't matter.

4. I'm Cool
2mindz did the beat. its just about rhyming. i got the hook from a debate i get into with a lot of younger smokers. they always wanna roll up all the weed in one blunt, smoking stogies. i never saw the point in that. once i reach that degree, i'm cool lol

5.Life Is A 5 Letter Word featuring Mizzat
2mindz again on the track. i recorded my part and e-mailed it to Mizzat. he added his verse and cleaned it up. thats one of the most discussed songs when the mixtape is brought up. i was really going through it with my girl at the time and nothing seemed to be going right in my life. 2008 was a long-ass year for me.

6.Four Twenty
another weed song =]
Mista Chaos got me hip to Les Nubian a while ago. he had the CD so i chopped it up and did my thing. i was real real happy with how this one came out.

7. Before This Evening Let's Out
the club-party song. i wrote that a loooooooooonnnng time ago and never put it to anything. i like this track because this isn't a fast-paced, hyper album. this song kinda fills a void.

8. Hellogoodbye featuring Mista Chaos
another song written the night before we went to the studio. G.I. Joe on the beat. this is that big stadium sound that a lot of rappers like. this was originally going to be the last song i ever did. lol you can't "retire" from what you love. God gave me the ability to do this and i love doing this. i'll be rhyming till i'm 99 1/2!