“10 From 11” Song by Song - “50 Cups”

It's been a couple weeks now since I released an album called “10 From 11”, where I got 10 beats by DJ Moves, and then spent the next ten days focused on writing and recording one track each day. It was a pretty unique experience, so I think I’ll try to share some of the process and some of my thoughts about the songs, with some RapGenius style breakdowns of certain bars. Why not.

This is the only album I've ever released where I chose a group of beats I wanted to use and then wrote to them all. Everything else has been some combination of beats and lyrics cobbled together over the course of months or years. This project, I flipped through and chose from Moves SoundCloud for a few hours on the first day. He offered me a package deal, and he'd probably offer you the same, I bet. We'd never met or interacted at all outside a few @ mentions on socials (when I’d feature some of the work he’s done recently for Sum-01, Lxvndr, The Drunken Arseholes, Fatt Matt, Tachichi, ect on #ATSIC, my radio show/podcast). Hopefully I get a chance to meet him one day. Anyways, I tried to pick beats with the same vibes. I had it in my mind that maybe I could make something really cohesive if I started with a bunch of finished beats from the same producer.

That night when I got the Wavs sent over, I sat and wrote to one, and decided to stay up into the next morning to record it. Finished it. Simple concept, simple structure, standard delivery. That was “50 Cups”. I half quote the Beastie Boys on the chorus, and allude to the caffeine driven insomnia that often accompanies my creativity. The late hours are prime for me to write because the rest of the world is shut down and quiet, so it's easier to focus in. Fewer distractions to pull my attention away from the task. I’d noticed my creativity would spike at about 11:30 pm years before I ever knew what melatonin was. Now it makes a bit more sense why that happens.

One other thing that I did on “50 Cups”, (that in retrospect is a questionable decision, for what ends up being one of the earliest bars that people hear from me), was to switch my octave up a couple levels and do my best GFK impression. It sounds like I must have punched in, but I swear I surprised myself by being able to go back and forth tonally to sound like Tony in one straight take. I say something like "I'll leave fucking trademarks on you, like the kid from that Ghostface song". The higher pitch is an ode to GFKs typical vocal tone, and the influence he's been on me and on Hip Hop in general. The line itself is a reference to the intro on "Iron Maiden" from Ghost's "Ironman" (1996). When I wrote it I knew that very few people were going to hear that and know what was happening. I didn't really think about how early in the album I placed it when I later decided that the tone of "50 Cups" worked nicely as the first track on the album. I walk the threat back the next line "nah, Im just talking slick, I mostly get along".

The "Buncha songs left sitting under dust for a while" that I reference on the hook are still going to continue to trickle out one by one, and the vault will continue to be replenished song by song as I write them in my typical here and there format.

"It's feeling like it's FPG cuz it still is".  #FPG4Ever is the hashtag tying a string of singles together, because I did a run of mixtapes called Feelin Pretty Good, and that's pretty much the brand now, at least for the time-being. If you give that a search, you’ll find a bunch of posts from me.

Another project that will maybe one day be real is the "album half made I did with Baggy Lean a half decade back" I mention in there. If nothing else, some of the ones we already did will see a release sometime, maybe soon. I gotta talk to that guy and find out what we’re doing. He sells beats here.

When I finished writing and recording it, the next day I listened to it and starting writing a second track. It was then that the idea struck to do 10 songs in 10 days. When I had worked at Arches, a local Supervised Consumption Site, I was running a daily recording program, and when I started that, I sort of wondered how long I'd be able to sustain waking up and going in to be creative (by helping others be creative), all day, every day. It turned out not to be a problem, and a lot of days I'd go home at the end of the shift inspired to write more of my own stuff. It was the opposite of my worries of running out of inspiration as if it was some limited pool to pull from.

After writing 50 Cups, I sat back and thought, "It's the pandemic. I got no job and I don't have shit to do (since the UCP provincial government closed the SCS based on bogus charges)… I might as well get busy and see if I can knock out an album real quick." that was the main inspiration to do it quick. COVID was looming. Vaccines weren't yet real, let alone here for us to inject. I've got asthma, so my lungs weren't guaranteed to be fit for rapping if I add more scar tissue. I coughed a damn hole in my lung somewhere around a decade ago, actually. I just wanted to get some thoughts off while I could.

A lot of these ideas on this '10 From 11" album are almost rhyming translations of thoughts I've already spewed out on twitter. The whole reason I rap is because I want to express ideas, start conversations, make people think a bit, maybe. It's lofty aspirations to mix that in with being entertaining. Rappers with anything to say are fewer and fewer these days. A lot of up and coming/unknown artists do their absolute best to mimic the current sound. This album wasn't about that at all. I just wanted to make some art to express some ideas, so I did.

I've been getting a lot of good response on the album so far. Thanks a lot to everyone who's shared their thoughts on it or asked me about it. Huge thanks to anyone who has shared it with their followers or friends in real life. It's really the best part to know that my word have been heard. “50 Cups” wasn't one that I anticipated people would like much honestly, but I've been told the slow eery beat is hypnotic and that the hook is catchy. It helps a lot to rhyme on beats by producers with skills like Moves, and it goes to show you that I have no idea how to pick singles. That’s one reason I typically don’t. I’ll let a DJ know what songs could be interesting to them, but that’s only because I know they’re too busy to listen to every song on every album sent to them. “10 From 11” is more about the sum of it’s parts, less about figuring out which track is the one that could be a “hit”.

I’m going to write something like this for each of these songs and post em here. Might take a while, but if you enjoy reading stuff like this, stick around. Hitting follow on bandcamp is a great way to make sure you know everytime I release new music. There’s a lot more on the way.

Feel free to let me know what you think of “50 Cups” in the comments or whatever. Thanks.

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