After months of being trapped in the house, homeschooling, working on productions for Cool House LLC and watching the world turn upside-down, I was networking with a few friends around the country to find some collaborations. Music Mawule on Instagram, a friend from Denver, was mapping out his new album and we talked about perhaps working on something together. He had posted a song called Mirror Mirror and I loved the melody. He had publicly asked if anyone wanted to work on the song. I got in touch and got started. Within a few minutes I had a whole new hook written and things started moving. Long story short, the song was so identifiable that we had agreed to just reproduce the track and bring Josh Macintosh (The Trews, My My Sugar) on guitar to add his magical touches. Alex Saltz (APS Mastering) has been his same amazing self by mastering the track and all of the recording and production came directly from Butterfly Temples Studio.
Cities were being torn to shreds and people were marching through the streets demanding justice. Lyrical content is so important to me and I believe that music is the perfect vessel to bring forth an enlivened discussion about contemporary issues. The lyrics ("And if you're crying then you're crying 'cause it hurts") brought me to want to discuss this almost fairytale-style conflict, one that requires a self-destructive rebirthing in order to find new social norms, one that was more inclusive than exclusive.
I remember when I was 20yrs old and I was planning on going to Zimbabwe for a study-abroad trip (psychology-Communications) my mother had explained to me that a couple generations back, my ancestors were black. I always wondered why my skin was darker than other white kids, why my body was shaped the way it was. Yeah, I grew up in white neighbourhoods with mixed friends, but there was always a connect and disconnect at the same time. It wasn't until I got my 23 and Me, almost 20yrs later, that everything started to sink in. It said I was 18% Native American, had deep ties to the Iberian Peninsula and 11.6% Sub-Saharan Africa which included Nigeria, Ghana and Congo. I even found traces of Asian descent. My past had always been a mystery to me. I always felt as though my past was being hidden; not in a deceitful way. It was simply unavailable.
My mother and great grandmother seemed to have had a deeply revolutionary spirit and it has been at the core of everything I do. My whole 15 years in China was about breaking norms, living an impoverished lifestyle while existing to lift the spirits of those around me. I've used music in the past to carve this message with careful and sincere seeds of social evolution. And this song, to me, was an attempt to reach out in support of the conflict and struggle of our brothers and sisters that face often hidden discrimination in a time in which many believe that it was a habit of the past. I chose a style of production for this song that took a lighthearted sound with magical lyrical content that portrayed a coarse confrontation to the struggles of this time. The only responsibility you can embrace is the one you establish to and for yourself. So, I encourage my kids to hold themselves to high moral standards, but also lay before them the hardships that riddle humanity and its often hypocritical existence. Bob Marley has always been a huge inspiration of mine and I wanted to take a moment to drive the language of Love back into the music. After all, it is my name and I'm very grateful to be able to hold that name. So, next time you feel like you're falling, maybe its because you're Falling in This Love. It might hurt, but its all for a reason.