Guante + Graham O'Brien: "This is the Opposite of a Suicide Note" REMIX

New song. Download it for free. And please spread the word-- Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, whatever.  This song is also in a "Guante Sampler" set; you can download the whole thing for free if you want to.

Graham is one of my favorite producers-- if you don't know him, he's the drummer in No Bird Sing and Junkyard Empire, and he also produced Kristoff Krane and Sadistik's "Prey for Paralysis" album. Graham also put out a solo album called "Live Drums" that's unlike anything else out there. He's super talented, and I'm honored and humbled to work with him.

This is a song I wrote a while back. The original version was on the Guante & Big Cats' mixtape "Don't Be Nice." It's a pretty personal song, and touches on some familiar subject matter for me-- the idea that you don't have to be happy all the time to be a good person; it's okay to be angry. We can use these negative emotions as tools to build something positive.

Aside from the subject matter, though, the real trick here was structure. I wanted to create a song that was all verse, no hook, but that didn't get boring. So some of that is in the beat, obviously-- the way it builds and breaks down and builds again-- and some of it is in the delivery and in the writing itself. I have other tracks like that-- "Winter is Coming" and "Lightning," and it's an approach that I like because it kind of bridges the gap between rap and spoken-word-- it's definitely rapping (AABB and all that), but it uses the slam poem's three-minute narrative arch instead of the standard rap song's 16/8/16/8 verse/chorus structure. Don't get me wrong though, the new Guante & Big Cats album will be full of hooks. It's just fun to try something different.

Thanks for listening.  Watch out for the first single from YOU BETTER WEAPONIZE coming soon.