I grew up in that wonderful period where Blondie’s “Rapture” and the SugarHill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” were totally new. Rap has never been my thing though… I just never knew the genre. Run DMC with Aerosmith blew my mind with “Walk this Way” and I even owned a copy of NWA’s, “Straight Outa Compton" on cassette…. So I know how well anger can be expressed through rap but it was outside my arena so I never tried it.
A few years ago I spent a weekend on a songwriters’ retreat in Kent and met a couple of young rappers who, in that short time, showed me how dynamic and intense rap could be… but also how thoughtful they were in crafting the work. It really cut through and touched me. I hadn’t realised how impactful that time had been until I started writing “J’accuse”….
The song had an unconventional start. I sat in a chair watching TV one Saturday morning in 2023 with a mug of peppermint tea in hand and started tapping out a rhythm on the side of the mug. It really grabbed me so I recorded it on my iPhone, ran it through GarageBand and sung the first thing that came into my head. When you put a vocal on GarageBand through your phone without headphones, there’s a crazy, interesting distortion that happens… That set the tone and the song was finished really quickly..
The rap part just happened. Like they say about the first album.... it takes 3 months to record but a lifetime to create.. I think that's what went on here...
I went into the studio and told Marc Joy, the album producer, that I wanted to do a rap track. Producers aren’t like other people. They don’t laugh in your face, and their eyebrows don’t raise perceptibly …. They patently listen and find a way to get you to decide that a track just never gets on tape..
Marc however, heard something good in that crazy demo and decided we should do it… I’m very glad we did…🙏🙏🙏
The title of course is taken from the Dreyfus Affair (Google it… it’s very relevant). The Emile Zola letter, published to shame the French government in 1898, seemed a very powerful reference… politics has always been strong in me after i discovered George Orwell when I was 19. I read “Homage to Catalonia” and just kept reading his works. It should have made me very cynical about politicians but I still put a lot of store in politics and politicians. I know many and I trust them… but the ones who have no compassion, who don’t care about people.. well, I have absolutely no time for them.. If you can go to sleep each night while knowing full well you did. Nothing to ease someone’s pain, you don’t deserve to represent them. In the words of “J’accuse”…
“You know you don’t mean Shit to me…”
I don’t know if a 60 year old man rapping his anger on a MOR album works but if you don’t try…
Diolch / Thanks
Crispin x
Comentarios