"Know you well"
Freestyle / DailyRambles by: Dutchmassive
Produced by: edac
Artwork by: Cade Williams (edac)
Album: The Reluctant Clap: DailyRambles Season 4 (Unreleased)
Year created: 2018
----Links to Edac/Cade music & art----
https://edacsound.bandcamp.com/
https://okaywonderful.creator-spring.com/
https://soundcloud.com/cade-williams
https://soundcloud.com/cade-williams-793721410
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Backstory:
***Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer! ***
Anything titled "DailyRambles" is 100% off the dome, improv freestyles / jibberish. Just needed to make that clear from the jump. =)
With that disclaimer out of the way now, I'll give you a brief (really long) history / context into the Reluctant Clap / DailyRambles Freestyle series before I get into the backstory surrounding this particular ramble.
My Last official album as the emcee "Dutchmassive" was "Crush Your System" which was released via Rawkus Records in 2007. That's a really long time ago, but it wasn't the last album I recorded as Dutchmassive.
From 2008-2011 I recorded my Opus, my next Dutchmassive album titled "Romanticizing". It was amazing. The album I was most proud of, The dopest beats, my best rhymes... It was what I had been building up to all my life. (for context, Samiyam produced 5 tracks on it) It wasn't finished but it was very close to being finished. If you've been following my Catalog drops on my "Dutchyyy" artist page and reading the backstories, you might remember the backstory behind my 2012 released instrumental album titled "Blue Screen of Deaf". If not, TDLR: On Xmas night 2011, My Laptop that held all the beats I made from 2008-2011 and my next Dutchmassive album met the dreaded Blue Screen of death fate. I Lost everything. Years of work. It broke me. I ended up paying a lot of money for a hard drive recovery service and when I got it back, It was just a bunch of random folders all titled "AVBDK28374" and every file in those folders was named similarly. It recovered all the media files, but nothing had a name. Any Project files, Vsts, settings, mixdowns, were all gone. Just random files. So I did manage to recover all the beats produced by other people that I recorded to, but I'm not the type of person or artist that is willing to revisit already finished music and try to replicate it. I could never match the same first take energy I put into that album. So I took it as a sign, I mourned the album, and 2 months Later I got distracted moving to Los Angeles to start a life with my now EX GF. (who happens to be the subject of this freestyle, but we will get to that)
Years go by, and I record some guest features, and verses once in a while, but had zero plans to ever record another album as "Dutchmassive".
Fast Forward to 2015, After Los Angeles, After living upstate NY and releasing "Chill Gawd, Chill" and creating the "Uproot" & most of "Traversal". I ended up back where I started. Quite Literally, the very same couch I was sleeping on at one of my best friends' apartments before I left for Los Angeles. I had wiped, and reset all progress and was back where I started. You know what extreme turmoil brings? Frustration, passion, anger, hope... The Full spectrum. You know what's a good release to put all those emotions into? A new album sharing your thoughts. So I began collecting new beats from all my favorite producers, new beats = new energy. So I got beat packs from Rnd1, Weirddough, Dibiase, etc... and I bought a Tascam DR-05 field recorder. Up until this point, my usual method of writing lyrics was never actually writing lyrics, I would freestyle into a tape recorder, or voice memos on the phone while I was out and about (remember I don't like sitting still when I write) but this was the first time in History, I was able to Play the beat in headphones, while mobile and record over the beat. Prior to this, I would have to hold a speaker up in one hand, and record into the phone with the other. Not ideal. Needless to say, the Tascam was a game changer for me.
What Started out as intent, to get beats that may inspire me to write, turned into something completely different and here is how Daily Rambles was born.
A Producer sends me a zip of beats. I don't listen to any of them. I load them all up on the tascam, and blindly Freestyle over whatever plays, whether I like the beat or not. If I can tell the beat isn't my style or won't match my voice, I'll end up being silly and try out weird voices. If the beat moves me, I'll just try and sketch out a cadence, but this is all done blindly and in real time.
This quickly got out of hand, I got super addicted to recording these jibberish freestyles, and started doing this daily. I can't tell you the amount of freedom that comes to recording things you never intend to publicly share. The fun you have, and the ability to be honest and vulnerable and super introspect is pretty magical. So I kept doing it, just to stay sharp, and maintain my love for rhyming and having fun. But I had zero intentions of any of these being heard by another soul haha.
From 2015-2021 I recorded 5 seasons of Daily Rambles. Some are straight incoherent jibberish and jokes and others I catch pockets of extreme lucidity to where It sounds like I wrote the song. During this period of time, I began having health issues that I didn't understand, this was documented in real time, the confusion and sadness and hope, as the seasons progressed, my health got way more severe, Then 2020 happened, and going outside became a risk. With my health in the worst condition, the Loss of my Career teaching at the hospital, the loss of health insurance and a deadly virus that made going to the hospital, the most unsafe place on the planet for someone with no immune system to go to, I began accepting Mortality as a realistic near future. I Shifted all my priorities into securing my legacy and began creating the "Dutchyyy VS the Algorithms" master vault cloud drive, where I uploaded most of my released discography and unreleased discography in fear that I wasn't going to be around long enough to share all my unreleased music with the world. I shifted how I approached music in general and began streaming, and recording every single session from start to finish, and experimenting and pushing the limits of live improv to extreme levels. Immense flow state... i.e. #EvolvingPortals
I came to terms with the situation and finally managed to drop all pride, and decided to start making these freestyles public. Something I was too prideful to do, out of fear people wouldn't understand they were freestyles and just thought they were new written songs.
But If my time is limited, who cares... I'd rather leave behind my vulnerable introspective, goofy ramble freestyles, then they be locked away on my hard drive. In the year 2021, My health reached absolute critical levels, I tried my hardest to fight it and push creating publicly even further and started live streaming the freestyles as well. Until I could no longer do it, Couldn't even, and still can't sit up in a chair without my knees holding my body up, which is why my live streams stopped last year and I left all communities and exiled myself into extreme isolation. The Very last freestyle I recorded was done Live on IG, on my birthday last year.
I ended up releasing it on Catalog. A 15 minute Freestyle originally titled EULOGY, you now know as "The long cold hot take"
https://beta.catalog.works/dutchyyy/-the-long-cold-hot-take-f-dutchmassive-
From Season 5 of "The Reluctant Clap / Daily Rambles series.
I didn't really intend to go this in depth or be this open and transparent about my situation, but I guess my pride of people thinking these freestyles are actual serious written songs embarrases me more than people understanding how severe my health has been / is.. But I hope it provided proper context around the series, and honestly. If I was no longer on this earth, It may sound crazy, but I think I'd rather people deep dive into all 5 seasons of Daily Rambles over my actual written albums or instrumental albums and the reason is, no one was ever supposed to hear any of this stuff. So it's like Chronological Journal of sorts and gives a lot of insight into who I am when you make it past all the jibberish hahah.
Enough Disclaimer, Daily Rambles backstory and onto the backstory or context for "Know you well"
So hopefully by now you know, Any track you hear that's a daily ramble, It's not planned, up until the moment I press record, I have not heard the beat yet. So ultimately the beat commands me on what direction I go. This was recorded October of 2018, I just flew home from working at the hospital in Brooklyn. While I was at my hotel, my EX hit me up to let me know she was in NY. For context, We dated on and off 2009-2014 and it was super toxic, but I'm not built for holding hatred or resentment so we on and off remained somewhat friends. When she hit me up in NY, my health was really bad to the point I couldn't even stand up at the hospital, I would sit on the ground with my knees to my chest (like L from deathnote) which is exactly how I'm sitting and writing this backstory out. She would always try to creep back in and say stuff beyond friends, but she was literally in NY with another guy haha, So I didn't sweat it at the time, but it obviously impacted me to the point where, when I got home. I drove my TAO TAO scooter to the Park, next to the ocean and began recording daily rambles, lots of them, when this beat came on... All I heard was "I love you" from the start. and welp, my mind did all the rest hahah.. No pre-emptive thoughts, didn't even think about her since we talked that night in NY, but the beat commanded it, So i ran with it. and if it hasn't sunk in by now, there's a part in the song, where I say "awww Stepped in ant pile, Story of my life" As I said that, I literally stepped in a huge Fire ant mound, which is why you notice my mind got a bit off topic and quickly ended the Freestyle because they were biting my legs up pretty bad. But it's just documenting thoughts and events in real time.
and thus "Know you well" was born.
I really hope this backstory wasn't super depressing haha. I know my health is serious and it's a super heavy topic and I don't like burdening anyone outside of the small circle that knows what's going on with me. The last thing I want when people think of me, is to think about my bad health, or have sympathy or pity or feel bad. I hope my lighthearted attitude and glass half full mentality and my productivity will overshadow any of the health stuff. It was just too deeply rooted into this backstory for me to avoid. Like the blockchain, I'm basically default set to full transparency.
Keep reading all these backstories, and eventually even you may "Know me well" ;)
Thank you for taking time to read the backstory and for listening.
If you want access to all 5 seasons of Daily Rambles, no need to collect anything, just reach out and ask.
P.S. I know Jibberish is spelled Gibberish but I'm the world shaper here and this world doesn't follow grammar guidelines haha.
PeacePeace.
- Dutch
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