I wanted to talk about angst. Two specific scenes inspired this record. One was in Home Alone 2 when Kevin is walking around New York at night for the first time and a homeless man walks past him cursing furiously under his breathe to himself. That exists here and it’s scary, and sad at the same time. The other was the hateful-to-every-race rant Edward Norton gives himself in the bathroom mirror in 25th Hour. That’s where I went lyrically. As far as the feeling, what it took to get to this place, that’s my father and some of the ills he’s described to me. Life beats you down. The shit kicks you in the shins and sometimes you wake up with a wife taking you to court, your kids thinking you’re a piece of shit, your landlord banging on your door, and shitty rap music playing out of someones car outside your window. This record is about getting to a point you dread your existence and how that might feel. It’s Old Man Angst and for some reason it needed to come out of me. – T.Shirt
Jay Electronica said it best when he wrote, “don’t underestimate the power of Twitter”. What’s funny is that it was Jay who helped T.Shirt and Derek Pike come together, even going as far as making sure Derek stay true to his promise to do a video for the upcoming NYC rapper. One night about a year ago, Derek held a contest on Twitter, the person to help him get over 6,000 followers (he was at 5,900 at the time) by the midnight deadline would get a free music video, the only catch was Derek got to pick the song and come up with the video’s concept. “It was a risk, essentially anyone could have won, luckily it happened to be a talented artist.” says Pike. “Twitter has helped me out so much with my own career, its only right I help out someone else through this same medium. Look out for another contest coming soon.” It took some time but the guys wanted to do something different and push things forward a little bit.
Originally found on Shirt’s I Should Just Chill EP, available here.
