Hi all and thank you for the replies!
If you wanna know the whole story behind it... You probably will have a plesent read. (this is a copy from a very famous music forum)
Well, well, well… Where do you start when you have to write about one of the biggest things you will ever do in your life? I guess I will start from the beginning.
You all know that I have been drowned in this project for almost 3 years now. It started off as a dream, a vision, an idea, a fantasy… And the strive was to reach that dream. Cause I knew deep down inside that I could do it. I had the motivation and passion, and that was what it took. Especially after my athlete career ended in 2008, I had time to do this. I move my passion from the sports, over to this project. And as time passed by, I came closer and closer to the big dream, by fulfilling small dreams one by one, which was working on the project, meeting the artists… and so on.
I think it was a day in late 2008, when I was sitting with my plaster (gips) on my leg, and could hardly move, and had to sit on front of the computer, day in and day out. I was zapping on a couple of beats that Drastic made for the project, and I just had one beat playing. And suddenly, out of the blue, I started to imagine lyrics to a rap verse to that beat. I mean, I had written the lyrics to the hooks of “Atmosphere” and “Live & Survive”, so why not try to write down a rap verse? And that period of time, my head was full of many things. It was a lot of changes going on in my life, and one of the changes, was that I had broke-up with my at that time girl, and we were like in no-man’s-land, going back and forth of being together, or just being friends with benefits, or just friends. It was a hard time. Very hard. And she also was away at that time, in another country, so I was thinking about her a lot. So I started to write exactly how I felt… “Sitting by my own here in this lonely room, I can feel the smell of your so nice perfume…”. And after that I started to imagine the rap, and since I have been listening to music so many years, and c’mon who doesn’t rap to the songs you play in high volume? So I started to rap… And I thought “hey, this sounds cool, I should get a mic”. So just for fun, I took my Skype headset and opened the Windows recorder... And recorded the verse. I did as Drastic and DMO told me, to record punch lines and all. And with the final result, I was like… “hey, it doesn’t sound bad at all”. So I re-recorded the verse again, and I came into it more and more, and got more excited about it, and I really was feeling it, especially that the verse was from my life. I was telling people about my life. So when I recorded the verse, I remember I send it to for example Staz, and he was like “dude, you sure you didn’t rap before?”. And also Malik from The Outhere Brothers and Dean aka Dirty-D, told me that I should definitely record this in a studio. I just thought it was a fun thing, and never really thought about it more then.
So, there came a time when I was in the MSP studio, and I think it was my 1st visit down in Bamberg, in May 2009, and we were sitting there together with Drastic and DMO and we had met so many artists those days, so we were just sitting and brainstorming. And I learned so much from the guys, just to sit there and see how they work, see how the artists recorded, and how it all was done. So I then told the guys about that verse I wrote… And I said “man, it would be so cool to have it in a studio quality”. And the guys said “Hey, the booth is free, and we have time today… Go in and spit.” I was like… “really? Cool, yeah let me try”. And so I did… I wrote down the verse again on paper, since I had it very clear in my head, and went into the booth, and got instructed by Drastic and DMO in the headphones… And 40 minutes later, the verse was done. Then, Drastic told me that he didn’t like that beat that much, and he wanted to make a totally new one, cause he had some ideas. And so me and DMO went to Burger King to grab some food, which took like 40 minutes, and when we came back, Drastic played us what he did in the studio, with the beat, and when he put my voice on there and fixed everything. When he put that in the big speakers in the studio, I almost dropped everything I had in my hands… It sounded amazing. Was that really me??? No way man, you did something with the voice, I said. He said he didn’t, that he just cleared it, and that I actually had a lot of bass in my voice, which makes it a good rap voice. I was so amazed. I got that little part on a cd, and I was playing that a lot of times. After I recorded that, I called Staz and told him that I wanted to have him on the song, and if he could record in super high quality, so we can have a top notch quality song. And I thought we could have Calvin on the hook, and that I could have my own song, just for fun. And you know how Staz is. When he’s in the mood, he does something in 2 days. He already knew what the story of the song was about, and he also knew the situation I was in, so he didn’t need much time to find out what to rap about. And 2 days later I got his verse. We liked it very much, and I couldn’t wait until Dras would make a song out of it. Then it was time to go home to Sweden. After a few days, I get an e-mail from Dras, telling me that he worked on my song, and he totally begun from zero. And when he send me the file, the full length beat, with only my 1st verse, I couldn’t believe what I heard. He made something so simple, to a masterpiece… To such a wonderful sound. The piano, the harp… ahh… This was such an amazing euro-rap song! I listened to it over and over again, and I even forgot that it was me rapping on there. I also send it to Staz, and he told me he was absolutely blown away. He just couldn’t believe what have turned out, from something that was supposed to be just for fun. I remember I listened to the song with only me and Staz on it, thousand times per day. I didn’t know what the title would be, but I knew it would be something about “love”. And having that wonderful beat, and me and Staz on such high production recordings, I also decided that the song would feature on the project. It was just to good to not put it in there. As time passed by, I went down to Germany a 2nd time, in June 2009, this time for more than two weeks. We recorded with a lot of artists, and one day, Mike Dalien was standing in the booth. The main purpose to get him there, was to record “Don’t Cty”. But when we were done, we had some time over, and we sat there, me and Mike, and I asked Drastic to play him the song with me and Staz on. Just for fun. And Mike really liked it. So, I just popped the question: “Mike, would you do me the honour of singing the hook on this song?”. And his answer was like music to my hears: “Yeah, why not? It’s a great song. Im really feeling the beat and also the theme”. So I gave him a pen and a paper, and we all left the studio, leaving Mike in there, with only the hook part of the beat, repeating, so he could come up with a hook. 20 mins later, the door opens and Mike goes “guys, I think I have something here”. So he sand that to us live… And we just stood there.. me, Drastic and DMO… like statues. Our jaws dropped to the ground… We went like “please man, just get in the booth and record what you just sang”. And so he did… When he was singing in the booth, and I was sitting on the other side with the guys, I realized that I’m gonna do a song with one of my childhood idols… When that thought hit me, I was totally overwhelmed. The way he sang it, with such passion and pain… Oh..it was undescribable. When Drastic later on worked on Mikes voice, and put together me, Staz and Mike, it was something so amazing, that tears from my eyes dropped. What a song we just did. And the craziest thing was, that I was on it! Me…. Myself… I…. Damn, am I dreaming again?
So, time went by, and I got back to Sweden, and the plan was to have another rapper on the last verse. I thought the song deserved a last verse. I went through some possible candidats for a extended 3rd verse, but then something happened in my life. My relationship with my girl ended totally. I was so hurt badly… In a worse way… And the hardest day, when there was no light in the tunnel… I played the song. And I cried to it… And when the third verse should start, when the melody played.. I just thought to my self… “Why do we love, and why do we trust? Why is everything often based on lust?...” And I continued to write. I wrote down that 3rd verse in 15 minutes. It was straight from the heart. I had to tell that story… This was my story… My life… So when the 1st verse was about being insecure about the future, the 3rd verse was the ending of everything. And when I ended the verse with “…because it’s the thing, the thing called love”, then I knew I had to call the song “The Thing Called Love”. And I was going to Germany again a week after that, and I told the guys that I was going to do the 3rd verse myself, cause I had to finish my story. And so I did. A week later, the song was done.
