Chris DeLine

Approach Influenza as a series which serves to help give insight as to where music is born; these are the thoughts, influences and the inspirations directly from the mind of the artists. Here in the second episode featuring Chicago’s Alltruisms the emcee remarks on the rush of excitement he gets when completing a solid rhyme; in this case that featured on “Blindfolded.” Including also that this rush can be pure on its own without adding any external hype, Alltruisms concludes that by keeping the scope of any external contributors to within his own crew he can define the success of the track by the rhymes alone.

On “Blindfolded”:

Verbal Kent got that beat from J-Zone, along with the two other J-Zone beats that were used on the Giraffe Nuts album “Eat Them”. J-Zone’s an underground legend who’s made a lot of great music, so I’m psyched to have a beat of his on my album. The title comes from the line that sums it all up to me, “I do Sudoku’s blindfolded.” After that, I don’t really give a fuck about some mopey dude with no stage presence on Leno talking about he can ride his bike with no handlebars…I wrote the first verse in one sitting, which is somewhat rare for me. The verse was actually written to a different, faster beat, so it was great to discover that it would work for this beat too. I knew I had something special as soon as I came up with “Set it off like my alarm clock in the morning / decided today that I’m not going / need a totally new career, lead the new holy Eucharist.” By then I had that rush, the excitement of creating something from thin air that’s the whole reason we, me at least, ever started writing raps, playing music, taking photos, writing books, whatever it is we do.

I knew right away the track needed a scratch chorus. Scott Evil laced it nicely, Scott also did the cuts on “OH” and “Nutcamp” on the album. This is the most “traditional,” bragging/battle rap song on the album, and even though some listeners might find it less “different” or “original” than “OH” or “Nine Digit Number,” it means just as much to me. That said, I wasn’t interested in doing any solo battle rap tracks on Culsterbombs. I’ve thus far limited it to collaborations and tracks on the Giraffe Nuts and Unhappyest albums. We considered getting a “name” guest rapper for the 3rd verse, but decided it wasn’t necessary, and rapped eight bars each for it instead, my eight was the end half of a sixteen I had stockpiled, and that was it, “Sisyphus successfully just lifted his boulder over the mountain.” I’m sure I’ll collaborate with non-crew rappers at some point, but I kept the guest appearances in house for my album, and I don’t think it’s missing anything for lack of a name guest. – Alltruisms

[This post was first published by Culture Bully.]