"Call Out"

The fifth track in the series is definitely the most in your face and confrontational. Check it out:

How did this come to exist?

This was a case of a concept based on a mood, which is not unusual for me. Some of my most spontaneous, and ultimately, favorite tracks have come together in response to some experience, often from a confrontation. In this case, I was an observer watching some back-and-forth Facebook commenting between O.G. bboys and some of the younger champions regarding accusations of biting.

Omen’s public post that hosted the debate. Click to see the video and read the exchanges.

Without getting into the specifics, and with my brutal paraphrasing as I understood the convo, the younger heads felt that it was unfair to call them out for biting in front of the audience, and they should have taken it up privately.

The older heads’ position was essentially “this is Hip-Hop, F your feelings. If you bite, you’ll get called out. You can be influenced without biting by spinning what you learn into your own style.” Of course, the players in the debate have their own history and relationships with each other to consider.

Independent of that debate, the music came together quickly, with sharp, break-ready drums, a deep but simple piano track, and heavy horns with a jutting, deeply reverbed brass section hitting through each bar of the verses.

My instruments when I’m trying to record in loop mode.

The intro and interludes give a quick breather between verses, with the scratch dropping in to remind you that “this is a call out!”

The scratch comes from a verse for a forthcoming track (keep an ear out for it soon!), depicting a Hip-Hop jam in the city:

Boom. Bap. Beats and bass,
alleyway echo outside the place,
rounds go down in the battle space,
been called out, back on the case.

The name was obvious from the content, and the artwork aimed for an anime-style silhouette of a call out in action, with the caller-outer in the foreground and the thrilled audience in the back.

The animated version built on the anime thought:

It was extra dope to see The Diss in Las Vegas jamming to “Call Out” soon after the drop on IG. 

Stay tuned to my Soundcloud and Bandcamp pages for new tracks in this series, mixtapes, and whatever else happens. Check out more “Behind the Beats” here.