I had been in my birth country of Honduras at the time of my 2 previous solo rap releases, in 2017 for Musical Alchemy and in 2019 for Expanding our Horizons, and during the time I was there I got the chance to work on some music that didn’t really fit the feel of either one of those two tapes. The beats were more intense than chill, the lyrics more controversial. These odd tracks became the base for what would become the album “Rebel Spirit.” Some of the first tracks I made for this album were “Mass Mental Manipulation” and the first track “Rebel from the Start”, which I produced the beat for, along with the remix of the track “Rebel Spirit” from the Musical Alchemy mixtape. Since I couldn’t acquire the rights for the initial “Rebel Spirit” beat and I really liked my lyrics and flow on there I decided to make my own beat for it so I could fully release it on my first album on streaming platforms. Being in another country really inspired me to make music, both lyrics and beats. It provided me with a different perspective on life, which travelling always does. I had a simpler life in a way, with more time to dedicate to music, and more privacy to record music uninterrupted as well. I had taken my mic and laptop to Honduras, along with the mic stand. In those days it was easier to move my setup anywhere in the world, since I was still recording on a USB mic and laptop, and had no notion of what an audio interface even was. I was also making beats using only a mouse and keyboard on FL Studio. Regardless of all that, I returned to Canada 5 years later, at the start of 2022, with a good amount of work done for the album, then finished up the rest of the tracks and all the editing, mixing, etc. I also re-recorded some of the tracks with my new XLR mic and audio interface. I had been learning a lot about setting up a studio, something which has always been a dream for me but I just never took seriously, and when I got back to Canada I knew it was time to level up, including the way I made my music. Maybe I never took the studio idea too seriously because I never thought I had the money for it, but now I know that setting up a decent home studio is a lot more affordable than I had originally imagined. You always see studios full of equipment, but you don’t realize that one doesn’t need all of that to make music, only some basic things. I also picked up a great 61-key MIDI keyboard which I use both on FL and on my MPC to get melodies down in a much quicker way, which is also a lot more fun and hands-on than clicking on a mouse. In a way, although this is a kind of debut album for me, being the first I’ve released on streaming platforms, it also marks the end of some things. For one thing, this album only has three tracks that I produced, but on future records I plan to focus on all or most of the production myself. I’ve been making beats for a decade, but only recently do I feel more comfortable using my own productions to rap my lyrics over. These past few years have been instrumental, hah, in me getting into the craft of making beats, both sampled and from scratch. I had been making beats only on FL Studio since the beginning, but when I got into the MPC workflow I started to really see the beauty in crafting a beat, like a piece of art much like a full song, and now with a newfound appreciation for music production I can enjoy making beats on any platform, and I’m excited to see how I can craft the sound of my music more deliberately. As previously mentioned, this album is recorded only semi-professionally, with the other half recorded on my old setup, my USB mic which I had been using since I made my first song ever more than a decade ago. Moving forward everything will be recorded the proper way, and I’ve been learning lots about mixing, mastering, production, and just audio in general. None of this is to say that this album is lacking in quality. As I mentioned, some of these tracks were in the works for years, since 2017 when I first got to Honduras, and they’ve undergone many changes to get them to their current state, ready for release. I really put a lot of time and effort into the songs on this album, as well as a lot of thought into the lyrics, so I appreciate any and all of you who are willing to give it a listen, as well as to all of you reading this. This album, true to its name, focuses on various aspects of life from a rebel perspective, from a perspective that I feel is not always noticed, or is actually actively ignored due to a widespread, sometimes unconscious, fear of facing reality, of accepting positive change.
I hope you enjoy it! You can listen to the album on Spotify, and if you’d like to support me you can purchase the album on Bandcamp. Much love fam.