A post metal (?) cover of the Dr Dre song 'Forgot About Dre'
Scrap Metal
I upload music to under the alias 'Extar'. The music is primarily heavy metal, but I like trying my hand at other things now and again. I record my music in my bedroom with an old PC and a bunch of sub-standard equipment.
Story behind the song
I've been messing around with the bass part to this for ages, throwing it into band practices, riffing on it for eighteen hours at home. It had also been on the cards as a candidate for recording for quite a while too. So, seeing as it's half term I decided to spend a day recording. This was the third song recorded in the day, and the only one finished and in a state worthy of putting up on here. If you know about the other recordings, and know where to find them, well done.
The song has a strong post metal sound to it, again, this was mostly deliberate. Maybe it's a direction I'm going in. I've talked about post metal before and my thoughts largely haven't changed. I have however got a couple of Isis single/EP things now though, and they do seem to be very good, they seem more concerned with making actual songs than other post metal bands. It's fun to record post metal, I'll say that much.
The only bits from the original song that I bothered to copy/use/learn were the bass part, one of the guitar riffs, and the lyrics. The rest of it all kind of fell together, I was particularly pleased with how the intro came out, considering it's just expanded from the two chords of the guitar riff.
The vocals were the most difficult part to nail down. From the very start, rapping was out of the question, ideally I'd have done some kind of drawn-out vocals like what Isis do. However, I can't do that for sh** . I had the idea of doing a Tool and whispering the verse and then the spoken-style vocals came along naturally after this.
For the lyrics, I would have to cut them down considerably from the original, lest I start singing very quickly and drift closer to rapping. Slow delivery was the way to go, I tried to pick the most metal-sounding parts from the song. I think what I ended up with could sound like a metal song in its own right, there's some very bleak imagery in there, 'Everybody wants to come to me like it's some disease, But you want get a crumb from me.'
I found out after I'd recorded most of the song that the main bass riff was 'sampled' originally from a No Doubt song called 'The Climb'. I checked out the No Doubt song and it's pretty good, fortunately I didn't come full circle in any way and end up with something sounding like a No Doubt cover.
I wanted to put in a few synth parts, particularly a string part akin to the distinctive string part in the original. However, by the time I'd finished off the vocals, I wanted to mix it and get it over with. Plus, it might just have been unnecessary and just muddied the waters.
The sample is from The Wire, specifically season 3 episode 6, Homecoming. Amazing, huh?
I was pleased by the fact that without the need for excessive padding the song clocked in at over seven minutes and the vocals only came in after two minutes.
Lyrics
If it was up to me,
You would stop coming up to me,
With your hands out looking up to me,
Like you want something free,
When my last CD was out you wasn't bumping me,
But now I've got this company,
Everybody wants to come to me like it's some disease,
But you want get a crumb from me.
Nowadays everybody wants to talk,
Like they've got something to say,
But nothing comes out when they move their lips,
Just a bunch of gibberish.
Nowadays everybody wants to talk,
Like they've got something to say,
But nothing comes out when they move their lips,
Motherf*** ers act,
Like they forgot about Dre.
This is the millennium of Aftermath,
There ain't gonna be nothing after that,
So give me one more platinum plaque and f*** rap,
You can have it back,
So where's all the mad rappers at,
It's like a jungle in this habitat,
But all you savage know that I was strapped with gats,
When you were cuddled with a Cabbage Patch.
