- Me saying that I matter shouldn't make
you say you matter.
Me saying that it's my birthday shouldn't make
you say well, your birthday is a week from now.
Me saying I'm hurt shouldn't make you say well
I was hurt a month ago.
Why is it that you know people saying their lives matter
means that your lives don't?
Saying black lives matter isn't an attack on you.
The song isn't attacking white people, you know.
The song isn't attacking black people.
The song is trying to let people know
that we need to come together
and that whatever it is we're trying
to accomplish takes everybody, every race,
every gender, every sexuality, just everything.
I just felt compelled to use my platform
to make something that I felt everyone could sort
of agree with what was being said you know.
Like I chose from the words, to the visual
to even just the clips that were added inside
of the music video.
I tried to make a song that I felt was unifying
to all people, all colors, all races.
So yeah just the current events going on
in the world inspired it.
2020 is really a change I think in history.
I think you know with the pandemic,
this whole movement that's going on
for Black Lives Matter and social injustices
you know along with the current presidential election.
You know there's so many different factors, you know.
Things that are being like outed like different,
I hate talking about conspiracy,
but different things that are like coming out.
You know I just think this is really a shift
in humanity, this 2020 year.
So I just remember saying to myself man,
this shit is a fucking revolution dog.
Shit's going crazy.
And then I went on Google.
I looked up acronyms for riot.
And then I saw Revolution In Our Time
and I was just like yes!
You know what I mean like this shit's gonna fit perfectly.
So that ended up being the first line
and yeah I thought it was pretty dope.
That's probably one of my favorite lines ever.
I've seen a lot of people saying you know
it's not enough to be not racist,
you have to be anti-racist.
To not say anything is now a part of the problem.
You know you can no longer, it's not enough
to just watch from the sidelines
and be like aw, that's cool, that like cool
it's happening over there, but it's not happening
to me so like screw it.
If you're not even with the movement
let it be known so people can at least know where you stand.
Everyone seen the most public
you know police brutality cases, you know,
Sandra Bland, George Floyd, Eric Garner
and there's a whole bunch of more names.
The George Floyd case, that was just,
that was hard to watch.
You know what I mean?
Just to have his knee on his neck like that,
for what I think it was like eight minutes.
The whole time I was thinking like yo,
why don't they just put him in the car.
No one is born racist, you know what I mean.
Racism is not a gender.
It's not a sexuality.
It's not a physical attribute.
You know it's a thought process.
You come out the womb and you know depending
on where you're born you know.
Maybe your community is predominately white.
You've never seen a black person before.
Maybe your community is predominately black
and you've never seen a white person before.
You go to church.
You always see a white Jesus.
There's so many different things that are you know
programmed into your brain as a child
with the media that I just think it makes you see color.
The country was built off the hard work
of those people.
So the country wouldn't be where it's at
if all that didn't happen.
We can't go back on that time.
But now it's time to recognize what happened,
recognize the effects that it's had on the people
that are still going on
and understanding that.
What inspired that was just it was my hope for change.
A lot of the words in this song are me hoping.
Let's come together,
cops, citizens and in-between is like me like trying
to urge people to come together.
It's not necessarily because of something I saw.
That's my wish for the world.
There's a bunch of people who just will pull
up an MLK quote and be like this shouldn't be happening.
Look what MLK said.
And he was
You know what I mean and then the people come back,
well like, well you guys offed MLK too.
I was first going to a school in St. Brigid.
The big thing at St. Brigid Catholic School
it was in downtown Ottawa was racing.
So at recess everyone would race
and I was always the fastest guy.
I ended up moving from like downtown Ottawa
to like more of a suburban area out in Orleans.
So now I get to this school called St. Clare
and for the first time there was someone
who was just like, just as fast as me.
And he was a white kid.
And it started off as a rivalry initially,
but that rivalry then turned into like best friends.
But then once we got into high school,
there became like this like tension pull.
Sometimes I'll get this feeling and I've heard it before.
Like I'll be with like some of these white people I know
and I can just like know like when they get mad
at me in their head they're calling me the N word.
I just remember there one argument with like
that group of friends and like
where they just said it out loud.
There were just like fuck it, boom
and it just like dropped.
And it was just like that confirmation
of just like wow this tension that I felt was there
was there the whole time.
Me and him just ended up going like our separate ways
and as we got older in high school eventually
we just estranged.
We were just like,
like you know in the hall, you know what I mean.
It was like yo, you.
It was like that person you were best friends with
when you were like fourth, fifth, sixth grade,
it just like constantly got pulled, pulled,
pulled, pulled, pulled.
I decided to end it with karma
because I just think it's like an unwritten rule
in the world.
Also, I mean listen, I don't like the word karma to me
to be honest.
Good things happen to good people.
Bad things happen to good people.
Good things happen to bad people
and bad things happen to bad people period.
The karma is that you know if we go harder than now
we can secure a safer and better world
for our future children.
So that's what the karma in my head
when I was writing it was for.
I saw a funny caption too.
It was this girl I know.
She posted happy birthday to me.
It's not my birthday, but all birthdays matter.
(laughs) I was just like, yo!