I went through several traumatic experiences as a child and as a adolescent and I realized
I'm thankful that every day I get to breathe and be able to do what I do.
"Damn.
I could be dead right now.
I could be still in the hood.
I could be doing all types of stuff.
I could be in jail."
But it's the fact that I took those and made it into my own personal experiences, so the
sky really is the limit because I ain't being limited from what happened to me.
Actually moving forward.
You wanna know the truth, I mean the truth truth?
This is how it went down.
The original verse and the original beat ... I liked the hook, but I didn't like my verse
and I didn't like the original beat, so I was like, "Nah."
I gotta come harder than that.
And then I left.
I went to Six Flags because I was like, "I just got away and have fun that whole day."
After we came from Six Flags, I went back into the studio.
It was like, "Hey.
Yo.
You should listen to the new version."
I was like, "Okay.
Lemme hear it."
Me and Twelve'len been making music together for years.
And GoldLink, me and him used to do shows together back when we was real, real underground.
My favorite part about "Black Balloons" is the hook and the instrumentation 'cause it
fit the whole vibe is like ... basically the instruments gave the hook life because if
you had different instruments and it sounded dark it wouldn't be the same, but they coincide
together.
It was like a hand in a glove
I was thinking of colors.
And I was thinking about the album cover at the same time because I wanted it to be three
different colors which you have now.
"Hot pink, Valentine red."
It's like Valentine's Day colors.
The black balloons represents all that pain and aggression and all that darkness into
this one balloon and it's black.
It's black for a reason because that's the darkness.
And then when it pops, it all goes away.
The paper plane represents the message because if you listen to track one, I was talking
about, "Paper planes being thrown on the side of the lawn that said, 'Welcome to the darker
side of Taboo.'"
Basically, it's like me writing this letter.
It's like a message back and forth between me and Taboo.
If you watch the movie It.
It starts of nice, a little boy.
And then, next thing you know, some bullshit happens, meet a clown.
Get his arm ripped off, dies.
Boom.
End of the fucking story.
But that's what I felt when I was writing that ... writing a verse.
'Cause I related It because the clown face and everything that was going on in Cloud
Cobain, and I wanted to fit along those lines and that concept to make it cohesive
I was very timid.
I was very sad when I was creating this album and I was trying to find my happiness.
we wasn't able to make this song until I was actually in a good place.
I use all that.
I use all the traumatic experiences.
Everything and everything I was feeling and wrote this whole album.
I have a lot of songs that I like from him.
I like Today is a Good Day.
You Can Do It, put your back into it!
I like that shit!
I like ain't nothing to it, Gansta Rap Made Me Do It.
I'm a fan of Ice Cube but I felt like he was his angriest when he had the Jheri curl.
When I'm off the deep end and I'm thinking like, "Man, this is all bullshit.
I don't wanna be here no more.
Fuck all this shit.
Life is overrated.
Why am I living in the first place?"
It makes you think about those things, 'cause you think you did everything in your life
already, but truthfully, you barely touched the surface, 'cause there's a million things,
maybe a billion things out in life that you could do that you haven't tried yet that will
still keep you alive and keep it exciting for you to stay alive, right?
I let it all sink to a thousand depths," is all deep.
It's all digging deep, it's like going to that deep part, that trench that's in your
soul, like, "Where are you right now?"
And how can you make that change.
And it could be a good change or it could be a bad change.