The series is all the tracks that I never recorded for one reason or another. Some of them I just didn't feel were good enough to go on an album and others were just forgotten about or incomplete. Actually a lot of the material comes from verses I wrote to record on other people's tracks but they never got around to recording it or either we did and it was just unreleased.
So being that this material was cut, why do you feel it's god enough to go on an album now?
A lot of what makes a song hot is the chorus and the beat. Basically if I write something, it's going to be good enough to be released and heard by the public, granted some of my old rhymes do not fit this description, most of my material from 2001 and on does fit that criteria. So all it really took was reworking some of the lyrics, finding a hot beat and giving it a good chorus. I guess really what it is, is a lot of songs with hidden potential, I just had to bring it out of 'em.
Now there quite a few feature tracks on here where there are guest vocalists, are these their original verses or re-recorded ones like yours?
All of their verses are their original ones, just put on a different beat and in some cases on their original instrumental. Who Can We Trust, I Want U, Lost Bodies, um, Live Playa, they are all on their original instrumentals, I just added a part or changed my existing part. The original verse that I spit on Who Can We Trust with Maega was awful, as was his verse so I cut both of 'em and just kept the chorus and some adlib parts from Maega. We had never finished the track so it was never even heard before. I had all these verses of theirs laying around, old master copies, so I figured I'd put them to use.
Okay so the series started as a three parter, In Biblical Times and The Age Of The Prophet and a third one which would consist of the forgotten and usused songs that you are doing right now. Now it has become six albums?
Haha, that's right. The first two were all written and I was in the process of recording, both were going to be double albums. But I kept finding more shit. It got to a point where I had over 40 songs for each of the two albums and there was no way in hell I could fit 'em. So I decided to just break the albums down and make six regular length LPs.
And by regular length you mean Proph regular length where each one is like as close to full as it can be.
Well of course, that's the only way I do it. They actually might be a little bit shorter, right now each of them is 15 tracks, well parts 5 and 6 are actually only 11 right now so I have to find some more to fill those out. Wit hthe other 4, I thought I had all of the tracks I had but I keep finding more verses here and there, and rhyme books I completely forgot about so they will all most likely end up being longer than the intended 15 songs.
So how are these albums broken down, like how do you decide what goes where?
That's acutally pretty easy in theory, I just put them together by when they were written. Anything befroe 2001 is "Future Imperfect", Early 2001 is "In Biblical Times", summer of 2001 is "Fate Is Sealed", 2002 is "The Age Of The Prophet" and then the last two are untitled as of yet but are broken into early 2003 and late 2003. The only one that was actually intended to be an album was "Fate Is Sealed", that was actually all one time period for an album that was to be called "Fated Return". I never recorded it, just a few random songs here and there before the project was aborted, now I'm trying to put it all back together. So that album doesn't have very many guest appearances on it, most of those songs were completely written with the intent to be recorded as solo tracks. Now some of them are kind of tricky cause with three verses, they could have all been written at different times, sometimes even going a year or more in between verses because they were not intended to go together, they just worked out that way. In that case I just kind of put the song where it's needed, if one album doesn't have many of that type of track, it'll go there. Mostly I try to keep it strictly by the date it was written though.
After these six Days Of A Knight albums, will you be doing anymore from the material you are writing now or will those be placed on albums right away to bring the series to an end?
Honestly I'd like to have them all placed on albums and put an end to The Days series but realistically there wil be a few more. I don't think there'll be anymore two albums from one year though. There may still be a 2004/2005/2006 one, all one album.
Since you mention that, why does there see mto be so much from 2001 and 2003?
Ya know, I don't know. I guess I just had A LOT to say. 2001 is mostly because of the unrecorded Fated Return album I suppose. That year I had released The Original Kingdom, The Sands Od Time and Rumorz of War so it was a busy year. 2003 I just had a lot of shit I had to get off my chest. Most of the 2002 album was actually for an Infantry album that we never did but I wrote tons of verses for it so that's where that one came from really.
Last question, is it easier to do an album this way?
Um, in the sence that I don't have to write it cause it's already written, but it's hard to find a beat to match the song properly and rework it in a way to make it a stand out track rather than just some forgotten filler material.