I couldnt find this on youtube, but if you bought the cd its track 16. with all the complaining from the last song (haha) this is our thank you to everyone that rocks with us. right now we’re still in your “back pocket” but no matter what happens from this point on, just remember who was up on us early. I know that feeling because im that kind of fan myself (lol)

it feels good to see people get even more excited than I am over our video being on tv or on the radio or whatever. when we say it means a lot to us, it really does and this song was our way to show that appreciation to the friends, fam, and fans. ilyas had another verse but he changed it for comic relief (…..*looks at camera*…..) and dons verse hits close to home as he speaks on his deceased cousin that is responsible for his early love of hip hop, as well as his grandmom and dad that passed on before this album could release commercially.

on a lighter note, yes, I chopped the heck out of this beat. go listen to the sample mix. *jumps back, kisses myself, and says pause*

…only to get my butt kicked on the NEXT bonus joint! (if you got the album from itunes)

S1 (AND his son) makes dope ass beats. when he asked us to be on his last album it was a no brainer, and in return we got our hands on this monster of a song. (we need to perfom this…we should perform this song yall!) its not technically apart of Brooklynati but itunes wanted more and we had just recorded this. the songs pretty self explanatory, but I deviated from the subject because I was a little heartbroken at the time (if you are a woman, say aww right now or I just wasted a confession. lol)

and once again Ragen is awesome and dreamy and has the hookup to the donuts and dr dre stickers. we always bother her for background vocals but thats going to change in the future if she allows it.

ok TM fans…ill see yall in 2011 for TM3.

donwill/vonpea/ilyas fans, ill see yall soon.

Jessie on the keys, Kay on the intro/first verse, Chop on the chorus.

I started this track in 2007, inspired by Kanye’s “I wonder”. I LOVED how the male vocal was used for melody in that song and I was already a fan of the song used in “we’re fly” so I tried it. Nothings wrong with inspiration of course, but I wasnt trying to make something that sounded like “I wonder”. Also, I knew that I wanted a real version of “rough u up” on this album, meaning a song with that same double time bounce but a real effort instead of a joke song.

What people may not notice is that every geographic…quadrant? (lol…sigh) of American hip hop is represented in this song. Kay was the south, Ilyas was the midwest, I was the east coast, and Donwill was the west coast with the too short impression/tribute.

When we went to Jessie’s studio to work on the piano parts he already had exactly what I wanted. We walked through the door and it was playing on loop. Jessie was like “so I was just messing with this based on what you asked for but lets do exactly what you wanted…” We just sat there like “um…thats exactly what its supposed to sound like!” with big dumb smiles, happy that it was done so easily.

I love this song and how it came together. As a fan of our music it makes me excited to see where we go on the next album.

this song was for the honey dips. in gotham.

im not linking the video to this one because theres a bunch of remixes when i do a search for the OG.

Donwill is the one that put this all together, he had the full idea for what we should rap about and to have Carlitta on the song. I think she may have left a comment on our myspace page saying she liked our music, and we knew her from Little Brother’s songs so then we ended up doing this joint.

Now the problem with talking about this song is, its impossible to do without giving out all my business so hmm…the first verse is supposed to be about a “player” and the second about a person that knows they’re being played, with the 3rd being about a person expressing their love for their child. the original name of the song was “unconditional love” because the sample in the hook is saying “i love you no matter what you do”. That is the point of each verse, the player is loved no matter what hes doing, the person being played is doing the loving, and a parent’s unconditional love for their children. this song reminds me of “i got a love” by pete rock and cl, which is funny because thats my least favorite song on the main ingredient.

not much of a story behind this one, but if theres anything to gain from this entry, its that Carlitta Durand is really dope. if you’re not up on her music you can check some of it out here.

lets start from the TOP:

i go to a beat society showcase at the (now closed) knitting factory in manhattan in 2007. or maybe it was 2006. i dont even fully remember the show but i remember not knowing who exile was. he was mad entertaining at the showcase, this was before he was doing the live beats but he had props and just was really animated while his beats were playing. i also remember thinking his sound was similar to the mobb deep “pearly gates” beat, and then i found out that was in fact him! this is important because if id not gone to that beat society “morgan blu” may not have happened. it was the first step in the chain of events!

step 2: my homeboy Dee asked me if i wanted to check out this album by blu and exile. he didnt say i needed to hear it, i dont even remember him saying it was dope or not! but since id seen exile last week i wanted to hear more beats…wait…it WAS 2006…anyway i turn it on thinking im about to just zone to the beats and thats when blu came through and kicked me in the face!

so somewhere from that point it got passed around to everyone in my circle and i did my bootleg campaigning for the album when it came out. so much that one day out of nowhere blu had contacted me just to say thanks. ilyas had spoken to him and they decided on doing a song…ok here is the funny part:

on the bridge ep we have a song called filthier interlude aka “place” and the beat goes “place……place……place….place…..” repetitively over and over and over and over and…

when i made that beat i had also made one that went “blue…..blue….blue……” over and over and over again. i hadnt heard of blu yet, (both the “place” and “blue” beat were old beats from years ago) it was a coincidence because i liked the guitar and i was more about looping that part. they were brother and sister beats, in a way. when ilyas asked for a beat for this song i went searching for this “blue….blue….blue…” beat id made years ago, but to have a beat saying “blue” for 4 minutes wasnt going to fly, thats too much of a blu commercial! haha…plus it looping for one bar was boring. so i turned it into more of a full track so we all could go in over it.

next step was sending it to blu and getting it back. he’d sent it back to me in a month or two but then his hard drive crashed so there was no accapella. for the next…few months? we tried to get it redone but i was more hoping the old hard drive would start working (hey aeon, deja vu! hard drive failure is the worst).

long story short it never got redone but blu and john (manager) both apologized about it, and its nothing but love! im actually happy we got to keep the original take. i had sent him the wrong demo of the beat with 16 bars open for him and 16 bars open for ilyas, with donwill’s rough verse and a verse i recorded but didnt like (id written it on the A train in a rush…ha) and he ended up rapping to the full 32 bars (lol). once we heard that the new hurdle became “do we put this demo on the album?” “ilyas isnt on it and hes the one that put the collaboration together!” “von doesnt even like his verse!”

it looked like a disaster for a second, but in the end we didnt care so we mixed his demo with the real version of the song. i got to write a verse i actually liked (my verse was supposed to be inspired by DOOM but you probably dont hear it. the 3rd person talk more than anything) and il & don wanted to do longer verses to match the legnth of blu’s verse. ilyas never wants to perform his verse though (OOOOH I THREW HIM UNDER THE BUS! lol just joking)

exile was supposed to produce a song on the album too, and we had the beat, but it didnt seem to fit with  the stuff we had so we didnt end up recording to it. i guess i have said all there is to say about this song at this point. Thanks to john kim and blu for going through the months of harassment from us (haha) and know that the album would not have been complete without you. the same goes for every artist (and that artists’ team) that contributed to this album. it really means a lot to us.

p.s. “she got on the pill after 23 jimmys cause i got enough son’s/sun’s and they all want a penny” (that boy good, that boy good)

(extra points because some people call jumpshots jimmys too haha)