Column: Creating An Album Amongst Beauty and Chaos (Part 1)

Editor’s Note: Normally, I would have tackled writing this story myself after an interview with the artist. But JC Poppe sent over this completed article that required so few edits that I decided to just run with it. It’s a moving story on how he created his acclaimed Sleep Therapy album amongst both beauty and chaos.

I am an independent hip-hop artist that is relatively unknown within the genre. Since Nov. 1, 2008, I have been a refugee from my home, the Milwaukee metro area, a place that I greatly miss. I have also gone through the processes of putting together my very first album, becoming a father for the first time, and dealing with my wife having a medical catastrophe. I’m not sure that this is the most exciting story in the world, but it’s something that I feel is worth telling.

For the most part, I’m a pretty mild mannered guy. I got my wild streak out of me the final few years of college and the year or so after graduation. In other words, I’m not the guy who meets many of the typical rapper stereotypes.

In September of 2008, my wife delivered to me the wonderful news that she was pregnant with our first child. This came only a little more than a month of us being married. Life immediately went from real time to fast forward. As such, we devised a plan that we felt was the best course of action for our growing family.

My wife, who I met in college, is not a native of the Milwaukee area. She is actually from clear across the state and was raised in a small town near the Mississippi River in an area completely devoid of hip-hop music. Unlike myself, she has a large and relatively young family with three sisters and an endless string of aunts, uncles, and first and second cousins. We decided that it was crucial to have that kind of family structure and backbone to help us while we tackled the task of being first-time parents.

The cost of living going from the city to the “country” was also a motivation to temporarily move. It allowed us to grow our accounts while adjusting to the great expense that is a child. Leaving the crime behind wasn’t a bad selling point either. Where we were living in Milwaukee was prone to lots of crime, with home invasions, regular armed robberies, shootings, and cars constantly broken into or stolen. To move to a nicer place would take more money, and that wasn’t a luxury we had.

The final push to move was the failing economy. Milwaukee was really starting to feel the pinch and the industry that I was in, the auto industry and specifically car sales, was just becoming miserable. It was so miserable, in fact, that my final month of selling didn’t yield one successful transaction. The economy across the state was slightly better with a lower unemployment rate so everything just seemed to make sense when you put it all together. It was almost like we were meant to move, but I’ll discuss that more on that later.

The glitch in the system was that I was born and raised in the Milwaukee area. I had only lived a brief couple of months away from the city while failing an attempt at graduate school. One of the big three reasons for my failing was that I was extremely homesick. I had no idea how I would handle another move, though I felt like I would fare better the second time around because I would have my wife. Also, my mind would be busy with preparing for a baby. However, my friends and parents lived in or around Milwaukee and the hip-hop scene that I was steadily growing into over the past few years was not going to move with me.

It was at this point that I decided that I would undertake the process of creating an album. This was a way for me to stay plugged into the Milwaukee scene because I would have to go there frequently to record and do business. And it would put me back into the familiar settings I so depended on my entire life. Then, the move happened.

The deal was that we would spend two years in this foreign land, no more, and then we would move back to the Milwaukee area to continue our lives. I felt fine with this as our plan. It would be inconvenient for me and the relationships I left behind. But when you are married with a child on the way you must take one for the team because you are now a certified man. And there is no going back from that.

The time ticked by and the album began taking shape. I was doing what I hoped I would by getting back to the city several times a month. I was maintaining some relationships much better than others, but I was getting work done and I was completely plugged in.

Not only was the album coming together in fine fashion but the pregnancy was also going well. My wife wasn’t experiencing any morning sickness. She was feeling comfortable being around her family. This to me was the best case scenario. On top of that, I found a job and I was going through training. That meant some extra money was coming into the house, which is always a plus.

As the months passed, I sprinted towards the end of the recording process so that I could be done before the birth of the baby. I changed jobs a few times, but I wasn’t going to complain too much. I was optimistic that something permanent would eventually come along shortly. Plus, the baby was due soon and it would probably be better for us to be able to help each other out those first several weeks as much as possible.

The recording process of the album was so interesting. I hired a friend of mine that I met through the local scene to do the whole project and he made it a fun and valuable experience for me. It wasn’t my first time recording music, but it was my first time really desiring perfection from myself. I had lined up some heavy hitters, both locally and nationally, for the project. As such, I didn’t want to play myself by not living up to the money invested in creating my official entry into the hip-hop world.

As the due date closed in on me and my wife, I really put the pedal to the metal to finish everything. That was a wise move on my part because my wife gave birth several weeks early. It was an amazing feeling to go from completing my very first album to welcoming my first child into the world. I felt blessed. I was on an ultimate high. Everything was pointing towards the fact that I could stay at that level for some time if I rode this out right.

We spent a few nights in the hospital because our baby boy had some jaundice issues. But I soon found myself home, trading off parenting duties and trying to plan the release of the album and the release party. I had built a good working relationship with 88-Keys because I hit him up for two beats for my project. And during that process, a series of technical catastrophes ensued on both ends. This led to us having more contact with each other than an anonymous rapper and established producer from different states would typically have.

In the end, our business together led to him coming to Milwaukee to do a guest DJ spot at my release party. I was also able to obtain Naledge, of Kidz in the Hall, as a special guest host — he contributed a verse for a track on Sleep Therapy. They weren’t free, but they were willing. And they worked within my budget. That was dope to me, especially since I was a nobody and they had no idea what they would be walking into.

I also had another advocate in the Milwaukee scene, a veteran rapper named Dana Coppafeel. He is a man with connections and, for some reason, he took me under his wing and pushed me to get everything together through him. It was like all the pressure was off of me. The tasks that needed to be taken care of were properly divided up amongst several of us so no one would feel overwhelmed. I really didn’t feel like anyone could stop the forward motion and progress being made. As we all have experienced, those are usually the times when something comes out of left field. The times when something effectively stops everything. And, most times, it helps you to take a few steps backwards.

May 25, 2009 arrived like most days. The only difference about the day was that it was Memorial Day. There was no reason that the day should have been different at all. My wife, who was still recovering from having our son three weeks ago, was complaining about some hip and back pain. But that type of pain is to be expected after going through such a huge event. The plans for the day were probably similar to the plans of most American families on Memorial Day. We were going to her sister’s house for a cookout. While it may be cliché to say this, after that day, nothing would be the same.

Check back tomorrow for the second-half to this story.