As I said in my last post, Getting Back to the Music, I am now getting back to working on music after most of my time has been spent on marketing. Tha One and Only is my current mixtape I have been working on, but in reality it is a collection of my best songs up until this point. While I still bump it like it’s the first time I’ve ever heard it, I feel like it is time to move on to my next project. I have one song I am finishing for it, a song I wrote back in 2008, We Out Here. We Out Here is a song that I gave up on after hours of recording and becoming frustrated with the result. Click through for the rest.

It started out as a collaboration between me and my homie DQ (West coast Affiliation, Slangin Them Thangs, Ride With Me Remix, Hustla’s and G’z), but I didn’t like the way it was turning out and decided to do it myself. Since then, DQ hasn’t been in the booth, which sucks because I feel like he is the most talented artist I’ve worked with, and some people even felt like he had more potential than me. It was a hard lesson for me to learn, not to be too critical and harsh when producing a song. Constructive feedback can be a great thing, but when it causes someone to stop rapping all together, well that’s not what I had in mind.

We Out Here has always been something I wanted to finish, but I had forgotten it for almost two and a half years up until I was browsing around my computer a week or two ago. I played it and knew I had to finish it. The beat is one of the best I’ve done, the concept was about hustlin and it’s a street banger, I had to finish it. So I am almost done with it now, I re-recorded the verses and it sounds a lot better than before, when it was recorded in a tiny walk in closet. The hook has given me the most trouble, and part of the reason I scrapped the song in the first place.

We Out Here was the first song I attempted to sing the hook on. Singing is something I’ve always have been good at, but to shy to show. I was selected in fourth grade by my music teacher to do a solo in front of the whole entire school (and their parents), to sing three different songs. It was probably my most nerve racking moment, staring at the seas of people and the bright lights. Anyway, it’s a simple song to sing but it’s just been hard to get down perfectly. The version I had done before is performed perfectly, but I’m not happy with the recording quality as it was recorded in the walk in closet.

So that is what I’m working on this week. I feel like I should have We Out Here done by today or tomorrow. I’m also going to do one more freestyle before moving on, I have to show off my new freestyle skills when focusing on not cussing. It’s bringing out a whole new side of me and making me think more when I freestyle instead of just flowing. My dream would be to be able to freestyle as good as I can write, and I think I can get there if I keep on working on it. I will most likely continue to develop my skills in both though. Keep an eye out for my next release We Out Here, and I will have more info on my next project in the next post. Thanks for reading this and all of the support.  Jaime “J-Xile” Landers

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