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More Than Enough is the 9th album in the A Year of Music project. By the time this one came around, I was exhausted. We recently moved and had a much larger property to take care of. We were also dealing with COVID and the hysteria around it. Add to that the world falling apart with riots every day, legacy corporate media and social media driving people insane, and the rest of daily life, I needed a break.
But I kept working on the albums because fuck that 5-minute rest shit.
Getting this album done was not easy. I was heavily drained every day in 2020, and as the months dragged on, so did my ass. I had to force myself to complete these albums, and wanted to quit many times. After all, no one is paying me to do this and it’s all of my own accord.
But my kids knew I was doing this. They don’t listen to a lot of the music because they’re kids and, well, you’ve heard some of the things I say. But they knew I was trying to complete this project, so I had to do it.
This album is a return to the original form, with several “kill the mic” tracks. But while songs like Strangle Them, None Other, and Mental Oculus have a lot of interesting lines, they aren’t the ones that stand out.
So let’s rip the band aid off and get to I Have Problems.
The song I Have Problems originally got left off of the album by mistake. As I mentioned, I was pretty tired, so I somehow left off the 16-minute rant that directly ties into the hardest album I’ve ever created.
I added it to the art and zip file once I realized the mistake, and the song returned to its rightful place, becoming a behemoth for both it’s runtime and the topic. It is an angry and exhausting tirade that flips the tight on its head and hammers at the problems I see in the world.
The track deals with a wide range of topics, including:
The song exposes my frustration with a lot of problems and how I wish that I could fix them. It also mentions how I don’t think I’m capable of being the one to fix them, despite my attempts to help. I reference my own past that conflicts with me today, but as Marvin says, people change. And this is true, as I’m a very different person in many ways to the person I was years ago.
In the song I commend a woman named Rebecca Welsh. Years before I wrote this song, I knew of her as Rebecca Neuenswander, the lead actress in the movie Fight night. It’s not an easy movie to find and her acting career consists of 2 films, but as someone who liked the movie, I wanted to see her in more. Looking her up, I found out she had quit acting and started Halo Worldwide, a foundation that helps at risk kids around the world. She’s an inspiring person and as I said on the song, she should be a household name for her work. She is the type of person we should celebrate, and though I liked her in the film Fight Night, I would love to have her sign the copy I dug up simply because of what she’s done for children.
2020 was the year of oppression. Never before have so many people been oppressed. At least, that’s the way it seemed. The problem is that many people misidentified the real person oppressing them. That’s because many people are apparently vampires and can’t see their reflection in a mirror.
I used to think that others were keeping me down, preventing me from moving ahead in life. But eventually, I realized that the only person stopping me was me.
Oppressor is a wake up call for those who want to blame others for their position in life. It recognizes that you have to work for what you want, and if you aren’t where you want to be, it’s up to you to get there. No one else is responsible for giving you the future you want. If you aren’t where you want to be after working hard, it just means that you need to work longer and harder to get there. Expecting an equal outcome to someone else is a flawed way of thinking. People are not equal to each other because are not toasters. Some people are better at things that others, have more or better skills, or a better starting point. You can either complain about it, or you can fight harder to get what you want. I spent years bitching about it and it got me no where. As it turns out, working harder has a better effect, and I’m living proof of that. Some people don’t want to believe that and instead choose to complain on the Internet. Miraculously, they are still in the same position they were before. Some have even gone backward. Still, they refuse to work harder for what they want, further oppressing themselves.
I mentioned in the notes for Everything Is Fine that I recently wrote a novel about a character on that album. As with Abby, many of the stories I write have hard to consume content, with very dark themes and horrible situations for the people in them. Alexa is a prime example.
The song Enough tells the tale of a young girl who hides away the terrible life she has behind the walls of her home. Alexa’s world with her alcoholic drug addicted abusive mother is spelled out in all of it’s horror. It’s not an easy story to hear nor to read, but it is one with importance.
Alexa’s life reflects that of too many children with garbage pieces of shit for parents. While she finds eventually help, far too many “Alexa’s” have no one.
The song leans into the rough gut-wrenching realism that some artists like Slaine have been known for. Doing anything less would be a disservice to Alexa. Enough is not meant to entertain, it’s meant to make you feel disturbed. You should be. Because things like this should not be happening.