When It’s The Time To Walk Away PT. 5
Preview to The Long Goodbye
Ultimately I believe it was this album that transitioned the Kemetic Suns. We didn’t break up. We didn’t quit. We moved on. The stresses of this album may have been too much. These songs were performed a lot and got us two label deals. Both deals had the same dynamic: this is GREAT. Then you get into the studio to re-record everything and the labels sends in their composition army to get hands on your publishing. Once the songs are done, the contract amendment comes and it requires 36 months of touring with a live band to play all the songs the label wants additions to with $30k of tour support split among 8 people. How many times do you do the same scenario before reaching insanity? How many times do you get bumped from your show time and not want to snap on everyone from the promoter to the venue? How many times do you choke a promoter for the money for your show money, plane ticket money, hotel money and per diem only to go on stage rapping about helping people before your mind fizzles? More and more. Also there was a reality that Koncepts and I came to realize at SXSW in 2001. We hated the road. Touring was living on the road. Living on the road was being a grown latch key kid stuck between parent’s homes. It was miserable. At 16 I was already thinking like a 26 year old. Imagine where my head was at 24, being asked to make drunk and high 19 year olds of suburbia happy on stage for 45 minutes night after night. Most of the guys who adored that life look like Larry Holmes now – flabby, sick, soft and slow to answer. Meanwhile Eclipse and I were making much larger checks pulling strings behind the scenes without needing to be in the spotlight.
Diagnosis
Perhaps the final moment for me was August 2004 when I discovered my mother couldn’t walk. She could barely eat much less explain the pain she was in. After seeing over twenty different doctors, it was clear my mother would need surgery and would need a full time caregiver. I made the announcement to the Kemetic Suns that I was bowing out to free up time for my mother. Mostly everyone was supportive. I disappeared as quickly as I emerged. During this time Kirby and Hypnotic did their Kirb and Chris album.
In June of 2005, my father was diagnosed with stage two Alzheimer’s dementia. The doctor took his license on the spot and told us to focus on “quality of life” because they didn’t expect him to live past two years. My mother’s illness combined with my father’s diagnosis and the demons of the road pushed me over the edge. I crawled inside a bottle for a time. I was convinced that I had hurt my parents with my music. I burned my rhyme pads and decided to never write a rap again. When I emerged I had a new path and oath to keep to my father.
Over the next five years, I became a new person in learning to go from being a Kemetic Sun to being the best son I could be. I found that many of the skills I learned through the music, were transferrable to helping my father. I also learned a great deal about my willpower, drive and commitment. My father was and is my world. My reason for being. A strong, hard, magician of a man who was loved by all he came across; even his enemies had to respect him. In 1995 when I handed my father a copy of 30 Daze and A Plane Ticket I had no idea the journey I would take. When I asked him what he thought, he played the Daddy Please skit for me and asked if I was talking to him. I vehemently denied it but I was deeply hurt that he thought I was airing him out. I shouted him out at the end of the album but he didn’t seem to hear that. I don’t think he believed me. That never set well with me.
Quality Of Life
When my father died, I had a brand new appreciation. I couldn’t just nod. I had to act. I knew he deserved some act to offset the notion that a song had been laid against him. I began writing songs about caring for my father. When things got very bad, Koncepts and Peek started sending me beats. I don’t know why. They don’t either. We are all being polite around the fact that they were worried about me. I would drive my father around to different appointments and play the beats that I was given. Music was good for my father’s moods. During the late nights in the emergency room, I wrote science fiction in my head. This project ended up becoming The Paper Thrones. During the mornings when I was trying to pay for everything, I wrote rhymes as I drove. The combination opened my eyes to the amount of people who were just starting the journey I was on. More and more I saw signs of millions of people caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s and no one speaking for them; or to them. I knew I had to say goodbye to you fans, to my father and to any hold this disease thinks it may have over me. I will not die of Alzheimer’s. If I do, it is because I went down fighting and I hurt the hell out of it.
Sometime in the near future I will release to you this tribute called The Long Goodbye. A 21 track album that is both a tribute to my father and also my way of closure with the people I meet who tell me how much good Kemetic Suns did for their lives. This will be the solo album the fans were promised. It absolutely sounds like a Kemetic Suns album; I am told it sounds like a grown man Ambershine. I have ZERO interest in selling the album. My goal is to see how money we can raise to fight Alzheimer’s using this album. Some simple value proposition such as “If you donate $1 to this cause, you get a code to download the album”.
I hope this answered the questions. I hope this gave you what you were looking for. I hope you will join me one last time for The Long Goodbye.
