TITLE: J. Cole & Billie Eilish Don’t Make Songs. They Build Ecosystems (content density)
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfcwJTmxCPU

Art without density is like a magazine. You read it, you throw it away. Art with density is like a novel. You might read it more than once. They'll take it and make a movie out of it. They don't make movies out of magazines. television about 10 years ago and it was on very late one night and I caught literally the last 5 minutes of the series where she was at the window trying to get in and it just really struck me. It was so strong and for years it's just been going around in my head like the basic story and and that visual image of her at the window and I thought it was just perfect material for a song. It's just so passionate and full of impact. It's great. And I read the book. You read the You read the book later. Yeah, I read the book before I wrote the song because I needed to get the mood properly. And content density is about reaching for something that's deep enough to make the audience have to go back more than once to digest whatever you're giving them. It's about layering things so the audience doesn't learn everything at the same time. And at that moment I get scared. I get excited and scared at the same simultaneously. I get excited cuz I go, "Yo, what if like what if you could do this whole rhyme about your life story in reverse, but you got to keep I'm setting rules. You can't cheat. You got to keep persevere through the worst. You got to keep four syllables minimum. What if? And I get excited cuz I'm like all that be so amazing. But then the fear comes in like almost a voice of like, "Don't even try it, nigga." Like, "Yo, why?" Like, "You know that's not possible. There's not enough rhymes to keep it clear and to keep it the way you want to do it. Stop, bro." And then the other voice is like, "Yeah, but what if though?" Like, "Nah, like yo." And then at that moment I'm giving myself a door. I can leave and and give myself leave or I can just take the mission. Take the mission. Take the mission. Take the mission. When J. Cole tells the story backwards, that's a great example of content density. There's no real hook to the song, and the song structure is not like a normal song. It's a loop. It's a circle. It's basically the circle of life. He starts the song in a space where he's he's not alive. He doesn't exist. He ends the song in a space where he doesn't exist. And then when you look at his album, his album is a circle, also. There's a myth that you have to make like a super commercial film, and it has to be easy to digest in order for you to get the attention you need. There's going to be people that don't want to listen to the content. They don't want to participate because the content is too dense, but there's always a workaround. So, the way you can make dense, really dense content and still please people who aren't into dense content is that you put it in a context that's real easy to digest. The content is dense. The context is easy to digest. So, in a movie, the plot might be really easy to understand. Even the dialogue will be really easy to understand, but the characters might be really deep. You want to make it easy and deep at the same time. Simple delivery, deep construction. The great ones balance density with accessibility. Writing is the cheapest thing to do when you make films. I look at a lot of amateur films, and one thing I noticed that is clear in all those type of movies. The attention to detail is lacking. So, just in the development of their childhood trauma really informed, you know, how they you know, how they stood, you know, the way they walked, the way they talked, um the cadence, um and and uh you know, how they held their face, how they rested, you know, it all it all kind of started from that from that from that trauma. And then, you know, when you start adding layers of, you know, wardrobe, um made little adjustments, you know, Smoke I wore his shoes, you know, a size too big and and Stack a half size too small just because I wanted Stack to um never really feel planing. I wanted him to feel like he always wanted to, you know, move around a little bit and never really sat still, always moving from one thing to the next. He was always kind of movement had a lot of movement to him and and Smoke, I wanted him to feel like he more more grounded and and and didn't planing and not not moving too much. So, little things like that to to the to the grills that they wore. Uh naturally, it changed the way, you know, you had to talk, you know, the way the way the way they they fit in your teeth and I think from a writing standpoint, there's nothing stopping you from getting more detailed or getting deeper into a subject. Ryan Coogler, he builds his characters through friction. He doesn't just make a stereotypical character that everyone has in their film. All his characters have something. They have a piece of something that the audience can attach to. These are also guys who will tell you what they what they are, you know, so so for Smoke, it was it was soldier. That was what he outwardly identified as. But but internally identified as father, you know, he wouldn't he wouldn't say this, but that's how he saw himself inside. For Stack, he would tell you, "I'm a pimp." You know what I mean? Like he was that kind of dude. I'm sure everybody's met those kinds folks. If you haven't, God bless you, you know. Um but but it but inside he identified as a dreamer, you know what I mean? Like he was he was the one who was who was always coming up with these these these lofty these lofty schemes and and um and and and that you know, you know, that dichotomy um was really was a really fun thing to play with, you know, in in in terms of in terms of writing the script. >> Deep characters are written in the space between who they are and who they want you to think they are. To me, you haven't seen the real of a person until he contradicts himself. Complex heroes, they can't be all good. Complex villains, they can't be all bad. And this is dense in any type of content, any art form, whether you're painting, whether you're graphic design, whether you make music. My mom might have had these things where she made sure I never took my Superman cape off. You know, I got this rap that say parents are the strippers strip kids of their confidence. Teach white dominance, question your common sense. I've been washed in tradition to Amare's, hopped off the Amistad and made Amagod. I think hip hop has the most complicated lyrics. Okay, I got to ask you about the opening line of the song. Can I give you my breakdown and you can tell me if it's right or or wrong? Can't stop my drive, obviously your ambition, you're referencing a literal car drive in this metaphor. 1955 was the year of the Montgomery boycotts. >> Yes. Tying in this idea of stop my drive, they refused to to ride the buses. >> The 85 is the interstate that connects Atlanta to Montgomery, so connecting your home or state. >> town, too. 52 Dodge, the fastest Dodge from 1952 only goes like 85 or 90. So essentially the play is like even if the buses were down, highway wasn't built yet, car couldn't go that fast, you still can't drop stop my drive. 100%. Like yeah, it it literally started with the initial line, you couldn't even stop my drive if it was 1955. That's where the ideas start coming from. I looked up when the first Dodge Dodge Ram was 5, a little bit. So I'm like, hey, when was the first car? What was the fastest? What's the speed? Trying to just make it all correlate to like you not being able to stop my intentions, my drive, my focus. So years ago on Jay-Z's first album I heard a song and in the song he says, "I got to keep one eye open like CBS." You see me stressed, right? Can I live? That's the song. Got to keep one eye open like CBS. When I heard that I was just like, "Oh man, that's that's CBS, the channel, you know, the logo to CBS, the channel." What's more amazing is years later I found out it's a double entendre. I don't think Jay-Z meant for it to be a double entendre, but it ends up being one anyway. See, you have keep one eye open like CBS, but also if you keep one eye open, you can see the BS. So, you see how that works? Even if he didn't mean to make it that way, I get to interpret it that way because I'm listening to the song. It's almost like looking in the clouds and seeing a face. You start hearing things that's not even the intention of the artist, but because the artist focused on dense content, it makes you dig deeper and deeper. That to me makes the creative process fun. Whether they're happy, sad, or they're just in a different mode, but the music is going to make you come into it. And you know, everybody here have had have had a like a massage. And when you go to the massage parlor, what do they play? They play music to make you calm. Whether they're If you go online, there are tones online that will help you stop smoking or be hypnotized or get up and be happy. >> [sighs and gasps] >> And that tone is in a lot of my songs. I'm sorry, y'all. >> [laughter] >> I just but it's it's real. You can look online and look for tones to make you smile or make you sad. And those tones you put in the song and it gets to the person and it makes them feel emotional. You know, even if it's a up-tempo. The sound in "bury a friend" by Billie Eilish is a dental drill created by Phineas. She also used a recording of a person walking, a pedestrian walking across the street in the song "bad guy". It's not a drum. Here's some more stuff from Billie Eilish and how she thinks when putting the album together. Phineas started changing the chords and it turned I started just singing "born blue". And then we kind of had this like realization like "Ooh, you know what would be cool? We took both of these old songs >> Resurrected them. >> completely different parts of our lives and resurrected them and made them into one song called "blue" and rewrote the verse and then wrote the rest of blue of "born blue" and then >> blue" is the second half of that song where it slows down and it gets That's That's the downer. That's right. >> That's the downer. And then we tied both of those together and added the motif, the string motif that had become And the string motif, if you haven't noticed, is the melody from the bridge of the greatest, which is also in "skinny" which starts the album. So then it also ends the And let's not forget that "blue" starts where "bitter sweet" >> leaves off. >> ends yeah Yeah, we ended "bitter sweet" with the melody of the beginning of "true blue" and then it goes into it. It kind of became like This is just such a pep, isn't it? >> Yeah, for sure. I mean Yep, so the idea about the production design of where they all were, everyone in their own space, so it wasn't a shared space. And everything is My thought was everything represents labor. It's it's brick and and stone and glass and steel and most of the locations feel very uh very industrial or or or about labor um to to connect to the idea of of of the labor that we've as black people have given this country not given uh the labor that's been stolen from us um for centuries and so um that idea married with where do you shoot Angela Davis? It's Reagan and Angela Davis. Okay, Miss Davis. She's in Oakland. So thinking about where in Oakland and we found this old train station that was abandoned and um was able to get access legal illegal at first and then eventually legal access to as we're indie filmmakers we do our thing. Um but legal by the time Netflix found out about it and um and yeah get her clean that cleaned it up got in there and you know, I just thought that there was an extraordinary very regal setting for that queen and what she had to say you know the prison industrial complex those words um that we use so so so frequently and easily is it was she coined that term. J. Cole knows that the album is very anticipated but he does the opposite of what stereotypical rappers would do. He pulls up in a regular car and sells albums out of the trunk connecting his project to nostalgia. He goes straight to the people. He becomes accessible immediately. All the symbolism from the mixtape cover to the album cover to the back of the album cover being connected to songs on the album. He uses all the things that people should use to increase content density. Easter eggs, metaphors, symbols, signals, everything. I guarantee you missed this. The rhyme scheme that J. Cole is going with is using the syllable is, right? Abyss, as this, Nvidia chips. But, you missed one because J. Cole actually hid this bar in this section of the song. So, when he raps, "I climbed out from the mouth of the gritty abyss." The antonym of idiot, "Who witty is this?" What is the antonym of the word idiot? It's genius. Which is genius because it actually follows the rhyme scheme. Mouth of the gritty abyss, genius, "Who witty is this?" Let me know if you caught that. Lady Olenna from Game of Thrones looks like a nice person, doesn't seem strong, seems meek, and then you find out later she's a killer. She used poison. That was her weapon of choice. I look at J. Cole the same way. Not loud, not over-the-top, not intimidating, but if you could read in between those lines, you can find in the poison. And by the time a lot of people figure it out, it's too late. I'd hate to die like your son, clawing at my neck, foaming bile spilling from my mouth, eyes blood red, skin purple. Must've been horrible for you as a king's guard, as a father. It was horrible enough for me. A shocking scene. Not at all what I intended. I'd never seen the poison work before. Tell Cersei I wanted her to know it was me. Remember, I don't have to always be right. I just want the opportunity to be wrong. If you make art too complex, it feels like homework. But, if you make it too simple, it feels microwavable. You have to leave some space for the listener. If you like the content, please comment, subscribe, and hit the notification bell. If you want to support the channel, feel free to become a member. This is Brian from The King's Hand. The be-appointed hand of the king. >> [music]