The Breakdown: The Left – Gas Mask

Gas Mask is one of the best albums to drop recently thanks to a combination of well-crafted, hard-hitting soundscapes and thoughtful, insightful rhymes. Check out The Left as they break down their critically-acclaimed album.

01 Change (DJ Soko): “Change” gives the listener a glimpse of the tone of this album – this track sets it off. Throughout the beat there’s a intermittent sample that says “Gas Mask”, even throughout the phrases in the beginning of the track before the beat kicks in. Once the beat drops, I used some samples that I had found and some that Apollo had sent to me, I made sure to request a few acapellas of Journalist’s vocals. I cut and scratched the samples for about 16 bars and the listener might notice that so of the phrases are repeated throughout. I wanted to attack it like a verse but almost like a hook too, I wanted to make sure certain phrases were reiterated and emphasized.

02 Gas Mask (Journalist 103): When I first heard the track, I knew instantly where I wanted to go with it. We needed a title track for the album as well, rather then just calling the album Gas Mask, so this song fit perfectly for the main theme of the album.

03 Frozen Ft. Kool G Rap (DJ Soko): This is one of the last tracks that was recorded for the album, and one of my personal favorites. It was an incredible honor to have a legend like Kool G Rap contribute a verse to this song. Basically, both Journalist and Kool G Rap are talking about the same thing, they just attack the concept differently, which is really dope. Both of them each flip the drugs/hustling concept in a creative way.

04 Battle Axe (Apollo Brown): Battle Axe was a beat that I initially made for beat battles and pretty much beat battles only. I could never really hear someone spittin’ on it until we started doin this project. It was actually kind of perfect for what we were going for. The original title of the beat was in fact Battle Axe and I wanted to leave it that way, after hearing Journalist and Mu destroy it.

05 Binoculars (Journalist 103): This joint pretty much came about from my own inner reflections. But living within the inner city I share those same thoughts with thousands of people – if not millions. So I wanted to address some of the problems and then shed a little light on the solutions as well. Something I felt like we all as people would be able to relate to.

06 How We Live Ft. Hassaan Mackey (DJ Soko): This song features a really dope emcee named Haassan Mackey out of Rochester, NY. This song’s pretty straight forward; it takes the listener on a journey of the environments and conditions that both of these mc’s live in. The listener also gets a little bit of glimpse at a few things Journalist 103 is socially concerned with.

07 Chokehold (Apollo Brown): The moment I heard this sample I had to touch it. There was just something big about it. When we got in the studio to record the song, Journalist spit his verses and I immediately knew what the song was going to be called, and it fit perfect with the sound. I called up Paradime and he was immediately down, especially after he heard the beat. Those two together on the mic created a classic of song.

08 The Funeral (Journalist 103): When I first heard this track, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. It was kinda different from what I was used to hearing from Apollo. So when we went to the studio, that was one of the beats we had to knock out and I hadn’t written to it ahead of time. So I pulled out two verses and a hook from the old notebook that I hadn’t used for anything yet. I started spitting and the song turned out to be a slaughter house of mayhem for wack music!

09 Statistics Ft. Invincible (DJ Soko): This song features the incredibly talented emcee Invincible. Journalist 103’s verse takes on the role of someone who’s frustrated and has been a product of their environment and feels short on options. Invincible’s verse attacks the statistics related theme as well but weaves it through a story of a young woman and drops much knowledge about reality and hardships that exist for many people.

10 Real Detroit Ft. Marv Won (Apollo Brown): We wanted a song or 2 on the album that was dedicated to home, Detroit. When I made the beat, I was going for sinister, and to me, Detroit swims in sinister character. We also wanted to get someone on the song that just screamed Detroit, without even having to say it. Add together a great Detroit mentioned intro, a grimy Detroit beat, along with 2 classic Detroit emcees, and a catchy Detroit hook, and you have the song Real Detroit.

11 The Melody (Journalist 103): This beat is what actually introduced me to Apollo Brown’s work. After meeting and contemplating on seeing if I could possibly get some production from AB, I ended up going to his MySpace page to listen to his music and the beat that wound up being “The melody” was the first thing I heard. I would listen to it over and over again. So when we started working on the album, I asked him about that beat, which had actually been used by another artist, but he was kind enough to let us get it for the project. Since the album was already gritty and hard “The Melody” was perfect to give Gas Mask the balance it needed.

12 Reporting Live Ft. Guilty Simpson: This is another personal favorite of mine. Apollo said that he immediately thought of Guilty for a feature for this song. This song reflects a few things, Journalist’s verses reflect who is, what his city means to him, what it’s like, and in a lot of ways the Detroit hip hop community in general. Guilty’s verse reflects representing for the crib, and what Detroit is basically and even though it might be grimy, that we always rep for the home team at all times.

13 Fooled For Thought (Apollo Brown): when you listen to this beat, you notice a lot of imperfections throughout. High static, lo-fi sound, record stops, and drops, etc. were all done on purpose. I wanted to make the sample and the overall song as dirty as I could get it without sacrificing the quality of the music. We decided on a quick 16 bar verse and out. It just sounded right.

14 Desperation (Journalist 103): This is actually one of the last songs we recorded right before the completion of the album. Apollo was real animate about making this the perfect album. So he sent me the track and I can honestly say, “Desperation” is one of the better tracks we did for the album.

15 Caged Birds (Apollo Brown): This song is one of the last joints we worked on. This was a beat that I really wanted to get Finale on, and so we did. He was down the first time he heard the joint, so him and Journalist combined to create an ill concept of the emcee. The hook had me sold as soon as I heard Journ spit it and the verses just flowed together.
There was a lot of passion in this song to me and the beat was screamin “set me free” on top of that. Nice.

16 Homage (Apollo Brown): I personally think that every great album has a reminisce type of song, a song that causes the listener to reflect or think back to a point in his or her life. This one is ours. I made this beat, just like most others, specifically for this album. The music, the drums, the feeling; the beat just said it all. Journalist came with a really heartfelt set of 16s and I wanted to get some feeling on the hook, so I called upon one of my personal favorite singers, Frank West. He came up with the counter melody right there on the spot and it was perfect. One of my favorite songs on the album.

17 Get In Where You Fit In (Journalist 103): This beat motivated me in so many ways. I felt like this could be the motivational song that grabbed everybody’s attention – to give hope in times of despair, and to encourage people to push towards their goals no matter the obstacles.