The Lost Psalms
At'Eaze
When I first was in album mode, my project was going to be called “The Book of Eazy.” I wasn’t completely sold on it and I just kinda placed it there, as like, an, “Ah, maybe. Maybe I’ll use it. Maybe I won’t.” And then a few months ago, I did some thinking on it, some praying on it. I was like, “I need a real title for this.” I prayed on it and for some reason Psalms kinda came to my head and I was like, “Let me just look up what the Book of Psalms is about.” It said that it’s basically a hymn book and a poem book that includes diverse emotion, worship and adoration, lament and petition, thanksgiving, cries for help, hope, things like that. So when I thought about it, I was like, that really matches my project. How perfect. There’s some sadness in it. There’s some storytelling in it. There’s some thankfulness in it. There’s some “I need help” in it. There’s some motivation in it. It just kinda covered everything and so I was like, “I’ma call this ‘The Lost Psalms.'" It’s a portion that you wouldn’t find in your normal day-to-day Bible, but it’s something that I feel like people who have been through similar experiences of me growing up in the hood, they can hear a version of biblical words and wisdom and inspiration in a way that they can relate to it and accept and hear.
And, as I’m thinking about the meaning of this album, God placed this in my spirit, too, just now. All the reasons that I called it “The Lost Psalms” is because it has a lot of themes that Psalms has in it and it was a play on, “What if there was some pieces of Psalms that didn’t make it to the Bible?” Like a metaphor. But He just placed in my spirit the reason why He wanted to call it “The Lost Psalms.” It’s because the album is a version of Psalms or has the themes that Psalms has in it, but it’s for the lost. So it’s a version of Psalms to meet people who are in the world trying to figure out what it might be like to try God. “I’m dealing with this life in the streets or this life that’s not very positive,” or whatever the case may be, but “I have a desire to get better within my spirit” and this is going to be able to meet them where they’re at. Crazy! It just blew my mind that the day before the album dropped this is what I received.
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One Psalm that impacted me growing up was Psalms 100:4, "Enter His gates with thanksgiving and enter His courts with praise. Give Him thanks and praise His name."
My mom is a minister and this is one she used to always use. I remember when I was younger, she used to always say a specific song to start up church with the praise team and everything. So that was a passage that was deep-seated in my faith journey.
With this project, I feel like I’m coming back to my roots. I’ve been in a different space of I’ve been more in depth in my relationship with God and in my faith and just trying to better myself spiritually, mentally, emotionally, walking in line with whatever God has for me. So the intention kind of goes more back towards how my “Bones” project was in 2020. Everything that I write has some kind of intention towards it of inspiring and encouragement and growth of some sort, but I felt like “Bones” was very, very intentional with certain songs and things like that.
So this album, “The Lost Psalms” kinda came across the same way where there was some songs that I had wrote years ago and of course a lot of new songs, but some of the old ones was like, this is very intentional about a message that I’m trying to get across. Somebody that I’m trying to reach with this, each song can’t just be thrown on an EP or just out as a single. My mission with this album is I truly believe that I can help change my generation, whether that be a mindset shift or planting seeds of wonder like “I wonder what it would be like if I actually tried to pray real quick or if I tried opening this Bible to see what it says. What does it look like to just try God in the midst of all of this darkness that I have to face on a day-to-day basis?”
There’s a lot going on in the world and I’ve been feeling a strong pull to take my purpose seriously. I’ve always felt called to help my generation, but it’s been a strong pull of you gotta be one of those people that don’t waste no time. It’s time to go do it, do something about it because you’re losing your generation by the minute.
I discuss that on “Git Up Wen U Fall” when I say, “Messages from God: ‘Elevate your kids. Elevate your queen. Elevate your Locs. Elevate your dawgs.’” It was really me speaking to a specific crowd, it’s mainly a lot of the people that I grew up in the hood with, so bros, sisters (people that I claim as sisters), people that I hustle with, people that we used to go around and fight with, all the people that I paid dirt with and being the leader amongst that group that may have stayed in those situations. They’re used to “This is what I know. This is what I did every day, so this is what I’m sticking to.” And I take it seriously being the one that they can look at that’s different. I’m trying to lead them to see like I’m here to help elevate my people. I’m here to encourage you to elevate your people. That’s the only way that we all can make a big difference is the “each one, teach one” concept. I encourage y’all and once y’all get to a space where you’re able to receive what I’m saying, then you can pass it down to the next person like, “Aye man, you was right. It’s about elevation. Let’s pull each other up from out the gutter.”
Another song that reflects the mindset I’ve been trying to maintain is “Thankful.” I was just having a really good day and I was just looking for beats and came across that. I immediately fell in love with the beat and I was just playing with some words and “Thankful” just kept popping up. The reason I turned it into a song, tried to make it feel good and as dope as possible, I wanted people to be able to vibe to it and say it themselves, just being thankful for not only the simple things, but the good and the bad. I’m thankful for the situations that I’ve had to endure, but I’m also thankful for the good. I’m not just thankful for the good, I’m also thankful for what I had to experience in order to get here to appreciate the good. I’m thankful for just waking up and having breath in my lungs ‘cause I coulda not made it. I’m thankful for family. I’m thankful for my kids being safe. This song is all about finding a reason to be thankful no matter what you’re going through. And that’s something that I also had to work on and that I still work on, finding the thankfulness in everything. If I stub my toe on the table, instead of “Mothaf**!” It’s like, “Well, thank you God that I got a table to stub my toe on.” Things like that. “I’m irritated with my job, but I’m thankful that I have a job to provide for my family.” So just trying to find the good in everything.
What’s crazy is I’ve always felt like God would use my pen. Like, He would control my pen. Now there’s been times where like clearly it’s me writing ‘cause it’s a lot of bravado in it and self-talk. But a lot of my inspirational stuff and encouraging things and storytelling, I felt like was always God controlling the pen. I really felt that with “WhatchuCryinFuh?” That it was just kinda Him taking over writing a story from my experiences, people that I grew up with in close range seeing their experiences. That song was my own experience directly from the first verse about a young child whose father left him, and then the second verse was close proximity to a friend who experienced the murder of his best friend in high school, and then the third verse was kinda like a culmination of what could happen if we continue in this mindset.
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“Dust if off, boy.” “Quit crying.” “Suck it up.” “Man up.” “Be a man.” “We don’t cry about stuff that we are hurt about.” “We bury our emotions.” “Deal with it.” “Never let them see you cry.”
That mindset doesn’t lead to anything good because all it does is just, it either piles up or it lays dormant, and it eventually is gonna get dug up somehow in whatever trauma you’re dealing with in a new stage. So the song is really just a message behind the story without directly saying, “Hey man, you gotta cry.” We’re all told, “What are you crying for? Quit crying.” And the end result is destruction, which is why I love how the beat ends out there. As soon as I stop rapping, everything just cuts. The beat’ll kind of sit in the silence before the piano starts to fade it out and Brionne Aigné fades it out to kinda help you digest what just happened.
In my opinion, every good album has a balance of content that is intentional, that has some smooth joints, that has some stuff that you can just kinda ride to and bob your head to. So I wanted to make sure that there was a couple of those on “The Lost Psalms” that people could turn the bass up and just kinda let it knock. And it’s crazy to me how God is in all of it.
“Cabo” is one of those songs. And it is a funny story. So I went to Cabo for my 30th birthday. My wife treated me. And before I went, I was so excited, I wrote the song as if I was already there. So that’s how I wrote, “I wrote this song in Cabo,” even though I wasn’t there yet. I was just imagining being there. I wrote the hook, wrote my verse and everything. And I was like, I want to see if I can get LaRussell on this song, and if I can’t get LaRussell, then I’ma ask my boy Malcolm Whyz3. Then I ended up going out to Cabo and I had a good time, enjoyed it. The first day we get there was like a jetlag day, so we kinda chilled. The very next morning, I see Malcolm on the same resort in the same buffet that we’re in. I was like, “What the! What are you doing here, bro?!” So we dapped up, embraced, gave him a hug and everything. And I was like, “Bro, I feel like this is divine. This is God’s timing.” I told him, “I wrote a song called ‘Cabo’ and I told myself if I couldn’t get LaRussell on it, I’ll put you on there. I can’t put LaRussell on it no mo. I need you on this song!” He said, “Bro, just send it to me and we’ll lock it in.” So that’s why you hear him say on his verse with the hook, “I seen At’Eaze in Cabo” ‘cause that was a true story. That one came out crazy.
Along with having Malcolm Whyz3 on the album, I was very intentional with all of the features: Andwele, BAM Mr. ALL KAPITALS, Duse, A Meazy and Brionne Aigné. I prayed with or over all of them when they came into the studio and went into the booth because I truly wanted this project to be spirit-led.
Sonically, I brought all of my personal influences to the project. There’s soulful samples, lively horns, tinges of Gospel and thumping 808s. I’m proud to rep Denver as an artist. But I don’t know if Denver is meant to have a sound because we have so many different sounding artists. I’ve heard complaints about that, “Denver don’t have a sound.” And people try to create sounds. But I think we gotta embrace that fully. It’s value in being that unique, which is why I take pride in my style because I grew up loving just music, period. So you’ll hear songs where it’s got an East Coasty feel or a West Coasty feel or a Southern feel or an R&B feel. I just, whatever feels good to my soul, sounds good to my ears, and feels like just a dope song once I finish it — I put it out. It don’t matter what region it sounds like to me.
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Someone who is an example to me of carving his own lane is Nipsey Hussle. I think a lot of people like me, especially being from the East Side where there’s a lot of Crips over there, I think we all loved Nip. He started just completely immersed in the hood and in the street life, and seeing that growth to “I’m a business man even though I’m still in the streets,” to now “I’m bettering my relationship with God even though I’m still fighting being in the streets.” So seeing that growth and of course, he met his demise way too soon, so we never got to see how that would continue to progress, but the inspiration behind like no matter where you start at, you can be very successful, not only in the world as far as your business, but as a person. You can grow and be somebody who people look up to. And who people feel like, “Man, he actually cares about people, or he actually loves people. Wow, he actually, he talks about God, and he got a relationship with God and he a street dude?” And then Nip was just wise beyond his years. On a crazy level. So like every time he opened his mouth on any kind of interview, there was always something you could grab from him. Like man, this hits. It was much-needed to have him talk on “Ones.”
As I try to deliver hope to my community, Nip helped me develop the mindset that my time is my time. So whatever God has for me, whether that’s a long life or a shorter life, my only purpose is to do His will.
I’ve been watching this show on Amazon Prime called “The Chosen” and it’s basically just a show about Jesus from the beginning of His ministry up until the crucifixion and resurrection. And the entire time, He’s like, “I’m here to do what My Father has asked me to do and I’ma do it to the fullest. It don’t matter what comes with it.” He knew what was to come, but He wasn’t worried about what was to come. So I try to stay in that mindset, of like, with me trying to bring people to God from my hood, if there’s somebody out there that don’t like it and is evil-minded and wants to take me out because of that, it is what it is, because that means that that’s what God had for me. If that means that I live a long life because I served the way that He told me to serve, then so be it. But my purpose is the same amount of destruction and evil that I may have put into the world, I’ve got to put out a hundredfold the opposite of that.
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"The Lost Psalms" is available on all streaming services. Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.
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Cover art by EPTheCreator
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