So this will probably surprise most of you who know I’ve been steadily trying to shed my comedy-rap past as I build a career for myself composing serious music and scores for films… But I’m going to talk about my comedy-rap stuff for a minute.
September 22nd, 2017 happens to be the 15 year anniversary of my comedy-rap group The Killa Korpse Gangstaz aka The Polar Bear MC’s first album I Hope U Melt release and our first concert. I was 21 at the time, very drunk and just starting out making music. I had produced some local rappers but I hadn’t put out any music with my name on it yet, hadn’t worked on any films, and was really just figuring out how to do this. So when a friend approached me and asked if since I can make rap beats if we could make the worst rap song ever over one of my tracks, I figured why not? We made the song, then another, then another, then some of our friends joined, and next thing you know we had the 57 tracks that make up the special 15 Year Anniversary Edition of I Hope U Melt that I just released on September 22nd, 2017 (the original release of the album was still a pretty hefty 22 tracks haha).
15 years is a long time and it’s got me a little nostalgic so it made me want to do this special edition release, both as a way of finally getting all the extra tracks out there into the world and a way to clean up my hard drive a little bit. It also just still makes me laugh even though the music is terrible, offensive, misogynistic, violent and pretty much as terrible as can be. That of course was the point though, to take gangsta rap and overdo its worst tendencies to the ultimate degree. We succeeded I think… And continue to succeed with every new release (yes I’ve stopped promoting the fact that I do this stuff, but we do continue to put out albums every few years with all the side groups of The Polar Bear MC’s).
I also have an Oral History article about the group and its impact on the Las Vegas local music scene that you can read over at the Polar Bear Entertainment website here: http://www.pearlsent.com/2017/09/19/a-big-waste-of-time/
On my site though, I wanted to make a little list of thoughts I had while putting this whole project together, so indulge me as I think out loud about this project that I just spent the last month on.
- Wow, this is such a waste of time.
- But in the process of putting it together, I had a good reason to force myself to get out of my house (I’m normally locked in working on real music) and go see my old friends who I used to do this with. It was great catching up with a lot of them. I need to make more time to hang out with them in the future, even if we’re not working on a project or anything.
- So as for the album, I Hope U Melt, I have mixed feelings… On one hand I wish I had forced everyone to fix verses and make things sound better… But on the other hand sounding awful was kind of the point. Also, no one was actually a musician/performer other than me so there’s only so much I could really expect from any of them. There’s some stuff in the lyrics that still makes me laugh to this day. Some of it makes me cringe though haha.
- The beats are actually better than I remember… It’s a shame they’re almost all lost to various computer changes over the years. I can’t open the project files anymore without replacing instruments to recreate the tracks… And as good as some of the tracks are, I don’t see myself ever really doing that (although when I first dreamed up this 15 Year Anniversary project 2 years ago, I was a little over-enthusiastic and thought I was going to load them all up and redo all the tracks to make them all sound better and more modern, which would have taken SO much work). But all that being said, I was surprised that aside from a few clunkers, I really am proud of the music I was making already at such an early stage in my career.
- The production quality… Not so much. I don’t think I had any idea what I was doing when it came to mixing, mastering or post production. Some of it though just magically came together… Other parts are just all over the board.
- I did remaster every track on here for the re-release. I don’t know that I did a great job at that because quite frankly, I wasn’t going to put more time into this project than it was worth… But I think it definitely sounds better than before, even though I couldn’t also remix it.
- My file management skills back then left a lot to be desired… For example, I don’t have full quality WAV files of any of the old songs. How I could let that be is just insane to me now. Granted storage wasn’t as plentiful back then as it is now, and neither were broadband speeds to maybe upload the files somewhere (actually there was no cloud back then so that wouldn’t have even been an option haha). But I had to work mostly with MP3s. THANKFULLY though, I saved everything in the highest possible quality MP3s… So there’s that at least haha.
- I still think I may eventually finish up all the songs we recorded after I Hope U Melt was released. As we continued as a group, we performed all over Las Vegas, probably a good 40 times, and were quite popular in the local music scene. We recorded around 20 more songs after that point as a full group, but as I said, broke into smaller side projects (MC Randumb & Jewish Dave, D-Mize & Dee. Rockz, Tha Big Yummy, and FA-COCK-TA). So all the material that was released after that point were albums from each of the side projects but never a true follow-up full group album. So yeah, that’s on the to-do list now… But I wouldn’t expect it for at least a few years. First is get back to real music, then I have a new album with D-Mize & Dee. Rockz in the works, and then finally finish and release Tha Big Yummy’s album… Then back to more real music, then a new MC Randumb & Jewish Dave album, then more real music and THEN… Then maybe finish up The Polar Bear MC’s second album. Maybe.
- The I Hope U Melt (15 Year Anniversary Edition) is now available on CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and all other major digital music stores… BUT I kind of screwed up. Well it’s not really my fault, it’s my distributor, CD Baby’s fault. I have an e-mail in to their support team to hopefully fix this, but since the album’s 57 tracks are separated into 3 “discs” (there’s no physical copies being made but I made the distinction as if there was), iTunes and all the non-CD Baby stores are marking the price at $29.99 (the usual $9.99 x 3 basically). Oh boy. So this album that maybe would have sold a few to old time fans and the strangely curious out there will now cost more than most people spend on music in an entire year haha. I guess note to self: don’t release any multi-disc David Rosen albums haha.
Well there you have it. I wrote about my comedy-rap on my serious music site. I don’t necessarily feel good about it, but at the same time, I think I’d be lying to all of you if I didn’t mention it. So you can check the album out (if you dare) on the Polar Bear website at www.polarbearz.net. And make sure you read that Oral History article on the front page. It’s a fun read.
Thanks for reading and thanks for keeping me away from that nonsense for the past 10 years or so.
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David Rosen is an award-winning music composer. He composes original music for films, commercials, jingles, video-games and all other kinds of media projects. He has a vast music library of original tracks available for licensing and is also available for custom compositions. Contact him on the ABOUT page for pricing and availability for your next project.