Nocando – Alaska [video]
New video by Nocando “Alaska” produced by Nate Fox.
Directed By:
Nova Rockafeller
Kavan the Kid
“I’d rather be alone and know that I have to fend for myself, tooth and claw than to be under the impression that others have my best interest at heart when that’s not the case.”
I initially wrote this song for a friend who said he was experiencing writers block over a beat he played me after an event. He kinda got pissed when I showed it to him and said the song was maybe more about myself than himself. I thought I was spot on. He could be right, we were kind of similar. He kept the beat because he was magically out of writers block and I sat around with these lyrics for a year or so.
A year later I hung with Nate Fox and he shot me a couple of beats. I made use of both of them. I used one for Alaska and the other for a song I wrote in honor of my friend the Late Ikey Owens.
The song lyrics aren’t all to be taken literal. When I say that “I fell in love with a stripper” – It’s to drive home the point that Im taking risks with my love and no good can come of this “there’s no happily ever after.”
When I say I have a “bad feeling I got a glass ceiling I pray I won’t hit it, won’t catch my ass kneeling.” Seems self explanatory to me but I’ll expound. At the time I felt the limits of my art form and my scene. I’d seen the top of LA underground rap (project blowed), the Low End Theory scene (local beat scene hub) or battle rap. These three things gave me a sense of belonging and purpose but came with their stigmas and confines. “Battle rappers can’t make music” “project blowed is dead” “the music in beat scene is too weird” being affiliated with those things gave people a chance to form opinions about what it is I do without really listening. You “won’t catch my ass kneeling” cause I really didn’t feel confined enough to need to pray or wish that these stigmas didn’t exist, I feel as if I can something to change that stuff.
Finally the Alaska Analogy can be explained simply. It’s about being apart of a group and operating by the groups laws and rules and culture but being physically separate. It’s grown man shit, it’s about having independence but having to deal with the loneliness that comes with it. It’s about the necessary growing pains of someone coming into their own.
