Chapter 41: The Devil's Incarnation
Monday, November 2, 2015
Michael woke up feeling... human. The fever had gone down. The congestion that had prevented him from recording 'Paris' the night before had dissipated, leaving only residual tiredness.
The first thing he did was pick up his phone. His Instagram live had been chaos. His feed was flooded with screenshots of his pale, sick face, and 30-second clips of the dark 'Paris' beat.
The comments were a unified clamor.
"Are you okay, Mike?"
"THAT BEAT. OMG, DROP THAT."
"Sounds like the soundtrack to an exorcism. I need it."
The hype he had accidentally created while sick was massive. People now didn't just want 'Paris'; they needed it.
He got out of bed, showered, and made himself the strongest coffee he could. Rest was over. He had a promise to keep.
He sat in his professional studio. He felt strong, filled with a repressed energy. He opened the Ableton project: paris_v1_beat.
The dark, distorted sample flooded his Yamaha monitors. The 808 bass hit his chest. It sounded even more menacing than last night.
This time, his voice was ready. It was clear. He was ready.
He opened the lyrics guide. He knew this wasn't a song he could "sing" melodically. It wasn't sad like 'Star Shopping'. It was aggressive, nihilistic, and arrogant. It was a character.
He had to act, but using real anger. And after days of being sick and frustrated, he had plenty.
Michael stepped into the closet-booth, closed the door, and put on the Sennheiser headphones. The 'Paris' beat started playing on a loop: oppressive, distorted, dark. It was the sound of an abandoned factory.
He opened the text file with the guide. He read the first verse.
And he stopped.
The lyrics were pure street "fronting". 'Gold grill', 'switchblade', 'dumpin' thirty rounds'.
He was none of that. He was a 16-year-old dark-skinned kid living in a rented house in the suburbs who had spent his morning solving algebra equations. He felt like a fraud.
He pressed record and tried to do it.
'Tell me what you know 'bout a motherfucker out the bottom...'
His voice sounded weak, insecure. He sounded like a child playing dress-up in his father's clothes.
He stopped the recording, frustrated. 'No. This isn't working.'
He leaned back in the chair, the beat still pounding in his ears. How could he make this sound real?
He reread the lyrics, but this time, he kept reading. He went past the arrogance, past the "fronting", and reached the end of the verse.
'Suicide, night time, no, we don't fight crime, oh...'
'It's the Grey59 with the real red eyes, and we dyin' inside, ooh...'
'Bodies in fluoride, let the rope untie, just crucify me...'
'Yung Christ wrists sliced...'
And then, he understood.
The arrogance was a mask. The "fronting" of the first lines wasn't a celebration of the gangster life; it was a shield. It was armor built to hide the unbearable pain of the last lines.
The aggression didn't come from strength. It came from despair.
He didn't have to pretend to be a gangster. He just had to channel his own frustration. The rage of being trapped in this universe. The loneliness of his existence. The stress of his multimillion-dollar secret.
He took a deep breath. He pressed record again.
This time, he wasn't "acting". He was channeling.
'Tell me what you know 'bout a motherfucker out the bottom...'
His voice came out like a growl. He thought of the Burger Barn. Of the smell of grease. Of cleaning the toilets. He came from the bottom.
'With a gold grill gleamin', makin' all these hoes problems...'
He adopted the arrogance, the mask. He imagined himself in the future, with the money he knew he would have, rubbing it in the face of everyone who had ever ignored him.
'Stalker, creepin' out the fuckin' dungeon...'
His studio. His cave. The place where he hid from the world.
'Switchblade on 'em, hit the guts like a pumpkin, dumpin'...'
'Thirty rounds off the clip, off rip...'
'Too thick with the stick, bet I won't miss...'
He spat the words, the violence of the lyrics becoming a metaphor for the violence he felt inside.
'Mike real sick, don't talk shit...'
'Whip, whip, like a brick scale on fish...'
The voice was cold, dead. And then, he reached the real part. The confession.
'Suicide, night time, no, we don't fight crime, oh...'
His voice became darker, more real. The "fronting" disappeared, replaced by the truth.
'It's the Grey59 with the real red eyes, and we dyin' inside, ooh...'
He thought of his tribe. Of Chloe, of Victor, of the thousands of "losers" who listened to him. 'We are all dying inside.'
'Bodies in fluoride, let the rope untie, just crucify me...'
'Yung Christ wrists sliced, couple hoes on ice, singin', "RIP"...'
The last line was almost a choked scream. He left all the pain and rage of his new life in that take.
He stopped the recording. His throat was on fire. He was shaking. He listened to the take. It was raw. It was aggressive. And it was full of authentic pain. It was perfect.
Michael took a break. He drank almost a liter of water, his throat burning from the aggressive take. The first verse was ready, a capsule of rage and despair.
He went back to the booth. The beat started again. It was time for the second verse.
This one was different. It was faster, more chaotic, and somehow, more personal. It was the story of the outcast becoming an icon. It was his story.
He recorded the verse with a cold, demonic confidence.
'Ruby was a motherfucking reject...'
His voice came out with a growl. He thought of "Glasses Boy". Of "Zombie". Of the pale, dark-skinned kid who sat alone at lunch. It was him.
'Then I cut my wrists, and now I motherfucking bleed checks...'
The line was a brutal metaphor, but for him, it was almost literal. He had used his pain, his invisible scars, and the world was starting to pay him for it. First in Impact Points, soon in real money.
'Still broke after all the motherfucking weed gets rolled...'
He sang this with a dry laugh. It was his financial reality. Famous on SoundCloud, but still counting pennies for gas and paying rent.
'Hoes askin' if I see a ghost, tell 'em, "No...'
'I just seep smoke when the weed blown"...'
He smiled singing this. It was his private joke. 'If I see a ghost? I am the ghost.'
'She choke from the deep-throat, three feet of rope, lethal...'
'Slay the fuckin' sheep, so evil, I'ma hang myself...'
'And then I get to see home, Ruby a fucking demon...'
The line "then I get to see home" hit him with unexpected force. He sang it not as a suicide threat, but as a desperate longing. The only way to "go home", to his lost universe, was by dying. The idea was so dark and so real that his voice filled with raw emotion.
'Ruby got a cult now, hoes tryna bolt down...'
He thought of Chloe, of Victor, of the thousands of comments on 'crybaby'. He had a cult.
'Ruby the result of a reject from a small town...'
He was the result of a broken universe. A rejection of reality.
'Turned into a demon, I'm evolved now...'
'Loud growl, $now Leopard on the prowl...'
He felt the power in his voice. He wasn't a victim anymore. He was becoming something else. Something dangerous.
'Stay the fuck back, ho, slay the whole pack, ho...'
'Paint the globe black, ho...'
It was a promise. A threat. His plan.
'Soon I will shed this skin, turn to the devil...'
'Then I'll never reminisce.'
The last line. A lie. He knew he would never stop remembering. But it was the armor he needed.
He finished the take, his voice a low growl. He felt powerful. He had taken the pain and turned it into a threat.
Michael stepped out of the closet-booth, his throat on fire. The effort of recording the two verses with such aggression had left him breathless and sweating, despite the cold of the house.
But he wasn't done yet. The outro was missing.
He drank some water, the liquid barely soothing the burn. He went back in. He didn't need lyrics. He just needed energy.
He pressed record and the beat started. This time, he didn't sing words. He just screamed.
'Ayy... uh... ayy...'
He recorded the track over and over, stacking his own voice, screaming the ad-libs with a chaotic and demonic energy. He went out of tune on purpose, screaming in different pitches, creating a one-man choir that sounded like an angry mob.
He stepped out of the booth. Now yes. It was finished.
He spent the rest of the night in producer mode. He had the vocal takes: raw, loud, perfect.
Now, the mix. This wasn't the clean mix of 'White Iverson' or the melancholic one of 'Star Shopping'. This was controlled destruction.
He added the vocals to the base.
The first thing he did was take the 808, which was already aggressive, and push it to the limit. He added a tape saturation plugin and turned up the "drive" knob until the bass stopped being a note and became a wall of distorted noise, a seismic growl.
Then, the vocals. His new Neumann microphone was too good, too clean. It had captured his voice with impeccable clarity.
Michael smiled. Time to ruin it.
He applied the same "Bitcrusher" plugin he used on 'Sodium', but more subtly, just to give his voice a digital, grainy edge. Then, he added more distortion, making his voice sound "broken", as if he were screaming through a blown-out speaker.
Finally, he turned everything up. The mix was in the "red", the main volume meter blinking, a universal sign that the recording was "clipping". Any other producer would have had a heart attack. Michael loved it.
He leaned back and listened to the final song.
It was brutal. It was abrasive. It was a wall of nihilistic sound. It was loud, chaotic, and completely anti-commercial. It was the "ugliest" thing he had ever created.
And it was the coolest thing. It was the perfect polar opposite to 'White Iverson'.
He finished the song. Exported it. paris_final.mp3.
He looked at it on his desktop. It was song number eight.
Eight songs. He was only two songs away from reaching the milestone of ten. Two more songs, and he could unlock the next System Roulette for 25,000 IP.
His current balance was over 80,000. He had the money. He just needed to finish the work.
He closed Ableton. The Ethereum anxiety was still there. But now, he had a new consuming goal: finishing his first catalog.