No Going Back, The Mixtape

No Going Back is Apollo's introduction to the flow and style of E$. The mixtape is more raw and 'in your face' than then subsequent releases and introduces the Spartan mentality/character. The mixtape is designed to tell a cogent story-line implementing the movie 300 to tell the narrative.

   No Going Back by Lyceum Recordz 

Track 1, Save What's Left was inspired by the feeling the song gave me. I actually had the majority of the lyrics written a long-time ago... even before the Edulutoin Album dropped. The song has a sober sentiment and ends with Bill Hicks doing his final sign-off at the last show of his career.

Track 2 is Occupy Wall Street and was made courtesy of DougDoesMusic's beat contest. The inspiration for the song came from my visit to Occupy Wall Street on November 4th and 5th and a girl I meet there named Hannah. (See the DougDoesMusic post on the Occupy Hip-Hop blog for more details).

Track 3 is John Lennon tell'n the world what's up; and track 4, Sleep on Me! is another one of Doug's contest beats. Track 5, Usurpation was just a track I decided to do for Youtube (kind of an experimental thing). I am a big fan of G.O.O.D. Music and enjoy their distinctive style, which is why I used the instrumental. Track 6, Dickless F*cks is another one of Doug's contest beats and enunciates E$'s aggressive style and intimidating ego.

Track 7, No Mistake was the follow up rap/video to the contest entry I did for the 2011 Funk Volume beat contest (below). I wrote the whole thing in only a few hours and didn't spend a long time on production; I still think it sounds great for what it is, so I added it.

Track 8 is a scene from A Beautiful Mind. The scene is where John Nash is eloquently telling a lady of interest that he isn't good with women because he is too brash and 'to the point.' Upon her request, Jon basically asks the lady to have sex with him, rather than continue activities of courtship...which are required by tradition. She proceeds by kissing him. It is a fitting introduction to Track 9, Good D*ck where E$ talks about promiscuous fornication with a female--if she "approve(s) of it"--between verses slamming the 1%.

Track 10, Prepare for Glory is from the movie 300 and introduces track 11, Spartan's Live which is another track made for YouTube.  Spartan's Live is 'nothing nice' and represents the absolute intensity of the (E$)Spartan mentality/character. Spartan's were uncompromising in protecting their freedom and society (at all costs); this track portrays that sentiment with an overly-aggressive delivery. Track 12, My Love is another clip from 300 and is the scene where Leonidas kneels to die by arrow fire after making his last stand. As arrows are being pulled back to fire he remembers the only real thing that matters to him in life is "my queen, my wife, my love." This is to show that, through everything, all the actions taken, they are done because love is the only real thing worth fighting for...

No Going Back: 13 Grab Ya Shawty (The Glitz) - Dionysus , Lyceum Recordz + Deadmau5 by Lyceum Recordz

Grab Ya Shawty
(Source)

Track 13, Grab Ya Shawty is a Dionysian song for parties. I love Deadmau5's music and wrote the lyrics a couple days after hearing the original Ghosts n Stuff instrumental for the first time. At the time I had been hanging out with a few friends who run a DJ business called The Glitz and they do a show called Recreation every Wednesday at club Necto in Ann Arbor. This gave me the inspiration for the hook and why I say, "Welcome to the party, Recreation" in the first verse and then go on to talk about the members, whose names are: The Groove Master (DJ), Ayinde Zuri (DJ), Luke (DJ), and Yoda (MCEE). 

Track 14, Edvis and Track 15, The Truth are more just bonus tracks that don't necessarily fit in with the focus or flow of the rest of the mixtape. Edvis is a house-music track that I 'tagged' for a DJ company in Portugal called Edvis. (See the SoundCloud (Edvis) post on the Occupy Hip-Hop blog for more.) The Truth was another impromptu track that was inspired by my desire to communicate (to my fans) what my day-to-day life is really like and give them a gimps of my motivations and why I do hip-hop. 

No Going Back: 15 The Truth , Lyceum Recordz + Good Music [Kanye West] by Lyceum Recordz

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Visit My Other Blogs: EDULUTION, Occupy Hip-Hop, E$ Weaponry,
FREE The WEED, and The Psychosocial Philosopher