In the summer of 2024, I was making drives from San Diego to Los Angeles every other week. I was working on the YOU OWE US WITH INTEREST album with Fashawn and ProducerTrentTaylor and was just networking with artists, dapping up record store owners, working with my apparel manufacture on new concepts, and getting photography and content all over the city before we made the trek back to SD. We were building an album and we’re locking down features for the Fash & Trent album.
One day I drove up solo to go see some samples of a couple of new hoodies, tees, and towels and I swung by Murs’ pad on my way back home. Murs and I go way back. We used to talk rap, wrestling, baseball, or whatever. I think we’re first linked up in 1998 if my memory serves me correct. Damn… that’s 28 years?
Murs and I worked together on his Speak n Spell EP with Wiardon which was the first release on our record label back in 2023. Murs asked me if I wanted to be involved in putting out a project and learning how it all worked and I was down. Through the process and over that time, I started meeting new people, working with new people, and basically just getting a better understanding of the music industry. Murs wanted to see where I could take a record label so that’s what I’ve done since 2023… I guess late 2022 is the real timing… So basically I’ve just run with the ball.
So I pulled up to Murs’ driveway that sunny day in 2024 and dap him up and he tells he has somebody to meet. Then, literally out of nowhere, Propaganda pops out with bags of Terraform coffee and gives me an instant-bro high-five hug and we all just start chopping it up. Murs knew I was starting to build with the west coast underground hip hop vets and lining them up with dope production and he wanted me and Prop to meet. Then Murs told me, “Prop needs his 9th Wonder album” I was like… okay… I see where you’re at right there just with 6 words and my brain started going… Then Murs says… He should be with somebody like Black Milk.
A part of me is standing in that driveway like, does Murs think I can just hit up Black Milk out in the D and be like… Can you send me some beat packs? Maybe he did? Or maybe Murs knew him and was going to connect me? Or maybe I was just going to do what I always do and just figure out ways through emails, content, DM’s, managers, or whatever to get to one of the best producers my ears have ever heard?
We dapped each other up and I began my trip back down to San Diego wondering what just happened in that driveway… Black Milk? I was in my car thinking about what I knew from Propaganda as an emcee and then I was thinking of Black Milk… As I matched the two up in my mind I thought that maybe it wouldn’t be the best duo what we could do… I mean, what do I know but I think rapping over Black Milk beats is really only for Black Milk himself and maybe Danny Brown or Elzhi or somebody out of Detroit… But then I kept coming back to Oddisee. Propaganda over some Oddisee production would be really dope. But again… I didn’t know Oddisee… I mean, I did bump into him walking through Bedstuy back in 2019 but that was a random occurence… or wait… was it?!?!?
I got home to the fam and the next morning I started looking into how I could get a hold of Oddisee… I DM’d him, I reached out to his management team, I emailed the website, I would have faxed something if I had to because now I was fixated on starting to listen to Oddisee beat tapes so I could pick 10 gems for Prop to do his thing over.
During this same time, I told Prop we needed to get him on YOU OWE US WITH INTEREST but the deluxe version because on the LP we already had like 15 artists in the mix… I remember hitting Trent up and telling him… Trent, we need Prop on the album… I could literally hear Trent pause and roll his eyes as Tim is once again trying to get another feature in… I think Fash and Trent were both like, Tim, we gotta finish this at some point… I remember hitting up our engineer Crispy Akiyama and me telling him we had another song… Again, the long pause and sigh… But I got everybody onboard… So I hit Prop and got him the “Toys 4 Tots” beat and this happened like 2 days later…
In 2024, I got 16s back from so many dope rappers and it was always crazy having these files on my phone over crazy Trent production… I would bump them in the whip and trip that I had these hidden gems… That Prop verse tho?? Easily one of my favorites because of how much passion he has in that delivery… Go listen to that verse fam… If you don’t start to stand up out of your seat I think you might need new headphones.
Trent heard it and was like, goddamn Tim… You were right… We needed this verse. And from there, Trent just started building with Prop in the most organic way in the late Summer into Fall of 2024. I was so busy trying to put out this album while keeping my own mental health somewhat decent and I was burning out… I was getting angry… I wasn’t sleeping… I was off my meds… I was totally exhausted… and then in October of 2024, I sunk into another deep depression and went into my dark cave dreading another dip into the dark valleys of my mind… If you know me, you know I can be a bit bipolar and very manic at times but the flipside is I get really lowwwwwwwwwwwww… I slipped into my dark tunnel for about 6 months… Suicidal thoughts…. Yelling… Screaming… Crying… Filled with guilt… No sleeping… Weed didn’t hit… Pills made me worse… so I was just winging it without any wings… Meanwhile… Trent and Prop were working on an album together… Trent was on the craziest sample hunt I had ever seen.
I went into a mental health program called TMS in February of 2025 as I didn’t know where else to go… The klonopin I was on weren’t good… That’s not a good drug… but the psychiatrist had me on them because he was addicted to them as well and he was a weird fuck… I didn’t want another round of new pills either… Going to the bathroom sink each night and popping medication to help me chase the clouds away was rough… So I was doing an FDA approved treatment for depression and partially for anxiety. I would go into this facility 5 days per week for 6 weeks and get my brain tapped my magnetic pulses… not many people know about it because the pharmaceutical industry needs you to stay on pills so all these rich fucks can keep making money… really sad tbh…
I remember being at one of the treatments when Trent was in LA with Prop working on the album and Prop hit me up and just said… Hey… Are you alright man? I had a lot of people really concerned about me, worried about me, trying to help but when you can’t see the light, what can you do… Prop hitting me up that day made me stop… It was like somebody grabbing my arms and saying, ARE YOU ALRIGHT? I wasn’t… But I was doing everything I could to get up… Those Prop words where he was big bro checking in on me but from an unbiased position really helped me. Prop wasn’t just trying to gas me up or anything like that… he just got right to it and it resonated with me. But I still was in the trenches… I was starting to move around a bit… I was starting to see a little bit of light again… and Trent sending over some of the tracks from the album him and Prop were working on were dope… “Gas You Up” specifically. The words just hit different… The beat just felt good too… This was spiritual hip hop… this was something real… So as I was starting to crawl again, it was songs like “Gas You Up” that helped me. They can help you too.
It took me around 5 -6 months of being down again to finally start getting up… I really don’t want to fall again and just know that it is a daily battle to maintain at times… but when you get older and wiser, failure still scares you but your stripes gained over the years help you cope with anxiety and depression better… help you cope with your life better… help you be better… so when tracks like “Don’t It Feel Good” come on, you actually FEEL something with the beat… the Prop verse… the Derek Minor verse… the track… fam… go listen… go watch… this is the type of music that heals people… it heals friendships… it can help heal relationships… this is feel good music.
And as we grow into adulthood and really just get older and greyer in general, we have to do everything we can to bury the anger… bury the hate… we gotta chill out and I’m looking in the mirror at myself here… We’re “Not in Danger” if we take care of ourselves… take care of our homies… take care of our loved ones… Let that bear out of its cage… Get rid of the anger or it’s going to maul you where you’ll have to leave it all to bear.
I have fallen and will fall again… But I always get up stronger… and I want you to as well. We want you to. We all have to get better together so we can live long lives for our kids and be good role models to our friends and families to help grow the next round of seeds who can carry on our legacy. This is music for to help you wherever you are at life. The beats are layered production that sink into your soul and the lyrics help give you perspective from Prop and Trent along with some of our friends. I am better… I hope you are too. This is music for your ears when you need it most and I hope it does something for you like it does with me.
THIS IS OUR FELLOWSHIP is our now wherever you stream music. Physicals on the way…