Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
The Newcastle hip-hop artist tells us about what inspired his latest, lockdown inspired, single he wrote alongside rapper Too Common
Newcastle rapper Scrannabis teams up with the hip-hop and grime inspired Too Common, to drop a fresh new track, The Norm (available via all good streaming sites from 11th December). Inspired by old school hip-hop but with a distinct contemporary flavour, the song was written after the news of a second lockdown and is based around the idea that despite our realisation that we can’t control the future, we can still miss how things used to be and prepare for normality’s return. The Norm is a wistful and evocative listen with warm production, hope-tinged lyrics and an imperturbable vocal delivery that will have you putting up your 2021 calendar with an air of optimism in your heart.
Here, Scrannabis tells us a little more about the inspiration behind the track…
The inspiration for our track “The Norm” came around quite organically actually. We’d both been spending a lot of time in the studio with one another and had been talking about putting something out for some time. The beat itself was made during a late night studio session, Produced, mixed and mastered all in house, it was definitely very much a collaborative effort from not only both myself and Too Common, but also a few others from NE Rising and was created fairly rapidly.
The actual theme for the track came the next day while writing. We were both struggling to talk about something fresh and what was still relevant to us because of covid-19, and we began talking about how much we missed being able to go out and play shows and see all the faces in the crowd. It’s from this conversation, the opening line of ‘’And you know I really miss the stage” came from. The first version was a little bit more explicit, but we decided that swearing in the first three seconds of the verses was just a tad unnecessary.
As well as Covid inspiring the track itself, we wanted to take it a step further with the artwork as well. We wanted to illustrate that things really aren’t as they should be at the moment, and reflect on the times. That’s why on the cover you can see us waiting for public transport wearing masks and being socially distant from one another. Unfortunately, the new Norm.
We can’t wait to share this song with everyone and even more excited to play it live someday!
