Words that Randomly Flip
By Ali Bey


I’ve sort of known Pesky for close to a year before I knew he made music. I had about 2 songs that I wrote to Kanye West and Dr. Dre beats (shackles & scams) I needed & wanted original music for them. I’m not really sure how the conversation came up, but while attending a Gray Kid show, I was put on notice that he had some beats that I should hear. The next day we met up at the Mark Ecko block party where he presented me with a production reel that had 20 joints on it. I didn’t vibe with all of what I heard but I knew the ones I liked were fire and if they weren’t Hot97 single material they worked well with my song writing(like scams). Scams & Shackles were the first songs recorded, they were like weights lifted off my shoulders, I hadn’t recorded in a very long time and those sessions were like therapy because I love recording and making songs. I wrote Carefree and Randomly Flip in the next 2 days and recorded them on the 2nd day. Funky Sh!t was a verse from 1997 with a make shift hook on a crazy Pesky cut that the Gray Kid and Kobayoshi jumped on, we felt the vibe was classic hip hop, Pesky even got on to do an intro(“finishing chewing and slip under the covers with this joint!”). It was a great time, I experimented with song structure because I was tired of the 16/hook/16/hook aesthetic of mainstream hip hop, although some of my songs have that structure I’ve always tried to push the envelope in that regard when working on this project.

On My Greezy changed chorus’s like 3 times before it felt right, even then I wasn’t sure about it. I decided to let folks hear it to get opinions, some hated it, and some loved it. Like any sane person I decided to focus on the love. The chorus had to grow on Pesky and to this day he still wants to mix it over, but I thought I was good so we left it alone.

| next page