"Let Me Breathe"

Backstory of one of my personal favorite tracks, now on Bandcamp. Original performance vid and music vid. 🌬

This song was made in 2018 and was inspired by 03 Greedo’s song Rude & Zoning. My friend had just showed me 03’s “First Night Out” project and I was extremely inspired. He was a breath of fresh air since Young Thug came out in 2014.

03’s raspy delivery and realness inspired me more to be myself and what I was going through at the time on the record.

It’s a shame 03 got locked up at his prime. I think he would have really changed the game more than he did already. #FREE03

“Let Me Breathe” is about having my own space and at the same time my dealing with asthma. Breathing emotionally and breathing physically.

This song I made with anticipation spring 2018, it was a Friday night and the music just came through me, it was one of those where I held my excitement back because I wanted the energy to be as potent as possible when I performed it. Usually if I’m excited about a song I’ll show it to a close friend right away but this was different.

My friends and I at the time were hosting an open mic called Take The Mic in Harlem every Tuesday night, gearing up for a big event we were hosting across the nation that September.

Tuesday came, I got off work from an after school program in the Bronx I was working at the time, I had brought my equipment to work including a guitar and interface, took the train down to central Harlem on 116th street and prepared myself.

I listened to everyone who went before and enjoyed their performance and made sure to not eat anything, as I found too much food before a performance can hinder the energy from coming through purely, and I like to give myself a good reward after doing something that requires a lot of energy.

I performed last out of everyone, and started with a simple folk song. Moved to play the song and the crowd was happy. All the energy and excitement I had for the song I let it out at that moment and it was the more profound moment I had with an audience. Here’s a 1 min clip of that moment.

After that response and my own feeling I knew I needed to take it further.

My good friend Marco offered to film a music video so we did that, released 7/7/18. Then I was hanging out with my friend Japan, I played it for him in the car and he was really inspired by it, he wanted to hop on it, so I got him on and he just tied it together in a nice and unique way.

It was my first song on streaming platforms and I hold it as one of my most important works.

Another day Japan & I both performed it at TTM:

Eventually I have an entire project centered around this song with other pieces made around the same time, but that won’t be out for a few years because I need to catch up on releasing other tracks at the moment.

In the meantime I hope you enjoyed this story and if you like the song you can purchase it on Bandcamp!

Have a great day ☀️🐬🌬 Below are photos from that day (of the first video)

Photos by Marco Giannavola