Life, sometimes, pushes us to do incongruous things, such as taking an interest in Mesopotamian mythology, drowning in alcohol a heartbreak and recording a solo album. Here is Tiamat, my love, first disc of Greg Beaudin, revealed under the stage name of Snail Kid in Dead Obies, then within the Brown Family with his brother, Jam, and dad Robin Kerr. A tightly woven story of the realization of a breakup and the questioning that ensues, the album makes peace with the chaos that the rapper’s life is still a bit like.
“It smells like you when I come home / Good thing done”, drops Beaudin from the first seconds of Tiamat, my loveshort album, but dense, to be listened to in two stages.
Side A, Greg takes the full measure of the decay in which he has lived since 2018, since his girlfriend ended their relationship of ten years, with titles like chaos again and the succulent funk ballad tinged with blues not you again — a collaboration with Les Louanges who, when he passes through Montreal, frequents the neighboring studio of Beaudin and the other members of the Dead Obies, that of accomplice Félix Petit, collaborator on the album.
How are you today, Greg? He bursts out laughing. “Yes, yes, it’s going great! But this story, I lived it for real. But just to have finally finished this project helped me a lot. Until the pandemic, I didn’t realize that this breakup was affecting me so much. » The depression that led to drinkingplaced at the end of side A, a collaboration with singer-rapper-composer Bazzart.
“Frankly, I’m not a big drinker — that refrain is Bazzart’s idea,” Beaudin says, sitting at a bar in the middle of the afternoon in front of a Bloody Mary, which could also have been a Virgin Mary, we we didn’t try to find out. “I used the theme of alcohol to evoke any form of debauchery” serving to numb the pain which, inevitably, would become the raison d’être of Tiamat, my love.
New identity
“The breakup coincided with when I started writing songs for a possible solo album, when we were doing the Brown Family. I wrote without precise ideas or intention; just to compose and, for the first time, to assume that I was doing it for myself alone. I wrote a lot of songs to finally realize that the common denominator between them was this rupture. »
This tale of a dozen short songs is surprisingly cohesive, considering the multitude of musical styles it encompasses. Soul, funk and the breakbeats of hip-hop rhythm are the foundations of the record, which deliberately avoids contemporary rap tendencies.
” I did a burnout of trap and music purely made on the computer, drops Beaudin. I was tired of hearing that. I was also inspired by darker stuff — Tame Impala, Radiohead. I listened to a lot of music outside of rap, to get away from the recurring thematic codes of rap, like the ego or doing the party. I felt like I had it all figured out. Which comes, I guess, with a kind of midlife crisis, the search for my identity. »
This journey “ended up forming the heart of the album, which took me a while to achieve”, continues Greg. “The album really took shape when I came to terms with the fact that a lot of the old material was out of date, but also when I came to terms with the fact that the album wouldn’t meet the expectations of some of my public or that of the Dead Obies, who would expect sounds to do the party. Once I accepted that, it freed me. »
Break away from the chaos
At the same time, Greg delves into ancient spirituality. Tiamat, a Mesopotamian goddess represented as a kind of dragon, embodies the forces of chaos, “but also the origin of all life, says the rapper, the life that comes from this feminine force — the concept with which I work is the opposition between order and chaos, the nature of man to bring order into chaos” and that of the musician to restore a little order in his own, starting by cleaning up his apartment so that it doesn’t smell like his ex when he goes back there.
I did a “burn-out” of trap music and pure computer music. I was tired of hearing that.
In summary, Greg, are you telling us that your ex is a freak? Another burst of laughter. “That’s so not what I meant! My ex is absolutely not a monster, ”said the one who wanted to avoid personalizing the breakup, without going into details, without directly naming the ins and outs of the relationship. “We are on good terms today, my ex is an exceptional person. Beyond the breakup, this record, it’s me who deal with depression — or, at least, with a hard time in my life. My desire was more simply to talk about rupture to break the link between me and the desire to be in chaos and drunkenness. »
On the B side, generally more rap, Greg takes control. first on big boy, a song inspired by a new flame, “which gave me hope to come out of my dark period. It illustrates the end of the pandemic, the desire for brighter songs. Obies colleague Joe Rocca lands on the melancholy Fugazithen friend Eman on Woah there!before that, on the squishy funk titled Usthe Brown clan comes to support the tenor voice of Beaudin.
The page is turned. Greg Beaudin will present Tiamat, my love in concert, but he is also working, with his brother and his father, on Brown’s next album, “a project really different from the previous ones – less rap, more sung, born from the father’s musical ideas”, on which Félix Petit is collaborating Also. And the Dead Obies? The band is still close-knit, although inactive these days, 20Some, Rocca and Beaudin working on their own material. “We have the idea of going back to the studio all together to record a next album”, announces Greg.