GOTiHe Presents: BigNard’s Album Release Part 2 - The ReAnimation
GOTiHe Presents: BigNard’s Album Release - Part 2 - The ReAnimation
This album feels like finding a buried treasure in a hidden tomb of an ancient pharaoh unearthed to bring light to a new era.
The ReAnimation was a project that I thought of after I finished the UnBelievAble song. I was excited and thought I could take all my old music that I didn’t do anything with and update it. Most of the songs were written in the 90s when I was younger, and the music was much different than it is today. This album feels like finding a buried treasure in the hidden tomb of an ancient pharaoh unearthed and brought to light to give a glimpse of the past in the present.
It all started way back when….
My mother, Barbara Hardy, was an exceptional pianist and organist who played for every church you could imagine. She played for Baptist, Catholic, 7th Day Adventist, Pentecostal, if it was Christ based, she played there. She also played for the Apollo, the Yankee Stadium, Bishop Bernard E. Jordan in Newark New Jersey Church and was a Member of the Grace Gospel Singers. Her love was Bethel and St. Cyprians Church in my hometown of Hackensack, NJ. My father William Hardy was a musician as well but for some reason I never knew until the church pianist was out one Sunday while my mom was on the organ. I watched him walk up to the piano and they started playing together and the choir was jumping and shouting. I was like wow, my dad is a superhero, and reminds me of James Bond who can do almost everything professionally, which is also where the BigNard007 comes from along with its spiritual significance as well.
My father served in the Navy and was very technical and purchased an Atari 600XL computer when I was in elementary school, living in the projects. I was the only person in my neighborhood with a computer at that time which changed the direction of my life and opened an entirely new world. I am an IT Infrastructure engineer who loves creating music as a result.
Music was in my blood on both sides of the family, and although my mom was one of the greatest pianists alive, I never truly learned how to play. She was highly religious and never forced the piano on me, which I appreciate.
I give thanks to both my father and mother for their sacrifice and tolerance in raising me and my siblings. My father passed while I was in high school and my mother passed months before the September 11th, 2001, attack on the Twin Towers. I was planning my mother’s birthday celebration at the Windows on the World restaurant at the top of the Twin Towers.
Humble Beginnings…
I played around with music in elementary school, but it wasn’t until middle school when I started rapping. I remember being at a friend’s house and rapping when my friends asked me to do it again. I found myself on the street corner rapping in ciphers, which is a circle formed by a group of people listening and taking turns rapping. Sometimes it was competitive and other times it was just us being fans of each other. Me and my crew would perform at talent shows or talk our way into parties as hired performers just to get on stage. This was before rap was as popular as it is today when there wasn’t social media or the internet, so we did it mostly for fun and entertainment.
One day my cousin called and said that he knows someone who is in the music industry, and they were looking for a rapper to do an album. He mentioned that I rap, and they were interested in speaking with me. I spoke to the gentleman and told him that I just rap for fun and not really a rapper. He asked me to say a few rhymes and to send him a demo.
I was excited but didn’t know how to create a song and asked a few friends to help me with my first song and we came up with a song called “Humble Beginnings”. This was the start of me taking rap seriously. I wrote a few more songs “I’m Getting Wiser” and “Appetizer” and later found the music industry manager was a compulsive liar and was only teenager like us. I was happy because this allowed me to tap into my musical roots instilled by my parents.
What the scene was like back the
During my era rap music was very educational and positive with a lot of different types of rap music to choose from. We learned more Black history from rap than anything close to the little that was taught in school. Being smart was cool so everyone started to educate themselves by increasing their knowledge and vocabulary. I found myself studying things like the command of the English language for word play, science, mathematics, and other topics. The more intelligent your rap was and sounded good the better you were. Due to the competitive nature of hip-hop people would try to make songs that dropped the deepest knowledge or lyrical skills, which made you want to study more. That’s why rappers had names like Doctor, Scientist, Grand Master, teacher, philosopher, intelligent because it was based on school and education.
Rappers had different subjects that they specialized in, like storytelling, scientist, party artist, street life, teachers, battle rappers, funny, and they all sounded unique and different from each other.
The worst thing you could do then was sound like someone else and if you stole another artist’s raps you were considered what we called a wack MC and a biter. Deep thoughts, philosophy, poetry and being unique were critical to back then because the audience and fans didn’t tolerate wack MCs. I listen to music now and I can’t distinguish many of the artists from one another. MCs like Kool Moe Dee preferred not to have beats that were hits because he wanted to showcase his lyrical ability. He was the originator of many rap flows and styles you hear today but many people don’t realize it as the beat is an important part of the song. In fact, some people listen to songs now where the artists aren’t even saying full words or sentences and their music sounds great.
Kool Moe Dee, Grandmaster Flash, Large Professor, Cool G Rap, KRS One just to name a few. If you listen to the lyrics in their songs, they focus on word play, metaphors, similes, double and triple entendre. You must listen between the lines to hear the masterful artform they were creating.
I really put my heart into my music since I was young, so I thought that it was a shame that I didn’t release my song years ago. My goal is to bring my songs that were lying dormant and unheard back to life and reanimate them. So, this is the Afterlife for my songs and hence the album’s name “UnBelievAble - The ReAnimation”!
Check out the pre-release of the album below and let us know what you think?
Key Questions:
What artist did you grow up listening to that influenced you the most?
Can you find metaphors in your favorite song?
How has your past shaped your future?
What is the difference between a metaphor and a simile?
