MolinaSoleilI wrote “Letter to Izriah” during the summer of 2005. I was going through a lot, personally, trying to make sense of the circumstances I was given.
I was writing to reclaim my life. My sun was at the heart of the equation. I was contemplating death on a very serious level. Was it death, physically? What is death, spiritually? If I wasn’t around someday, how would that affect my sun?
Being a father changes the way you think about your life, the way you think about your actions. Your legacy becomes what you pass on to your seeds.
What would my sun need to know in the case of my absence? What was I leaving to guide him? Memories… but he was only two years old at the time.
My music… that’s what I was leaving to my sun. Something that he would be able to track down and listen to someday in the case I was no longer living.
I began writing Letter to Izriah. What were the lessons I needed to pass down? Raw lessons. No sugar-coating life in this world. I needed to speak honestly to my sun, for both of us.
I wrote the first version of this song out of thin air, without a beat.. I revised a few lyrics early in 2007, recorded the vox and sent them to Mannequin Rituals.
Mannequin Rituals wrote the beat to the lyrics. We recorded late in 2007 and “Letter to Izriah” was released on Up Before the Sunrise in 2008.
Ever since, I’ve been thinking about writing and recording a song that celebrates the other side of fatherhood…
Tags: Father, Hip-Hop, Mannequin Rituals, Molina, reality rap, Son
