Rosemary's Baby by Tawobi

Normally when I start getting the idea that I’m making an album I’ll just keep making songs until I’m spent on that idea or sound. What doesn’t make the album will usually turn into a small run of e.p’s. I’d been so focused on this one album since 2018 I didn’t know what to do with the other records. I was just going to put them all out as singles like Donald Trump, Who Cares and UhHuh. But when December 2024 came along my manager gave me an idea, my big homie and mentor left me a voicemail and I got sober (mostly).

It all started back in June of 2024, 8 months after our first independent tour. Coming back home I quickly lost my job I was depressed and depleted. I had done what I was worried about doing on ‘Black Saturday'. I’d swung my leg too many times without resting. I finally broke. I hadn’t been paying much attention to myself let alone taking care of me and ended up with some health issues just as I was getting work again. I was on anti fungals for a bunch of infections and my drinking had become the worst its ever been (a bad combination if you want to keep your liver). With the stress of barely getting by on unemployment, combined with changes in streaming and social media affecting my monthly income and engagement. Show bookings slowing up to an alarming rate, family drama, allowing a friend going through their own spiral to live with me and approaching 30, I was drowning. I was down to just weed alcohol and mushrooms but I started blacking out more consistently than I’d like to admit. The medication I was on just made it easier to do and harder on my body. I visited family for a weekend and would forget I ever went down there a few months later. I drank til I passed out every night and woke up on the floor every morning.

Things started to look a little brighter around October of that year though. I had finally gotten a job and the band I’m a part of (Violent Highs) was about to drop its first e.p. The band had been getting an interesting amount of attention and was something that had started to take on a life of its own. But if I’m being honest that had been slowing down too. The e.p felt like the only thing keeping us hanging on. I started dating again after 6 months of being broke and feeling disgusting. I had just started seeing someone I’d known for a while and things finally felt bright, light and hopeful again. That ended. I found out the band didn’t want to tour.
My music seemed at a stand still and this was my first year not taking a step forward after 3 years of consistent momentum. There was no SXSW, no Kill Tony, no meeting my idols, no tour, no big write ups or platform promotion it was just one release after another with dwindling response. And it was all I had. All I had to show for 9 years of work. I felt like I had failed and that all of this was coming to an end. That maybe my best times were behind me and I had wasted them all. It was the first time I’d thought about killing myself in a long time. The last time was when my friend was killed around 2022. I used that moment as an excuse to be a shitty person and dive further into my substance abuse and escapism. So here I was again. Was I going to allow life to break me, to do what I’ve always done and run diving into a level of escapism I’m not sure I could come back from? How had it worked out for me so far? I got shaded one last time. Cried a bunch. Texted my ex and then began the process. My first 24 hours sober I had a dream that left me crying when I opened my eyes. Within that first month I put this together.

Rosemary’s Baby is a title me and my manager have been holding onto for a while. It’s my mothers name and a play on perception. Who are those that have been demonized in America? The world at large even since the trans Atlantic slave trade that started this whole thing? What happens when you make demons out of your victims? They come back to haunt you. The concept started coming together after a mentor of mine left me a voicemail after I didn’t pick up the phone. Its the intro of the album and one hell of a tone setter that sparked an idea. Me and my music have always been a magnet and safe space for myself and other weirdo’s, outsiders and people on or around the fringe of society in one way or another who don’t feel heard. So I decided to put it out there on social media for people to leave me a voicemail. No specific point goal or purpose other than to get some weight off their chest. Whatever was on your heart that day leave it on my line. I saw this as an opportunity to not only involve my community but give a voice to the voiceless. Even if you aren’t an artist, entertainer, influencer here is a chance to have that experience and share a piece of you.

Black Saturday was a comic book cover. Almost a super hero version of myself, the me I created to withstand shows, events and high pressure studio sessions with dozens of artist fighting for the opportunity to hop on a record. None of that was natural for me. I love playing shows but I hate crowds and have high anxiety which was why I was drinking so much, chain smoking L’s and popping adderal especially in those studio sessions. The real me is in the first record on ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, ‘Now (Thats What I Call Music)’. ‘I used to never leave the house, held up in my room with a pill and an ounce’. I’m an isolationist at heart and I keep my circle small. Especially during this time AND when I originally wrote the record (sometime between 2018-2022). There was no more playing around no time to hang out if you weren’t on my type of time and being productive in some way I didn’t have you in my life like the outro says ‘get out my way now I’ma get it.’ As the blues sample plays out at the end the first voicemail from my dad appears calling me by my family name ‘hey Oldman, where the hell are ya?’.

I had a conversation with my dad around this time and it was the first time since I was a kid that he had ever, I wouldn’t say doubted me but regretted encouraging me. If you’ve been listening to my music since 2020 you know he is the narrating voice of my album ‘F.A.T.E’ the one teaching us all the lesson of eating the elephant and pursuing your dream one step/bite at a time. I ended up recording him while he was talking and sliding this audio into the end of the song ’13’ I wrote right around the time me and the other core members of HBC moved into our first house together in 2016. The whole first verse was a letter I wrote to myself on reasons not to commit suicide one night at 3 am on the floor of my closet sized room drinking robatussin to get myself off of drinking syrup. This is one of 3 records I got from Johnny Polygon in 2015/2016 and the only song I’ve ever released that I didn’t originally write to a beat. I wrote it just for me. If one of my friends and consistent collaborators Andrew Vickery hadn’t heard it it most likely would have never seen the light of day.

As the song ends the theme music to rosemary’s baby (a sample that plays throughout the project) begins to play as my dads voice from our conversation that night of doubt begins to play ‘I don’t know all your struggles by any stretch but I know that you struggle with shit. So then in an ideal world I’m thinking should I have encouraged him to go a different path? I just keep telling you to do it do it do it. And sometimes I wonder if that was a bad thing’.

What follows this is a string of messages that I gathered from when I began to DM people my number who wanted to participate in the experience. The first is a young woman I met at a Violent Highs show expressing her own issues with her mental health and depression. The next a person relating to me (and the intro of the album) the rough year 2024 had been and thanking me for reaching out when their friend died, acknowledging that whats important is community. And the last is a message of hope and encouragement. To this day I still have no idea who the last message is from but whoever you are thank you. Not only did I need it to finish this album but I needed to hear it.

Right after the clicking sound of the ending of a message plays is one of my favorite songs I’ve released so far. ‘(Cult)ure’ featuring J.U.S from Bruiser Brigade, a person and a group I’ve been looking up to, watching and listening to since I was in high school almost 13 years ago. A poetic ending and affirmation after a stint of doubt and darkness. And, even though I went broke on it and lost my job right after, the only reason I got that verse in the first place was because of the tour stop we set up in Detroit in October 2023. Give and take, loss and gain. Equivalent exchange. If ignorance is bliss what is knowledge? This whole album is about finding purpose within a total lack there of. Belief within doubt. All it cost me was everything I was. Who are you when the chips are down? When there is nothing left? I am Rosemary’s Baby.

To the child in us all. May we remember we need to learn how to love and parent ourselves before we can do for anyone else.

Alternative rapper, punk rock vocalist, producer and Co-owner of Philly's local independent record label and artist conglomerate HBC (Highest Basement Collective). Rosemary's only begotten sun.

Booking: rileyofhbc@gmail.com

Inquiries: tawobihbc@gmail.com

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