Christmas 2010

This has been the best Christmas ever. My beautiful baby girl, Chloe Eliah Fletcher, was born on December 17th. We got to celebrate her first Christmas together. A lot of people say God is good. I believe that God is so far beyond "good" that it's almost an insult to say He is good. God is amazing. I can't even believe how far my life has come in the last couple years. I'm a father now and engaged to the most wonderful woman I've ever met. My fiance's daughter, Tabby, is an intelligent, talented, gorgeous, and sweet girl. She's fun to hang out with. Her sense of humor is great and she makes me laugh all the time. For years every night before I went to bed I would pray to God that He would someday bestow upon me the blessings of having a family. For a while there I lost my faith in those prayers. I listened to people who wanted to drag me down and started to think that I wasn't good enough to have a family. I can't nail down an exact moment where I started to believe that God would honor my prayers to have a family, but I can tell you it all started when I made changes in my life. These were changes that had to be made in order for me to be the kind of husband and father that God has called all of us men to be. I'm proud of these changes but I also realize that without the strength that comes from the Lord that I wouldn't have been able to do it in the first place. I don't feel that going into detail on this particular subject would be in my best interests or the best interests of my family. I have learned over the years that there are many people in the church that love to gossip and start rumors. Some pastors can't even be trusted with information that was discussed in private counseling sessions. For that reason I won't go into into any further detail. Just know that Fletch is focused on being the best Christian he can be, which in turn will make him the best husband and father he can be.

I'm also excited about my music again. I released 3 projects in 2010. My goal is to release 2 in 2011. The Mergence album with Jay Money of Posafe Beats and Roach is almost finished. The long delayed Rhyme Commission (also with Jay Money) album Poetry in Motion only needs a few more songs. So when I time find between work and taking care of my daughter I'll try and wrap these up. That doesn't give me a whole lot of time though.......does it? Merry Christmas ya'll

Conversations

Conversations is finally done. I can't tell everyone how great it feels to have this album finished and out for people to listen to. I recorded the tracks for Conversations more than 5 years ago. This project was very precious to me for a number of reasons. For one it was very personal. On this record I told real stories of things that I had gone through over about a 2-year period. This CD was also a concept album. I have long been a fan of concept albums. The rap concept albums that made me really want to write one of my own were Masta Ace's Disposable Arts, Prince Paul's A Prince Among Thieves, and Jonathan Toth from Hoth's Brainwashing. These records all achieved what they set out to accomplish. They told a story through music in a way that was entertaining enough to make you listen to the whole album. The only way to truly listen to a concept album is by listening to it all the way through, or "front to back". I can't count the amount of CD's I've listened to in the last several years that have what I call "filler" material on them. These are songs that are complete crap that artists throw on their album just to take up space and up that total track listing. I'm not sure who it was in rap that started the whole 20 plus track album but it seems to be the norm now. I'm just as guilty as anyone. The Rhyme Commission Cerebral Poetry record has 17 tracks, Beats 2 The Rhymes has 20, and Conversations has 19. My belief is that all of my projects have a flow to them that make them not feel like "long" albums. I hope and pray to God that no one listens to them and finds any "filler" tracks. Conversations has a definite flow to it. Achieving that flow was part of the reason why it took so long to finish. There are songs and skits that didn't make the cut. Getting the mix the way I heard it in my head took time. But let me give you the main reasons why this record was delayed for 5 years.

For those who don't know, Conversations was in essence the 2nd Rhyme Commission record with Jay Money of Posafe Beats. We started working on it pretty much right after we released Cerebral Poetry. It became clear to both of us that the material was going to be so deeply personal that it would make more sense for it to be a Fletch solo project. Jay Money has always been more concerned about the artistic side of the business so he had no problem with the Fletch name being front and center. When the recording sessions and editing began to wrap up I started to realize something. At this point Jay Money and I were doing a fair amount of shows. I was making more connections in the scene and felt like we were pretty well established in St. Louis. For whatever reason, the people in St. Louis don't support the local music scene much. I have heard that rock bands get more support than the rappers but even they struggle to sell CD's. Conversations was by no means a "commercial" sounding product. There was little to no way to translate just a few of the songs from this "epic tale" to a live performance. Neither Jay Money or I had the money to throw into a project that wouldn't break even. Yes, Boondock Records is just us people! For all these reasons I decided to do another album to basically fund Conversations. My goal was to make a record that was catchy enough to get people to buy it, but rugged enough to still be a Fletch album. That's how Beats 2 The Rhymes came about. That be another flog all in itself.

I recorded Beats 2 The Rhymes in 2006. That's when the next delay kicked in. This is when I met my now ex-wife. I have no desire to go into details here. Let's just say I lost a few years of my life that I can never get back. I had to give up doing music during this time because she hated it so much. I wanted to make my marriage work but sometimes things just can't work. Especially if one person wants the other to give up everything they love and become someone else. Once that dreadful time of my life was over I was able to finish Beats 2 The Rhymes. I had the CD release party at Blueberry Hill and it was wonderful. I remember telling my fiance Gail......if that was the last things I ever do in music, I was good. That's how great it was to me.

It was also time for me to step back from music again. I needed to focus on work and my soon to be family. Gail is about to have our daughter. We are getting married next year. And I also have a new job that actually takes a lot of concentration and effort on my part! Drawing counter tops in the CAD department at Stonetrends keeps my mind busy. My daughter Chloe is only a few days or weeks from being born. That's why I'm on this kind of mad rush to put out some projects that have been sitting around collecting dust. I'm not going to have time to do music once she's here. I don't think I'm much going to want to either. I've been waiting my whole life to have children. Just the next chapter in life of Fletch.........