Sound CheckMadchild of Swollen Members debuts first solo album “Dope Sick” and music video “Monster”
While on his journey to recovering from a heavy addition to drugs like Percocet and OxyContin, Swollen Members' MC Madchild spent approximately 10 months in seclusion writing and preparing for a project that would eventually become his first solo album, "Dope Sick."
"Those 10 months were really needed to get my head back together," the 36-year-old, who lost $3 million to his addiction in roughly four years, told Yahoo! Canada Music. "I forced myself to go back into writing mode and to start recording again and force a new [work related] addiction upon myself."
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He also said, "I want to focus on rapping and being the best MC I can be before it's too late…It's important to me because you can always focus on business and money later, but right now the main focus is my art and becoming a master of my own craft. Coming back to life is the most important thing."
The Vancouver-based hip-hop artist says that he used the creation of his album as his form of therapy instead of joining a rehabilitation program and even though he's almost 23 months sober, he's still realistic about factors that might lead him down the same path again.
"Let's say that I have success over the next couple of years and that I become financially very successful again, which I was before and I lost it all to my addiction. Now that's a time where I'm really going to have to reflect on what I went through," he said. "When you experience success, you are going to want to celebrate, but obviously my new way of celebrating is a lot different than my old one."
"Dope Sick" is an ultra personal album that Madchild says has strong messages about pulling through when life gets tough and rising back up after you've fallen down.
"I want to show the world [with this album] that even when you have the blues and you're going through your hardest times, you can pick yourself back up and get yourself back on track," the MC said. "This album is a display of my self-improvement and I feel like it's me being the best that I've ever been lyrically. I think that's what people in general are concurring with and I appreciate that because that's how I feel about where I'm at lyrically now as an artist. It's like I was reborn creatively."
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One of Madchild's favourite tracks on the album is the song "Monster." The music video has close to 75,000 views on YouTube just four days after its release.
Along with developing his sound and lyrical content, the Vancouver-native has also changed his music video style saying that he now prefers to make clips that are more cinematic in nature.
"I don't necessarily want to do performance videos anymore," he said. "I want there to be a beginning, a middle and an end, like a little mini movie and I couldn't wait to debut the video for 'Monster' because it features an attack of the hipster-eating zombies."
Detailing how he assembled his crew of zombies and hipsters, Madchild said, "I asked my small circle of friends to be in it, so my brother is in it as well as Prevail and Rob The Viking (from Swollen Members) and a lot of people who are close to me."
He also added, "We have these hilarious people dressed up as hipsters, even my girlfriend dressed up as a hipster, and as they are camping we come out of the forest and we slaughter them. It looks like a B-level horror movie from the '80s."
"I'm telling you, from the cover art to the songs that I've heard so far, [this album] is going to blow your mind," Prevail said in a behind the scenes clip of the making of the video.
Check out "Monster" featured below and look for Madchild's debut solo album "Dope Sick," which is currently number one on iTunes in Canada, that dropped today.
(Caution: This video contains coarse language and images that might be disturbing to some viewers)
