Bakar is making his Genius debut on Verified dissecting his hit song “Hell N Back.” The song has had a recent resurgence with ATL songstress Summer Walker hopping on the viral track. Four years after it’s release the song is the British singer-songwriters first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at number 53. The Jake The Snake and Beach Noise produced song is also off Bakar’s debut EP Will You Be My Yellow?.
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MusicTranscript
00:00I always talk about my music as like, light at the end of the tunnel music.
00:03Helen Beck is like the epitome of that.
00:12I always would shy away from this song.
00:13In my head, I was like, I don't want to be defined by one song.
00:16Fast forward a couple years from that, I had this moment.
00:20I would just see the look in people's eyes with this song.
00:22I was just like, I almost felt guilty about how I was looking at the song.
00:26So I ended up writing this letter to Helen Beck, basically being like, I apologize.
00:30I apologize for how I've treated you, how I've looked at you, and almost how I've disregarded
00:35you.
00:36And I do love you.
00:46The Mountain Dew thing, I've actually seen people that really write deep dissertation
00:50level kind of explanations on what I mean about that.
00:53I didn't mean much about it.
00:55Honestly, I got to America, I saw Mountain Dew everywhere else, I hadn't seen it before.
00:59It looked like lava.
01:00You know what I mean?
01:01Like green lava.
01:13Before I even made the song Helen Beck, I knew that I was going to make a project called
01:17Will You Be My Yellow.
01:18I had done this painting with a friend of mine that was called Will You Be My Yellow.
01:21I just took a yellow paintbrush, and I just painted the whole thing yellow, and then with
01:24my finger I wrote, Will You Be My Yellow.
01:26And so when I made Helen Beck, I was like, this is the single to Will You Be My Yellow.
01:41My friend that I was saying I did that painting with, he passed away not that long before
01:47I made this song.
01:48And then there was also the fact of whatever scenario I was in with the female that I like.
01:53So those two emotions gave me this oomph to just like, you know, maybe I wouldn't even
01:58have said something with that much weight.
02:00Like, save my life.
02:01That's quite dramatic.
02:02It's almost like I realized, damn, whoa bro, you went too far, who'd have known you'd fly
02:06my kite.
02:07It's like, wait, wait, wait, chill, chill, chill, chill.
02:10Let's get back to the beat.
02:24I write songs from a hip hop place.
02:33I'm not a rapper per se, but I write songs from that place.
02:37It's a four bar hook.
02:39And when I tell you that I write things from a hip hop place, and you look at that four
02:42bar hook, it makes complete sense.
02:54So the blessed part, in London, me and my friends, or just in general, it's a greeting
02:59or a goodbye.
03:00But also we're like, are you blessed?
03:01It's like something we'd say to check up on someone.
03:12Again, painting this picture of like, I'm in the park, we're looking up at the sky and
03:15like, how reaffirming, how comforting would it be for the person next to your loved one
03:20to just be like, the world is ours.
03:22Can you imagine that?
03:33It gets like that.
03:34That might even be like the more important part of that line, is that it gets like that.
03:38And then like, yeah, wrong side of the moon.
03:40We're just on the wrong side of this equation.
03:42But then also, yeah, play on the Pink Floyd album, Dark Side of the Moon.
03:52It becomes way more effective when I rhyme actor and BAFTA.
03:55The impact is felt more.
03:56I don't know what it stands for, but isn't it like the British Academy of Film and Television
04:00or something like that?
04:01I'm getting specific about stuff where I'm from, and this song transcended all of that.
04:05Yeah, I think that's a really important take and a really important message, is just like,
04:08you can get specific about where you're from, and it can become way, like worldly, you know
04:13what I mean?
04:14And way bigger than the town.
04:16Bro, I can make anything rhyme.
04:19I think things rhyme when you match context and feeling.
04:25It's not just about the syllable.
04:27It's about like the delivery, how I'm presenting it to you, and how I say it to you.
04:32I truly believe that I can rhyme most things, or at least make you feel like I'm rhyming
04:37most things.
04:38We're not rhyming words, bro.
04:39We're rhyming syllables.
04:41I need to stop.