Hi, I’m LEX the Lexicon Artist, and this is Alter Ego: Explained.
I Know is a song about how other people perceive me, and how I react to those perceptions. It’s also a brag track. Basically I wrote I Know to be a spiritual successor to Peep Game. I wanted it to inhabit the same kind of role that Peep Game plays in Raging Ego. Even though “Question” is the first track, it isn’t really an opener. It’s like a “fakeout”. It plays more of a comedic “intro skit” role that leads into “I Know”, which is the true album opener, and I wanted the true opener to reflect the things people liked about peep game: braggadocious, funny, hard-hitting, heavy, and very indicative of my personality. I wanted to write another huge, energetic song to open my live sets, something that people could sing along to. I wanted it to appeal to not only existing fans who love “peep game” and raging ego, but also brand new listeners who are hearing me for the first time. Most importantly, I wanted a song that I would have a massively good time performing.
I think I succeeded with that last one because “I Know” is one of my favorite tracks on the album. It just cracks me up. It’s so over the top and ridiculous. There are some lines in there that I think I’m going to make into stickers because they’re just straight-up wacky. As an album, Alter Ego can get pretty serious and even dark, but this is a shining exception to that rule. It’s not just upbeat, it’s pretty funny, and I welcome any opportunity to train that comedic muscle.
The whole thing is tongue-in-cheek commentary on people’s reactions to me. Or according to Doug: “This song is about boundaries.” As artists, we get a lot of the same feedback over and over, so why not smile and nod and eat it up super obnoxiously and say “yeah I know”? Obviously I’m playing up the rockstar ante and exaggerating my ego, since this is the starting point of the album and the Raging Ego is still alive and back for Round 2. It brings us back to a simpler time, a more familiar mindset, while putting a new spin on it using new experiences I now have.
Each verse addresses a different group of people and a different type of reaction. Verse 1 targets the haters, doubters, and spouters of platitudes who don’t peep my game. I assert my confidence in the LEX ego, and double down on my convictions.
Verse 2 is poking fun at existing fans who know and love me. It’s a campy brag fest about my psychic powers and a guide for how they should best interact with me, including a warning against creeps.
Verse 3 is more nuanced. It appears to be directed again towards fans who say nice things about me, but I think it’s actually me expressing my insecurities about not living up to their expectations or not being a good example for what they see in me, for example, an activist. It’s the most honest verse in the song, because I come straight out and admit that I’m not explicitly political in any of my work; all I do is write a bunch of songs about my experience, which in the grand scheme seems kind of frivolous. So I get a bit self-conscious when thinking about myself as a role-model for Asian American activists and feminists, even though deep down I know that as far as role models go, you could do a lot worse. So I open up about my true goals: I just want to make cool stuff people can relate to and see themselves in. And if you like it and speak well of it, that’s exactly what it was meant to do, and that’s what’ll encourage me to continue.
On the production side, I hired Mozart von Robot, also known as Vincent EL, who also produced peep game and glasses remix. Since they live in Sweden, we worked together over Facebook chat to iron out the specifics. I wanted a brassy sample and huge drums similar to peep game, and the Eminem song “We Made You”. Vincent said they did not listen to Eminem, so I sent them the instrumental and they programmed the brass samples and other instruments from that jump off point, and ended up with something that really just hit the spot.
And thus concludes this Alter Ego: Explained. Did you enjoy it? Thanks! I know.
LEX the Lexicon Artist combines Internet culture, fandom, punk ethos, and shock humor (not the mean kind) to create an over-the-top explosion of nerdy, dirty, funny raps.
Soul-searching hip-hop from this Florida rapper, with lyrics that dig deep and take an unflinching look at life’s questions. Bandcamp New & Notable May 1, 2023
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