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Intro and Overview

from Alter Ego Explained by LEX the Lexicon Artist

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Hi, I’m LEX the Lexicon Artist, and this is Alter Ego: Explained.

I’m really excited to share this new audio commentary series with you. In this series, I will be discussing the themes, concepts, and inspirations for each song, as well as inviting some of my collaborators to talk about the work they did for their tracks. So if you haven’t listened to the album in full, go ahead and turn this off, and go do that right now before you keep listening . But if you’ve finished it, let’s talk about this album as a whole.

The term “alter ego” is usually used to refer to a second personality, an alternate persona someone adopts that’s different from their typical self. There are many types of different alter egos in popular culture: secret identities of a superhero or supervillain, depictions of multiple personality disorder, or someone’s artist persona that is distinguished from their identity in other contexts, like Donald Glover/Childish Gambino, Sonny Moore/Skrillex, Marshall Mathers/Eminem/Slim Shady, to name a few.

Some fictional examples of Alter Egos that inspired me include Father and his homunculi from Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Dr. Horrible and Billy from Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog, Mob and ???% from Mob Psycho 100, Pink Diamond and *spoilers* from Steven Universe, Tyler Durden and *spoilers* from Fight Club, and probably a whole lot of other alter egos I can’t remember right now.

My goal in creating “Alter Ego” was to explore all those variations, as well as the kind of alter ego most of us already have: different sides of us we show to different parts of our lives, such as friends, family, work, romantic relationships, strangers, and more. Depending on who you are, some of those faces might reflect a more “authentic” you than others; or, they may not differ from each other very much in terms of authenticity. You may consider all these sides reflective of the “true” you in some way. As a loose concept album, “Alter Ego” also explores our relationships with many things we consider a part of us that take on their own identities, such as ambition, anger, desire, past selves, hypothetical clones, and even our phones. It puts them in a patchwork to highlight how they interact with each other to create one complete person.

The other way to interpret the title “Alter Ego” is to think of the word “alter” as a verb. When you parse it like that, “alter ego” is a command for one to change their ego. It’s almost like a computer command, something you’d type into a command prompt that will kick off a change in the target’s ego. That reflects the other goal of the album, which is to chronicle a gradual shift in my ego over the last two years, from raging to something more zen. There is an overall narrative arc in the album; the song order tells a somewhat linear story about one person’s journey through anxiety and disillusionment, and how they change as a result. But, it’s less of a defined story than an assortment of musings loosely tied together by a common theme and narrative thread. This kind of organization was inspired by one of my favorite concept albums, The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, which executes on its concept in a similar way. I tried to capture the structure and feeling of that album in my own style.

And thus concludes this Alter Ego: Explained. Ready to explore the album?

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from Alter Ego Explained, released July 3, 2020

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LEX the Lexicon Artist New York, New York

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.

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