In 2019, Atlanta MC Grip was at a crossroads. He’d released two official projects, 2019’s Snubnose having been the latest, but was yet to see any of the spoils he’d worked towards as one of the most honest, observant, and technically proficient rappers in his state. Touring Europe with JID had exposed him to new listeners, but when the pandemic slowed the entertainment industry en masse, forcing Grip to consider some moneymaking schemes he’d long ago thought he’d graduated from, the MC began to take a good hard look at what music was not doing for him. “And then,” he tells Apple Music, “Eminem reached out.” The Shady Records head honcho had apparently loved Snubnose, and went on to offer Grip a deal exponentially more desirable than the ones he and musical partner Tu had been fielding as relative unknowns in the years prior. With the support of someone like Em—which included a guest verse for his Shady debut I Died for This!?—Grip’s passion for storytelling was born anew, allowing the MC to recount, for fans and newcomers alike, exactly what he’d gone through to get here. “I gave up damn near everything for this,” he says. “But part of you is also questioning everything that you gave up in order to get to this point and just being a totally different person than you were when you originally started the journey. Parts of me have died that I'll never get back. So yeah, I died for this.” Below, the MC takes us through the life-affirming project, track by track. “And the Eulogy Read!?” (feat. Wiley From Atlanta) “You know how a eulogy is somewhat a summary of your life up to that point? So what it was was a summary of everything that had been going on with me up until the album drops.” “Hands Up!” “This was one of the first tracks that I made with DJ Khalil. I remember listening to it in the car and when the hook portion comes on, it's just like, this shit just sounds like it was meant for a fucking concert, meant for people to react to. So the first thing that came to mind was how it is for me to interact with the crowd and how powerful that shit is. So then from there, I just dive into 'hands up'—of course, like you would do that at a concert, but also like the cops said it. That's something that's always in the back of our minds as we navigate, as Black men.” “IDFT!?” “‘IDFT!?’, being the title track, represents the greenness or just being naive when you first get that rap check. It’s like that braggadocious feeling that you got as a n***a who ain’t never had shit when you come across that first check. That's probably the biggest check he ever seen. It's kind of like, 'Yo, I went through hell for this. Like, I died for this.' That's one of the ones that have the exclamation.” “Momma Told Me!” “It's just one of those tracks that's announcing myself as a presence in this game. Second verse, of course, is just lyrical showcase, bars and shit, but the hook, 'My momma told me don't mess with these messy lil hoes/Get a check, make it stretch and get more'—it's just how we grew up. And just that those lessons die hard. You’re staying the same person in a sense, where you're still trying to keep what momma told you inside, but at the same time, you might bend her words a little bit and just use it as a flex. 'My momma told me' is a flex. So yeah, another exclamation point.” “Placebo” (feat. Royce da 5’9) “This song was originally just one beat. We ended up adding one more beat and then Tu hit me with the idea, ‘Hey, let's do three beats.’ I thought about it and I'm like, well, matter of fact, this shit can be art. Royce, he bodied it. Not necessarily a slight to other rappers, but just how all this other shit is hype. The shit ain't healing you, n***a. It'd be cool for the moment, but real music is here to last.” “Gutter!” (feat. Wara) “‘Gutter!’ was also one of the first songs that we made [for the album]. A lot of people didn't like the distortion, but coming off of Snubnose, we was looking to do some different shit. Outkast is my favorite group of all time; 'Da Art of Storytellin', Pt. 2' was one of the first tracks I heard with distortion. The song is pretty much just a 'fuck you' to critics ahead of time.” “JDDTTINT!?” (feat. Dead Cassettes) “I had been listening to a lot of rock. ‘Human Sadness’ by Julian Casablancas and The Voidz is one of my favorite songs of the past few years. I just wanted to speak on pop culture and celebrity status and how it's demanded of the celebrities to just 'Take a pic, crack a smile/You owe it to the world every once in a while' and just people being unaware of the pressures that come behind that shit. We've lost so many of our icons—2Pac, the Kurt Cobains, the Pop Smokes—whether it was overdoses or violence and shit. It's an ode to everyone that's ever been in the limelight who has ever sacrificed to be in this position and died. And then me, as a father, I'm a hero to my kids. It's like, hey, you're doing the same thing, but just don't die this time.” “A Soldier’s Story?” “I say, 'My hunger to be regarded as the best is what's starving me to death/Partially depressed, harboring regret, targeting success, bartering'—that's how I felt at a certain point. I'm reaching for this goal and we're doing this shit, and we're kind of getting noticed, but at the same time, nothing's changing. We had already dropped Snubnose. It was critically acclaimed and all this shit. I was just at a point like, maybe I was going too hard in this shit and maybe it's time to do something else. And then Eminem reached out.” “Walkthrough!” (feat. Eminem) “Originally, we weren't sure if we were going to be able to get Em on the album. But I knew I really wanted him on the shit. Me and Tu sit down and we didn't hear him on any of the songs. I said, 'Out of respect for the project and for the art, let's craft something from scratch.' We end up flying to Detroit, playing the album for Em and the team, and before I even let Em know that this is the track I wanted him on, he's like, 'Damn, that hook was dope as fuck.' I was like, 'I'm glad you think so, because this is the track I wanted you on, brother.'” “The Lox!” (feat. Tate228) “Shout-out to my guy Tate228. He's from Mississippi, but been in Atlanta. We actually went to high school together. He's got that real gritty, street but still intelligent shit. The first part of 'The Lox!' is actually produced by Tedd Boyd. Tu killed the [other part]. But it's just another one of those tracks that can get the people going. My mind state at the time was 'I want it all: money, power, and respect.'” “Enem3?” (feat. Big Rube) “This song, it's just pretty much about self-reflection and just facing the truth. When I first heard the beat, this shit made me think of some Phil Collins shit. I didn't want to rap on it. I didn't even have to give Rube too much of a description, because he's a fucking genius.” “ConMan?” (feat. Ahyes) “‘Con Man’ is a love song from the perspective of me realizing that I was a con man. And by the time I realized what it was, it wasn't no way to get out of it without somebody's heart being broken. Part of the point of view is selfish. Because I'm blaming someone that I was in love with for the way that my career unfolded. 'I was too focused on you and I should've been been more focused on rap when all my peers were, because now they're ahead of me. Because when they were focusing on rap, I was focusing on us.' It's an apology. It's a love letter. It's growth for me.” “Glenwood Freestyle!” “Glenwood is a neighborhood on the east side, and back in the day, back when we were in high school and shit, everybody bring their old-schools out, motherfuckers cooking out, motherfuckers wilding out in the street playing their music loud. That naive state of mind, where you're just like, 'Gotta push that GLE 'fore I'm pushin' daisies.' That shit's what's important at the time, because you ain't never had the shit.” “At What Cost?” “Yeah, I got to this point, but at what cost? What did I give up? It's not necessarily speaking on my situation with Shady. This is about the industry and how an artist can fall into that shit and have no other options and be forced to go through that cycle. It's just about the plight of the starving artist.” “Patterns?” “I was on a beach in LA late into the night. I had been listening to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. And then me, Beat Butcha, and Willy Yanez made the song from scratch. I sat with it and just got in the mindset of wanting to speak on those sacrifices like missing your kids' first steps and shit. And them being too young to even know that you let them down. Because my pops wasn't in my life. So it's like, 'I'll be damned if I'm not in my kids' life.' I know I'm not necessarily perfect at this point, because I'm too busy chasing this shit. It’s still feeling like a dream, you ain't getting no respect, but you’re literally devoting time out of your life to this.” “Pennies…Exit Stage Left!?” (feat. Kay Nellz & Kenny Mason) “Early on when we started mapping out the album, thinking about what our influences were going to be, [Outkast’s] Stankonia was heavy. Stankonia broke a lot of sound barriers for hip-hop music, especially Southern hip-hop music. I wanted to tap into other genres on this album. I wanted to mesh everything, blend some shit.”