International Rap and hip-hop phenomenon Rebecca “DawgGoneDavis” and
hook master (and longtime Snoop Dogg producer) Chago G. Williams have
worked their edgy, visceral, and incendiary dual magic numerous times
before – but never like this. On one of their first tracks, 2020’s “Darkest
Hour” – which hit #5 on the Euro Indie Chart – they danced around the
heavy energy of tragic loss, with her talking generally about dealing
with grief and his chorus echoing, “It’s like a raging war, stuck in the
darkest hour/With no lights at all, who cares if we fail?” Tough stuff
for sure, but “Can’t Rap My Head Around This,” Rebecca and Chago’s
remarkable seventh and latest rockin’ Rap jam, roars their hard-hitting
truth to a whole other level.
Produced as all their tracks are by German producer, saxophonist and
flutist Hellmut Wolf and Featuring the otherworldly rock guitar crunch,
drums and bass of rock band Moral DK from LA, the song begins with
the Rapper’s very direct reference to her beloved nephew who was shot
and killed in a home invasion at the age of 25. Rebecca notes that it
took 11 years to put the surviving perpetrators behind bars.
She ties her grief with the dynamic connection she and her nephew
shared over their mutual love for rock and roll: “Sweet 25 – slain.
That’s the rub. He didn’t even make the 27 club. He took the Stairway to
Heaven. Full of pride – yeah. That was the day our music died/He was
diggin’ Zeppelin my boy…”
When she sent these clever, incisive lyrics to Chago, he connected
them to deep losses in his own life and quickly spun out a hook that he
delivers with appropriate rage and confusion at the top of the track
(the first time Rebecca chose a chorus to open): “Can’t rap my head
around this. . .When the shots rang out and she lost her little boy.” In
a later chorus, the wise, witty wordsmith makes the shock of losing a
loved one to murder even more real: “I can’t stand up/Just want to fall
down.”
As Rebecca has done throughout her nearly five year career as an
artist, she lets her anger and sorrow over her nephew, and their mutual
love of Led Zeppelin, become a springboard for some whimsical stream of
consciousness rapping: She mentions trips to Lakehurst NJ, where
the Hindenburg (a real life Zeppelin) crashed and blew up in 1937. She
flashes forward from that metaphor to “Discovered Zeppelin flying
high/Staring at the stage, my oh my!”
Her unique rap also refers to another tough challenge in her life,
breast cancer (“Slower than tumors in my chest/Gave cancer the boot”)
and exults in her collaborations with “Hellmut and his rockin’ flute”
before invoking her passion for “a whole lotta Led” once again. After a
playful Marge and Homer Simpson reference, Rebecca becomes perhaps the
first rapper on the planet to tie her lament of wearing a pageboy
haircut on the school bus to a crush she had on Jimmy Page.
She gets a bit naughty referencing tight 70’s Robert
Plant jeans before reaffirming, “I want a whole lotta Led.” With over
21 international hit singles, Rebecca is an unstoppable phenomenon,
proving time and again that an almost “Middle Aged Woman – Hip Hop
Style” – the name of her 2018 debut single, the first of many to reach
#1 on the Euro Indie Music Chart – can rap and roll as impactfully
and passionately as any artist/songwriter. The powerful intuitive
creative relationship she has cultivated with Williams – whom she calls
“one of the greatest hook masters of the world” – has led to some of her
biggest hits. “Can’t Rap…” follows on the heels of their two most
recent singles
“Love’s Boss” (#5 on the Euro Indie Chart) and “Appreciation,” an ode
to The Guess Who and Burton Cummings which hit #7 on the World Indie
Music Chart and became a huge terrestrial radio smash In Canada. DGD and
Chago’s hitmaking streak also includes the edgy, pandemic era singles
“Darkest Hour” (#5 on the Euro Indie Chart), “No More” (#11) and “Clean
Slate” (#7) as well as “Raybans in the Rain,” a festive celebration of
summer, Rebecca’s favorite season. “What’s special about ‘Can’t Rap My
Head Around This’ is that with just a few lines and his intense
emotional energy, Chago did the hard emotional work to really underscore
the devastation of the story I am telling in the first verse, and how
it still pains, angers and haunts me” says Rebecca.
“We’ve been working together now for four solid years, and when I
send him my latest raps, I never know if he’s gonna do his spin on them
soft, medium or hard RAP. I didn’t order this one to be as hard and
intense as he came back with, but like always, he got the feeling
Right! . I heard it and thought, ‘Holy cow, this is perfect.’ I realized
he knows the pain and wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable. I’ve loved every
track we’ve done, but this one in particular surpassed all of our
expectations!”
