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A post shared by wendelpatrickofficialmusic (@wendelpatrickofficialmusic) on Jun 26, 2020 at 5:33am PDT

"Like it has been for many, it has been difficult at times over the past few weeks for me to manage my emotions surrounding race and racism in this country, fluctuating between anger, sadness, muted hopefulness at times...I have not slept well. I had not felt much like making or listening to music. About six days ago, I stumbled on Dead Prez's "Police State", which I hadn't heard in a long time, and I couldn't stop listening to it. Something about the production...that beautiful, slow melodic line made me think of my dad (who I've been talking to a lot about things lately) and some of the music he used to listen to when I was a boy. And the lyrics, right now, really hit home, and I kept thinking "wait...isn't this song like 15 years old?" Anyway, I couldn't stop listening to it for six or seven days straight.

Surprisingly, I found an a capella version of the song two nights ago, so I decided to make my own version of the song, which I'm posting here. People often ask if I make drum tracks first. It depends. In this case I recorded the drums last, which is the full take that you see here...after I recorded the guitar, bass and choir in that order. I finished the remix in the early hours this morning, logged on to instagram to look for stic.man or M1 to send it to them and see that TODAY OF ALL DAYS at 8 pm they are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the brilliant album "Let's Get Free" that "Police State" was on. Crazy convergence of energies. Listen, and please feel free to share if you are moved to do so. " - Wendel Patrick