One of the greatest gifts I got from 2020 is how much quarantine pushed me to grow as a producer. I learned to trust my own skills, my own ear, my own sound. That was my favorite thing about working on this cover — I got to play with situating the song inside of an arrangement that I felt gave the song a new perspective.
I recorded all the sounds alone in my living room, with the exception of the bass guitar part, which was done by Shahzad at Figure8 Studios, also in Brooklyn. The song was mixed and mastered by my friend Alex Toth (of Toth.)
I love the song because it’s about returning to a mindstate of abundance when things get scary. It’s that sentiment of, “even when it seems that everything is falling apart, look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” It’s that mindstate that keeps me from recoiling in fear and hopelessness.
I wanted to cover it because it describes the way I felt throughout this past year as my communities really came together in the spirit of allyship, mutual aid, and love in the wake of the pandemic and George Floyd.
The feeling in this song describes the initial moment that I saw thousands of New Yorkers taking to the streets in my neighborhood. Every day that I marched shoulder to shoulder with my neighbors gave me such a sense of love and hope. I just had to learn to see it to receive it.
