This might be my sleeper for favorite song on the Randle Rose EP. I can say this much with certainty – from a lyrical standpoint, this is my favorite incarnation of the Rose / Big Mon / D. Randle trifecta.
One of the beautiful things about making music is that songs can act as mnemonic devices, triggering thoughts and recollections that you otherwise might not have. This song is one of those. I have to confess that this song is pretty old – like, 2007 old. It was originally part of the batch that was being considered for Tasters Choice. As is the case with many songs, the title is derived from the original file name from DJ Cozmos: “cameo_flow.wav”
While Don was in my studio writing to some of the songs in that batch, he asked me about jumping on this one. I hadn’t written as much as a verse in over two months, suffering through one of the worst slumps that i’d had in years. But there was something about the swing on this track that brought out flows from the three of us that hadn’t been explored yet.And haven’t really been done since by either of us.
a cautionary tale for songwriters: if you’re creating a song that you intend to have a hook on, do your best to record that hook during your initial recording, or else you risk not completing the song at all. In the case of Cameo Flow, we were so caught up in the initial swell of writing to Coz’s track that a hook was an afterthought. And compared to some of the more polished tracks that would make the album, this one just didn’t fit the mold at the time.
Seven years later, and the song sounds like it was just recorded yesterday.
