Kia ora, my name is Chase Woods. I’m a Māori rapper and songwriter living in Aotearoa/New Zealand. “LovesaDrug” is the second single off of my upcoming EP Better Late Than Never and here’s a little insight into the making and writing of the song.
My producer Shush and I were in our Wellington studio making beats when Shush played this real spacey sample; straight away I was hooked. I came up with the melody in seconds, singing it over and over again “I ain’t got the time to keep on wastin…”. I was just waiting for the next lyric to come.
I like to think about stories or experiences from my life that I can tap into when I’m writing. I can’t write about something that I haven’t been through or seen – being able to picture the environment that I’m writing about helps my creative flow.
In this instance, I chose to write about addiction. This may be a surprise if you’ve heard the song, but listen closely and you’ll hear it. I have seen family members fall into addictions, some coming out the other side triumphant and others not so much.
Using these experiences, I wrote this particular song from the point of view of a drug addict still in the “honeymoon stage”. This is the stage where everything is amazing and they’re riding the high without a care in the world. I then also tried to encompass everything else I know about addiction and all the feelings and emotions that come with it.
The intro/hook and the first verse is me as I am now, talking about never wanting to fall into that hole. I talk about the consequences of being an addict, and then tell the listener about my belief that I am enough and don’t need to be anything other than who I am.
I have been surrounded by loving and caring people my whole life, who have made sure my feet stay on the ground and that I don’t go down that dark road. This is the meaning behind the line “I was born with the juice, I done came along with the crew so I don’t use”.
We chopped up the hook to mimic the thoughts that are jumbled up in an addict’s head, to put the listener in their shoes. The second verse switches to be from the point of view of the addict, saying that they don’t care about the relationships they’ve built and that they just want the “light” to ignite their drug.
The “addict” jokes about being out of touch with family, saying “I stole attention and bought a belt”. In the line “tryna hold the whole world and myself”, I’m talking about the user trying to hold their life together, but also the harm they’re doing to themself and their body in using drugs.
This is my writing style. Making upbeat songs but talking about dark stories or topics, because at the end of the day, all of these things shaped my worldview and have had an influence on who I am.
For the visualiser, my manager Nate and I really wanted to make something that emulates the feeling an addict may have, the feeling of being transported to a whole new world. It’s also a reflection of that “spacey” vibe we got from the sample.
We used a lot of AI to create the video, playing with a bunch of different ideas and concepts. I feel that the final video makes the song come to life, as if you plugged the song into a projector and that’s what it spit out.
To sum it up, the song as a whole takes you on a journey, always giving you something new to listen to or think about. To be fair, what I say about the song doesn’t really matter and that’s the coolest part – “LovesaDrug” is whatever you think it is.
Listen to “LovesaDrug” and stream it everywhere else here.
