Daniel Jordan: “Killed by Love” Interview

Wednesday 24th February, 2016 by Chad T. Carsten | 0 Comments

Underground fans have been hyped the hell up from (Mad Insanity Records) Daniel Jordan’s new record “Killed by Love” since it dropped on Valentine’s Day. Some fans have been saying “Killed by Love” is Daniel Jordan’s most personal record to date. It’s an album for those who’s hearts have been shattered to pieces. This FLH exclusive goes deep within Daniel Jordan’s personal love life and uncovers the truth behind the songs featured within “Killed by Love”. Shout out to Daniel for this personal exclusive!

Chad Thomas Carsten: Does true love exist? How would you define true love?

Daniel Jordan: True love is like a drug; it is the most dangerous drug on earth. It can build up your confidence and tear it in holes all in one moment. True love is a roller coaster of emotions that inspire you, give you purpose, make you feel ten feet tall, and give you the courage to conquer the world! But the downside of it is that it can bring your whole world spiraling down, it can give you suicidal thoughts, turn you violent and make you want to harm others and yourself. Love is the greatest mystery of all…

CTC: What kind of love tactics did you to use to tug on a woman’s heart strings and who was your first true love?

DJ: My first love was actually the director Dope Scorsese’s (“Nothing Lasts Forever” and “itwontstop”) step-sister *Laughs* That’s how me and Dope met, I was in the 9th grade. Me and the girl only lasted a few months but me and Dope became inseparable and are still best friends to this day! Funny how things work out. Words were always my aphrodisiac to get a woman to fall in love with me, making a woman laugh, make her think deeply and introspective, to get inside of her head and plant my flag right there. I like to play the dark and mysterious figure to a woman so it leaves her craving more, then I have her right where I want her and she is mine. She can no longer resist.

CTC: Can we get into how many times your heart has been shattered by a significant other? Any personal stories you would like to share about this subject?

DJ: Well its more times then I would like to imagine, but I have no regrets, I feel like every heartbreak has made me stronger and I am thankful for them. The harshest one was seeing my ex move out and stay with my mom and start seeing somebody else under my moms roof, that was the ultimate betrayal I have ever felt, not only from her, but from my mom. It really strained the relationship between me and my mother and it hasn’t been quite the same, we have a lot of problems and I just try to not get involved too much and avoid drama. Like they say “fool me once…” I take all of my heartbreaks from different women and create this sort of super woman who is bits and pieces of every girl. That girl is my muse that inspires me to write.

CTC: How important is passionate sex?

DJ: Without passion, what is love? I am an intense cat, I always have been. I can’t help it. I am a pleaser. If I am in love with the person, her needs are very important to me. I will do whatever it takes to make her feel good, like she is the only woman in the world to me. I am an aggressive person in bed. I take what I want and I am in control. Women tend to like a man who is sure of themselves and in control of the situation. It turns them on. I hear it all the time, so that is what I go for.

CTC: What’s the most romantic thing another female did to catch your attention, and did it work?

DJ: I love the moment in time that is frozen when a man and woman’s eyes connect for the first time and sparks turn into flames. It’s not so much words, or even actions that turn me on. It’s body language; animalism. We as human beings are civilized, but deep down we have animal instincts and our bodies send out signals on a metaphysical level. I believe I am a mind reader in those situations, little movements and eye contact are signs that tell me what I need to do in that situation. I love when a woman gives off those signals, it turns me into something I cannot describe. I am completely aware and attentive. I have had many of those moments in my life and that is what keeps me excited! The thrill of new love, it is a rush!

CTC: Did you ever fall in love with a female teacher while still attending school? Did you make any moves on her?

DJ: My first sexual thoughts were with a preschool teacher of mine and that is where my attraction to legs came from. I am a sucker for a nice pair of legs and this lady wore skirts with black pantyhose and I remember I would find ways to touch her legs without getting in trouble. Today I am no different. A nice pair of long legs is my kryptonite. It is my ultimate weakness.

CTC: How often do past lovers stalk you? What is the most creepy moment from a past stalker?

DJ: It is hard doing shows sometimes because I don’t consider myself any different than the people, so I generally like to hang out with the people and politic. What is hard about that is stalkers, which are men and women. Some people want to get a hold on to me and not let me go and it is hard sometimes to be diplomatic and tend to everyone’s needs. Some people have gotten my phone number and called me at all hours of the night. Some women think they can be the step-mother to my child. They think what they see belongs to them, what I show them on social media. It is a double-edged sword, because some people can be obsessive with every facet of an artist’s life and feel like they know that person. When a woman steps to me for the first time she may have had sex with me in her mind 100 times, but I have just met her. Those fantasies can become dangerous in the hands of the wrong person and that’s where things can get creepy.

CTC: Has love ever pushed you towards suicide? If so, how did you overcome the thoughts of suicide and move on?

DJ: Definitely. If love has never pushed a person to wanting to die, then that’s not love. Love touches every fiber of your being and consumes your soul. But suicide is not the answer. I have lost friends due to suicide over getting dumped and if you just take that pain and do something productive with it, it will turn out to be a blessing. In pain there is opportunity. With a broken heart you can change things about yourself that can make you a better person. Because of a broken heart I re-enrolled in school and now I am just a couple years away from becoming a doctor. How crazy is that?!

CTC: Why the name “Killed by Love” for the title of the album? What is the main reason you chose to release it on Valentine’s Day? What type of music fan is this album directly aimed at?

DJ: “Killed by Love” is how I felt after my heart had been broken a number of times. In my video you see a date on the toe-tag on my foot. That date isn’t the date of the video, that’s the day I was “Killed by Love”, my life would never be the same from that day, so I slid that date in there as an Easter egg for me and the other party to know.The album is aimed at adults, people who can appreciate mature grown-up music. I chose to release it on Valentine’s because not everyone is in a relationship on the holiday we celebrate love, and those people need a voice too. I knew when I was recording the album it would be very polarizing and it would separate my audience in two; people who dug it, and people who wanted the wicketshit, and this was a very different approach than just wicketshit. I also knew I had high expectations, because of “The Stranger”. I set a high standard and I knew I couldn’t make a Stranger part 2. I just had to do something completely different if I wanted to make an even better album. I feel like a completely brand-new artist with this album. It’s like the first time, in a long time you have heard this style from me.

CTC: Where was the album primarily recorded at?

DJ: The album was recorded in solitude, not one person was in the room with me when I laid my vocals down and I liked it that way. I sat alone with the lights off, closed my eyes and laid my vocals down. I was gonna name the album Sunday Sessions because every song was recorded on a Sunday. I found out my mother had cervical cancer the day I recorded “Nothing Lasts Forever” and that was the catalyst for the song. It was a very lonely and dark experience and I harnessed that energy and put it into the song. You can feel the pain in my vocals, it was a very real thing.

CTC: Any fond happy memories from Valentine’s Day you would like to share?

DJ: Well my ex-wife’s birthday is the day before Valentine’s Day so we would always celebrate both holidays together. One memory was I was in jail in Jamaica for Marijuana possession (which is illegal, go figure) and when I was released I was so happy to see my wife and we flew back to America on Valentine’s Day and spent the night in a suite in Miami by the beach. It was a beautiful experience.

CTC: Production wise, who was your main go to producer for “Killed by Love” and why did choose them?

DJ: I worked heavily with BADMiND on this album. It was a great marriage of minds. It was a team effort definitely, I would conceptualize the tracks and he would lay them out with his magical fingers and put together incredible beats. He can seriously take any song, replay it and make it completely from scratch. We didn’t sample much on this album. Most of those songs are played out on the keyboard and the MPC. I could not have done the album without BADMiND so I just wanna give him a huge shout out. I also worked with SmileyOnThaBeat (who is a top producer in the Bay Area). He has worked with many greats and he laced the tracks on “Everybody’s Been Defeated” and “Turn My Whole World Around”.

My man Doyem out of Czech Republic produced “The Phoenix”. I had that beat laying around for a while and I didn’t know how to attack it. Then when I wrote “The Phoenix” I knew that beat was the one.

CTC: In the title track “Killed by Love”, you mention how love is always a losing game. Why is love a losing game to you and describe anything from you’re past that directly influenced the lyrics within the title track?

DJ: Subconsciously I got that line from a Bob Seger song “You’ll accompany me” and I didn’t even realize it until I heard the song not too long ago. In love you come in one way and exit the other. What starts out lovely ends so bitterly more often than not, so there is only one way to leave a relationship, and that is by losing. No matter who dumped who, you both lose that person that you cared about long ago.

A lot of lines on the album are from personal experiences. The album is directed at 3 different women over the course of a few years; My ex-wife, a summer fling, and a girl I dated for a few months. Writing became my only outlet and I used writing as a form of therapy to get out all of the pain and energy I had inside.

CTC: The title track sounds directly like it came from the 1980’s era. What love songs from the 80’s may have inspired it and how?

DJ: I have references to a couple songs in KBL “I’d rather be your enemy” and “I move around” by Lee Hazlewood. “Only the lonely” by The Motels and of course “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” by St. Etienne.

CTC: Who is on the hook (Killed by Love) and is it sampled? If so, why you chose this sample and how does it connect to your heart musically?

DJ: It is a sample from St. Etienne “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” from the 80’s. I’m a big fan of the song. I have wanted to freak that beat for years, but I needed the right subject matter. Once I wrote KBL I bought the St. Etienne album on vinyl, slowed down the beat a little and had BADMiND throw some 808’s behind it and boom! I took shit back to the 80’s!

CTC: What exactly is the track “Never As Good As The First Time” really about?

DJ: Love is the most dangerous drug on earth, but it’s never as good as the first time. After your first time on that emotional roller coaster when you are thrown back in to the world less of a person than you were before, nothing is the same. That song is 10 years in the making. Watching everything you love get old and die.

The song is about divorce, losing family members, my inability to connect with women. I was with my son’s mom for 7 years. We were best friends and the divorce turned us into two completely different people and I was looking at a stranger. When my ex-wife played “itwontstop” in front of the judge in order to keep my son from me it was the ultimate betrayal. I had never felt so deceived in my life and that’s when I knew things would never be the same. It’s never as good as the first time.

CTC: Any behind the scene details you would like to share for the making of video “Nothing Lasts Forever”? Why did you decide to focus on your own cremation and is there a deeper symbolic meaning that surrounds the cremation?

DJ: I don’t know how much detail I can give about the video without getting in trouble, but let’s just say one day I will write a tell-all about that video. It’s something that’s never been done before in videos or movies, the movies could never bring that much realism.

I chose cremation, because it was a side of death that is not brought up often. Nobody knows what goes on inside that room after your loved ones pass away and I wanted to give insight on the matter. I wanted to make Brooks (Cremator) the star of the video and I am just there in the background.

I wanted to show the human aspect of death and how we as people are freaked out about the subject, but it’s just another day in the life of a cremator. I wanted to be as tasteful as possible in contrast to my last video (itwontstop) which was very tasteless. I wanted to show my growth as an artist and bring a level of maturity on that video and record.

CTC: It’s fresh that you paid homage to Mars of Mad Insanity Records and the Godfather of the wicketshit (Esham), by having their names featured on the urns. Anything from their back catalog that may have had some impact on the love songs found within this release?

DJ: I mean, what I did on this album is so different than what anyone has done in rap before. I didn’t listen to any rap when I wrote this album, it was all old school songwriters and rock, pop, and soul songs. But the wicketshit is always an influence no matter what, you can hear the dark undertones in most of the songs. The album is called “Killed by Love”, but I focus on death as much as I do love on this album.

CTC: For the track “Everybody’s Been Defeated”, how exactly have they been defeated since the day they were born? What’s the true meaning behind that line?

DJ: Because we are born, we are raised and we are thrown into the matrix and none of us asked for it. Child be born, child feel the pain, child feel the slow death. Live long enough to watch your heroes die.

I don’t believe psychological issues come to us when we were born but they are developed throughout the years of abuse. So by the time we are old men we have had a lifetime of abuse, but that abuse was waiting there for us since day one. So a child isn’t given much of a chance from day one. We are defeated before we even start. Kind of a negative statement, but truthful in a lot of ways.

CTC: Is “I’m Not the One” about one night stands?

DJ: “I’m Not The One” is a defense mechanism to prevent myself from getting hurt. A way of guarding myself. It’s unfortunate that it has to come to those measures but it is desperate times. I’m putting it out there like “hey, I don’t want to get hurt so I’m going to hurt you first. It’s a pre-emptive strike.

CTC: ”Only The Lonely” only features Stephanie Baumann singing? What brought about that decision to only feature just her?

DJ: Cause she is a good person, I feel like I did a bad thing and hurt her in the past and I wanted to make it right. She is extremely talented and when I had this song in mind I knew she would be the right person for the job. She knocked it out of the park.

The original song by The Motels was a song me and this girl I was seeing enjoyed. It was a song we both shared together and it was “our song”. After me and her split up, I went to see The Motels by myself, wondering if she was there. When they performed “Only The Lonely” it sent a chill through my spine and I knew I had to put that song on the album. On “Turn My Whole World Around” I mention that time with the lyric “I hear a song that sent a chill through my spine, it reminded me a time when you were mine…”.

CTC: Can you completely dissect the track “The Phoenix” and what the song truly represents?

DJ: “The Phoenix” is the rebirth, after I was killed by love I rose from the ashes like a phoenix and was born again. This record is a positive record with dark subject matter but hope for a new beginning. It’s all about forgiveness and letting go of the past. I pray for the happiness of those who have hurt me in the past and work towards a brighter future with a stronger mind and body. “The Phoenix” is my epitaph; it is my life’s work put on a 4-minute song.

CTC: Why did you choose ”Turn My World Around” as the closer?

DJ: Because “Turn My Whole World Around” is a declaration of independence! The chorus may say “If you came back we could turn it around” but throughout the song you are seeing me build myself back up without her, in her absence. In actuality the person that needed to come back was myself. So by the time she does come back around, I won’t need her. The song is actually about 2 different girls. The first verse is about one girl I had a brief fling with. The 2nd verse is about a girl I dated over the spring/summer of 2015. The third verse was from me watching a bunch of inspirational videos on YouTube during a time of pain and I needed something to believe in, so I believed in myself and my ability to get back up. I had a very bad foot injury in 2015 where I was immobile for months and it still is painful today. That’s where the lyric “I fell down, I’m walking but I’m still limping” came from. It all ties together.

This song was the final song I did for the album and I felt confident and back to myself, after the rebirth of myself in “The Phoenix”. Turn my whole world around is me becoming stronger and being able to let go of the past. Pushing forward.

CTC: What is your personal favorite song you recorded for Killed By Love and why is it your favorite?

DJ: It changes constantly. In the morning I like “Killed by Love” and at night I like “The Phoenix”. There is something on that album for every mood I have and when I was making it I just made it for myself to enjoy and reflect on. I hoped that people who listened to the album would understand and feel the same. I would have to say “Out of my Head” is my most complete song on that album as far as beginning, middle, and end. If I was to make another video for the album I would definitely have that song in mind.

CTC: Any advice you’d like to share about keeping a relationship healthy?

DJ: Be faithful, be attentive, and be loving. Give a person freedom and if she comes to you, it was meant to be. If she leaves then it wasn’t. Focus on growth together and include your partner in the things that make you happy. Love is about filling gaps Take both of your gaps and create one whole being. One day I will love again, and that person will get the very best possible version of me. Always be the best version of yourself and make that person want to be better by being with you.

CTC: Who are the most influential pop artists from the 1980’s that inspired the “Killed by Love” album?

DJ: First and foremost, David Ruffin, I couldn’t do this album without his music. “Statue of a fool” “Let somebody love me” “Each day is a lifetime” were very influential in the creation of this album. The Motels (who did the original “Only The Lonely”), St. Etienne, The Pixies, David Bowie, The Smiths, Lee Hazelwood was another, he was from the 1960’s and 1970’s, but songs like “I’d rather be your enemy” “I move around” were very influential. You can hear it in the album in a major way.

CTC: Final shout outs?

DJ: I would like to thank everyone who was a part of this project. Mars for helping me with the promotion and giving me a label to call home. Of course Esham for helping lay down the blueprint that gave me the means to have a career in the underground. I would like to thank the women that inspired the album. What was so painful at one time became such a beautiful thing when I turned it into art and I have no regrets! It was a growth experience recording this album and it will now live for eternity.