Shane Eagle rose to prominence in 2015 after placing third on the first season of rapping reality TV show, The Hustle. In the seven years that followed, he released Yellow (his golden-age hip-hop-inspired debut), Never Grow Up and toured with Dreamville signee Bas. Throughout that time, he’s released music that speaks to and challenges the social order.
“I feel like it's an artist's duty to reflect the time we're in,” the rapper tells Apple Music of his fourth studio project, 2022’s Green. “With everything that’s been going on in the world, the past few years felt like a reset. I wanted the album to address that”. Over the course of the album’s 45-minute runtime, Green sees Eagle (Shane Patrick Hughes) rap about the trappings of success, spiritual awakening and family dynamics. Featuring a roster of international talents such as Monte Booker, Navy Blue and Omari Hardwick, the album is a blend of Eagle’s signature boom-bap rap and new-age 808 melodies. Here, he breaks down key tracks from Green, and how it relates to previous releases.
“Paranoia”
“Paranoia was made around the time I made [his 2019 mixtape]Dark Moon Flower. It’s the oldest song on the album and starts with the line, ‘This is some sh*t the doctors can’t fix’. That could refer to a mental thing, or the pain you feel from a loss, anything really. It’s about how the people who are supposed to be in a position to help us, can’t.”
“STREETFIGHTER”
“This was produced by KKTha1st. It’s definitely one of my favourites on the because everything comes back down to video gaming for me. It reminds me of a time before video consoles when we went to the arcade with fifty-cent coins. It’s very nostalgic. But the way I’m rapping here feels like a victory lap. ‘Paranoia’ was a calm introduction, so I wanted to switch to something hard-hitting for track two. But this song also speaks on serious social issues like war.
“Moving Spirit”
“All of the songs on the album have some secondary meaning or they’re connected to something else entirely. ‘Moving Spirit’ is produced by [American producer] Navy Blue. He’s produced for Earl Sweatshirt and, if you’re familiar with Earl, you know his father was also South African [former poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile]. There’s a vocal sample of my father at the end of the song. It was a clip of him speaking to me. It’s a song about legacy and being in control of your own narrative.
“To Be Frank”
“There’s a line in the song where I say, ‘I don’t even listen to the rap sh*t. I bump Frank Sinatra because my daddy was an OG’. That’s a nod to my father and some of his musical influences. But my grandfather’s name was also Frank. The song is a play on words. I’m talking about my father’s love for Frank Sinatra, my grandfather and I’m also being frank and saying to my peers, ‘You guys are no match for me’.”
“Pillow”
“‘Pillow’ is connected to ‘Moving Spirit’, in that both songs were inspired by Lauryn Hill. It just speaks about where I see myself on the hierarchy of legendary MCs. It’s one of the most honest songs on the album and I deliberately made it as short as I did so people would have to spin it back repeatedly.”
“War Paint”
“‘War Paint’ and ‘Metal Slug’ are like parts one and two of the same song. There’s a line in the beginning where I say, ‘Sometimes I wonder when the Lord be washing away my pain/Then I think, where do homeless people spend the day when it rains?’ Because it's like if he's showering you with blessings, what does that mean for the next person? It’s a song about self-reflection.
“Green”
“On previous releases, the intros would relate to some colour sequence. On Yellow, the album started with the song ‘Yellow’. On Dark Moon Flower, I started with the song ‘Black’—but here I put ‘Green’ toward the end of the album. It’s almost like an outro. ‘Green’ was also recorded quite a while back; it’s one of the OG joints on the album. I put it at the end because it felt like I was piecing together all of my previous colour sequences.”
“Memory”
“I start off the song by saying, ‘I’m staring through this gold mirror/That my pops left me before he dipped’. This is one of the most self-reflective songs I’ve ever written. My pops literally left me this huge gold mirror and I was writing the verse staring at it. That's crazy, because the song itself speaks on reflection. It speaks on memory and how the energy my father left is still here. When I look at myself in the mirror, I still see him. I also have a line where I say, ‘Memory is more precious than diamonds’. Because everything is going to fade, but what you have is your memory.”