The last few years have been a bit all over the place for Christian rap artist Davis Absolute. He’s been signed to a label, off of a label, dropped two independent releases, got married, had a baby, changed states, and got a new job. Despite the complications and complexities of growing up, Davis currently finds himself under God’s care in his own perfect “Eden.”
“Eden,” God’s perfect garden, a paradise for God’s creation that was soon eradicated because of man’s sin and subsequent fall from grace, is the name of Davis’ new record.
The project is a culmination of two to three years of writing and rewriting, stops and pauses.
The very beginnings of Eden can be traced to his 2016 project, Absolutes. In fact, these records were supposed to mesh together to form one long album called Flood Lights Forever. This whole concept fell apart because of the disbanding of former label Xist.
Taking one more step back, 2015 was a year full of promise for Davis Absolute. He earned a 2015 test.rapzilla.com Freshman nod and was given a record deal with Xist. Unfortunately for him, all of that momentum was killed.
“The plan was, I’m going to sign, drop an album, then I’m going to use the next couple of albums with them to have a platform to life my career so I can go indie,” he explained. “There were so many issues that arose, from payment to botched release dates and waiting for other projects that never dropped.”
When he was getting the beats together for Flood Light Forever, he was told that the beats didn’t mesh and to change things.
“When you hear records like “Flood,” “Oz,” and “Fly Away,” they should have been part of the album that would have been Absolutes,” said Davis. “Looking at 11 tracks, that’s how it was supposed to go. The remaining four tracks, I had to come out of pocket for those, then I was getting married, the baby was unexpected, financially couldn’t afford the project.”
“It stinks, I didn’t have a chance to capitalize on being a Freshman, it was a bad situation.”
Davis was able to make his way off the label but then had to fight a bit to get his music back. Absolutes the way it is now was already recorded, and he had to drop that independently. Unable to afford anything else at the time, the rest of the tracks would be held in the reserve until Eden. Many of those tracks already had scratch vocals and just needed minor tweaking before he put them out. “Rewindat” was the only song written recently for the new album.
Absolutes did really well, “The Body” single did well, and all this after a long dry spell for him.
“I put money behind and it was an eye-opener for me that if I do this the right way you can do something really awesome,” he said. “I feel like the work off of Absolutes, someone can say it’s very one note, and I get that, but man, there’s no way you’d feel that way if the songs from Eden were mixed in. I wrote all of that music together at the same time with the same intention and they were going to compliment each other.”
He continued, “I almost didn’t have ‘The Body’ because they weren’t going to give me the beat. I was going to have to reproduce it because the label was disbanding. I fought for it and wound up getting it. When I look at that time, I appreciate the lesson that I learned.”
At the end of the day, Davis Absolute trusted God had a plan for everything the way it worked out.
Looking now at his project Eden, which released on October 6, the theme and setting is after the fall of man and right before the flood. Davis broke down the project from song-to-song.
Flood
Everyone gets caught up in the flood and they don’t realize it. People in Noah’s time had never seen rain like that before, so they didn’t imagine that could happen. I take Genesis very literally. When I think of a flood, I think that’s happening right now just on a different level. It’ll be unfathomable that all the stuff I’m involved in and that I’m loving, can actually be my eternal loss.
Sky City
Transitioning from “Flood” into “Sky City,” and it’s that same thing. It’s talking about, I can’t wait to meet Jesus, but at the second chorus it’s talking about my feet don’t even leave the ground. It’s taking that same image, we’re so focused on what we’re doing, but we need to focus our identity onto “Sky City” (Heaven).
Rewindat
“Rewindat” brings that back. There’s so much doubt on Christ’s name. I’m in a situation, God can’t help me, I’m depressed, God can’t help me, I lost my family, God can’t help me. I rap, “And when they put my Savior in the grave, had to Rewindat.” I think that’s the antithesis of the idea that we’re lost. You got caught in the flood, you might not make it to sky city, you need to change your thinking and then that transitions into “Oz.”
Oz
It might be a little misplaced but it’s more so looking at the whole scope of the world. “Oz” is referring to the Wizard of Oz, but oz is also the abbreviation for ounce. So when the chorus says, “Travel down this yellow brick road for an ounce of gold, the Wizard of Oz” the entire world is obsessing over money, the powers that be are in pursuit of this control which is money. The Wizard of Oz is money. In Revelation, it talks about all the different beasts that will come up with our nations representing in the End Times. This is the idea of the song.
Fly Away
“Fly Away” is pretty straight up, I can’t wait until I can be taken in the air and fly away with Christ.
Wide Awake
It ends on “Wide Awake.” It says, my Savior’s not dead, He is wide awake. The song ends with “I can’t wait, I’m actually going up to meet You, the King is forever wide awake, and even if I die, I’m going to be forever wide awake.” My death is only a temporary sleep.
So Eden takes us from Flood to the Rapture. If combined with Absolutes, the Last Supper and Temptation in the valley would be mixed in.
In total, the album as previously stated would have been called FLF (Flood Light Forever). Davis Absolute gave us the artwork and created a Spotify playlist of what the album would have looked like.
