“This song is very personal to me. From my own life, stuff I’ve seen, stories with tragic endings that happen around me, Sad Story is me stepping back from my braggadocious punchlines for a moment and shining the light on others’ struggle. The deep-sounding instrumental helped,” shares Oscar Biggs from Montreal, Quebec, Canada for Blue Rhymez Entertainment. Sad Story is the Boom Bap echo of the highlife that attracts so many individuals from poor backgrounds served with extra lyrical effort from the artist who this time developed an unexpected vein of empathy and sentimentalism.
An intro of only 10 seconds that brings about Eugen Doga vibes is enough to lay a prim, respectable, and sturdy foundation for Sad Story. One can note right away what the artist meant when he mentioned that the instrumental was deep. As if giving a voice to the doleful violin, Oscar Biggs raps: “The story starts with a teen that sold weed to buy a necklace/ Then started actin’ reckless doing mad flexes to get a Lexus/ He got involved with the wrong crowd, for money, no doubt/ In this game once you’re in they ain’t no walkin’ out.” A master of his rhymes and cadence, the rapper immediately takes on the narrator role, instinctively sinking his tone deeper and more sober than usual.
Leaving the audience hanging by the edge of their seats, the rapper subsequently recounts the trajectory that usually follows with the fast life: “Man did good for a while found a wife and made kids/ Eventually tho he got caught and had to do a bid/ Dude made dough in the pen so it wasn’t too bad/ For a minute at least until he fell in the bag.” Oscar’s moderate flow clicks with the vibe, the story, the gravitas, and of course, the bonafide Boom Bap style he’s known for. He just proved the same style can be shaped for more than just N.W.A.-type music.
Unstinting with the details, Oscar Biggs paints with his words the breakdown of the main character making the public see his life as if on a film reel and witness the addiction, jail calls, and eventually, divorce: “Divorced his ass took his cash and his Porsche/ The man lost everything, his family, his wealth/ Several months later in his cell he hung himself.” The intimacy upon which lays the charm of Sad Story just hit its first peak during the last line before the hook comes in.
“There’s a bunch of Sad Stories everywhere I look/ Some of them is pretty bad and really got me shook/ Bad decisions people took led them to certain places/ In f*cked up situations they wish they wasn’t facing,” rap-sings the artist in a very ’90s Hip Hop mannerism with heavy emphasis on the last word of each bar. The twice-repeated motif is simple, memorable, and acts as a band-aid between the very complex storylines circumscribed by the verses.
The second verse packs great drama and sadly, a most modernly relatable life tale: growing up in a fractured family structure. “My story continues with the kid that grew up without a father/ Mostly left to himself ’cause his mother just didn’t bother/ Loneliness was a problem, self-esteem was real low/ Growing up f*cked up not knowing what way to go.” These acute real-life observations captured by both the music and the lyrics, make for a great classic record. When Oscar Biggs will hit the road, Sad Story is the one song that’ll make people in the audience cry.
As the artist delves into gut-wrenching details of the lost boy, “Only 16, no hope, feeling empty inside/ Ending up joining a gang using hard drugs to get high”, he takes a step back from the character and directly addresses the listeners as if to check in with them and make sure they’re still tuned in: “The way the story goes you’d think that human being was cursed/ I guess some people was just born to have a sh*tty passage on Earth.” This complex yet empathetically satisfying announcement brings the public under the same roof: we all have pain that we carry around.
As the second verse reveals that the son suffers the same ending as the father, “Desperate and depressed, the kid rather choose to die/ He did the same thing his old man did, committed su*cide,” another hook follows and Sad Story comes to an end.
In a world where materialism reigns supreme, Oscar Biggs created a paradoxical co-existence of commercial appeal and real-life tragedies on the same song titled Sad Story. Radically conscious of people’s suffering and pushing out of his comfort zone, the Rap artist just became that much more likable for old and new fans alike.
Song Credits: Guillaume Tranquil Richards (Oscar Biggs) – Artist, Songwriter; Chris Groove (The Canadian Butcher) – Music Producer; Merker Miyagi (Cali) – Sound Engineer.
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Written by Mariana Berdianu
Blue Rhymez Entertainment ©2021
Blue Rhymez Entertainment 