Behind The Mic: The true story behind Pharoahe Monch’s ‘Damage’
Queens emcee Pharaohe Monch is a powerful lyricist and tells a lot of stories with his music. From his 1999 debut, Internal Affairs, to his 2011 project W.A.R. (We Are Renegades), he has sent a lot of messages with his lyrics. Still, one of his most impactful projects was his 2014 body of work, PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The lead single of his 2014 project was a Lee Stone-produced track entitled ‘Damage.’ It has a dark but interesting story behind it, and, as with many Pharoahe Monch songs, it was recorded with a more profound message beyond what many listeners may hear. Its artwork depicts a bullet engraved with the writing, “Your name here,” and from the visuals alone, it is striking.
In a 2012 interview with The Real Hip-Hop, Pharaoahe Monch spoke about the creation of the track, explaining, “On some straightforward hip-hop shit, I’ve had that chorus for about a year and a half. I’ve been saving it because I was looking for a hard beat to scream on rappers and utilise that ill chorus.”
The Desire creator admitted that, at first, he didn’t hear it being good but then found out its place on the record once he got into the studio with Stone. Telling The Real Hip-Hop about this process, Monch continued, “Lee Stone hit me with this beat when we started working on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and being the artist that I am, I was like, ‘Man, this is iller than I thought.’ I thought I might as well finish this trilogy and put it in the personification of the bullet and let this be the third and last instalment of the bullet records.”
The New York native had spoken about bullets twice before and made it a trilogy alongside his previous tracks, including ‘Stray Bullet’ and ‘When The Gun Draws’. The former was made alongside Organized Konfusion, while the latter was featured on his 2007 project Desire.
During his discussion with The Real Hip-Hop, the emcee admitted that he wanted to bring awareness to the plague of inner-city violence and wanted to try and make the track feel as close to home as possible so listeners could personalise it and realise they could potentially fall victim to the crime too.
Talking about how the crime inspired him to write ‘Damage’, Pharaoahe Monch detailed, “Yeah, you know it’s been so [crazy] with killing and violence here and in Detroit, Chicago, and other main cities. It’s just been crazy. I’m a passionate person, and I have empathy whenever I see that type of thing on the news, especially for young children.”
He added, “What I wanted to do with this song was to be as graphic as possible to bring about these types of interviews and these types of discussions to say, these bullets don’t have any heart. They aren’t sympathetic, and they don’t have empathy, whether you’re a cop or a 5-year-old.”
The ‘Trilogy’ rhymer also admitted he wanted to make a song that turned the table on police officers to show how indiscriminate guns are, stating, “That’s the true triple examination of the song. At the end of the day the bullet turns on the police officer. That’s how we’re going to shoot this visual and I want to examine how the song affects people when the tables are turned.”
The main sample Lee Stone used for the composition of ‘Damage’ was ‘When You Got Trouble’ by Redbone, and Pharoahe Monch even interpolated an LL Cool J lyric for one of his rhymes when he begins “Oh listen to the way I slay your crew.”