Alt hip hop artist MORSIFIRE creates a distinctive sense of personality with his new single “77 Skeletons”

San Francisco-based alternative hip hop artist MORSIFIRE pulls from his harrowing past, crafting songs that land somewhere between Kid Cudi and 21 Pilots. His lead-off single “77 Skeletons” exorcises the trauma he internalized throughout his young life – being reared by a drug addicted single mother and exposed to the untimely loss of his younger sister and father. Today, we’re pleased to give you its exclusive first watch and listen above!

Andrew Seely aka Morsifire commented:

“77 Skeletons is really an exercise in letting the cynical, self-loathing part of me share itself, uncensored. Abandoning all hope and giving into that feeling that nothing in this life is going to work out and each decision has been a misstep. But there is something about accessing the anger beyond the defeatism that allowed me to move past this feeling in my own life.”

Metanoia is an album about loss in three forms. The loss of sense of self, the loss of a lover, and the loss of loved ones. Featuring an array of talented artists such as former Third Eye Blind members Tony Fredianelli and Arion Salazar, Indie-Pop Singer/Songwriter Emily Afton, and rapper Dogthief, Metanoia subverts genre expectations by weaving in and out of many styles and instrumentations, all the while maintaining a sense of narrative focus.

Hailing from the outskirts of San Francisco, Andrew Seely aka MORSIFIRE straddles the line between hip-hop and indie alternative, crafting an indelible sound from his harrowing past that lands somewhere between Kid Cudi and 21 Pilots.

His painfully honest stories are lifted directly from a fractured childhood, raised by a drug addicted single mother and exposed to the untimely loss of his younger sister and father. As a young adult he suffered from panic attacks, often so severe he ended up in the hospital. The only thing that seemed to quell his anxiety was music, an art which he dissected and pursued with abandon, gaining acceptance to Berklee and studying music production abroad in Spain.

Returning to the local SF scene was always the plan, as the city had served as a constant source of inspiration. While running workshops in the Bay Area, teaching kids how to produce/record, Morsifire began doling out verses on a few mixtapes, eventually deciding to plant his flag and release a debut LP. During this time he was hanging with notable SF artists, like Emily Afton and Dogthief, many of whom ended up on the record, along with notable contributions from Tony Fredianelli and Arion Salazar (formerly of Third Eye Blind.)

The title of the album, Metanoia, stands for ‘a spontaneous attempt of the psyche to heal itself by being reborn in a more adaptive form.’ This term seemed to suit the material well, as the resulting recordings became a strange, often psychedelic journey through the trauma he internalized throughout his young life. The tender “I Can’t Stay” was played on his dad’s guitar (“I still can’t bring myself to change the strings”) and the powerful “Contact” dives into the complicated emotions surrounding his little sisters death, while other tracks probe the mysterious and often macabre nature of existence.

“Making this record helped me work through my grief,” Morsifire asserts, adding that he often felt compelled to incorporate found recordings of the deceased into the song structure. “My music is not something you flip on while you cook or party. It’s not passive shit. It’s involved.”

“77 Skeletons” lyrics:

I’ve seen the devil two times
I ain’t see God once
Live inside my rhymes, I’m putting up no front

I awaken from a hibernation
Hands shaking and I’m suffering from palpitations
Jaw clenched, I’m just hoping that I’ll fucking make it
Through another night I’m tainted cuz I’m inundated

Silent tragedies, accidents, calamities
Hard to believe that they really even happened, see?
Memories exist outside of my reality
Delusion, confusion, a fucking fallacy

But I can’t be this no more
I’m bout to kick down the door
And fucking leave a crime scene splattered over the floor

I concede that I need a green seed or a spore
That can grow inside me and maybe lead me ashore

Cuz I am floating in this ocean
I can’t conjure up the hope and I am hopelessly consumed by the fumes
I am smoldering and shouldering the weight of my tomb
I get older, I get colder as I wait on my domb

This life, this life is not for me
I stare into the sun, lose my memories, yeah
You know, you know, but you can’t see
I guess what’s done is done, never meant to be

And I slip back into coma
Ain’t no waking me with no smelling salt aroma
Deep inside a wooden sleep, met a goddess, got to know her
I got visions in my dreams that I’ll never get to show her

How much more can I lose before I lose myself?
I don’t know but liquor helps
Living in a living hell
I ain’t really living well
Stuck inside a mortal shell
Happiness elusive, they say one day that I’ll get it well…

It’s still a mystery to me
I bet its mystery to you
Is there more that I can’t see?
Is there more that I can do?

You can spend eternity
Always searching for the truth
Life is always wasted on the youth

But I’m finally done looking
Didn’t find shit but I made my mind crooked
Got a ticket in a trigger, I’m thinking I might pull it
I got 77 skeletons waiting for my bullet

Never knowing when the time’s right
Blind but I got 20/20 hindsight
There’s a film flickering in my mind’s eye
8mm load it up and I might