Withdrawal Symptoms

This is one of five songs I wrote in December 2021 that weren't originally planned for this project. Its premise was initially meant for a potential stand-up bit, but since I felt it would fit nicely within the story of Sippin' and Trippin', I decided to turn it into a song instead.

At the time of writing the song, I had listened to Cap's recently released debut album All Caps about three times, so I was in a space where I wanted to tap into his production style for this song as well as "Wake Up". I browsed through the beats he had sent me again and settled on one, but when I asked him for the stems, he told me the beat was already taken. That drove me to explore some of his collaborators at East Side Nation (ESN), eventually settling on Jami after finding three beats on his Instagram that I really liked.

I reached out to Jami in December 2021, and he eventually responded early the following month; he said that he didn't have the stems for any of the three beats because he'd had some serious issues with his laptop. When I settled on the beat I wanted, he recreated it, sent it to me and it turned out much better than the original. Moral of the story: Sometimes setbacks give you the opportunity to do something even better than before.

Around the same time I found Jami's beats, I was also thinking about getting a woman to tell in her own words what goes through her mind when she's in her ovulation period and feeling hornier than usual. I had recently discovered Groovy Jo's music and liked the "bad bitch" energy she brought on her song "Big Ole Big Booty", so I decided to look no further and reach out. I was really impressed with what she came up with and her decision to respond to my verse, rather than simply retelling it from her perspective (or rather the perspective of the older woman Lilmaina calls at the end of "Wake Up", which is what I initially envisioned).

The idea for the sample at the end came on the morning of my last studio session for the album and getting Ty's blessing was easy, having gotten to know him through stand-up.