FERG has opened up about why he chose to reveal his experience of being molested as a child in a deeply personal track on his new album, DAROLD.
During his interview with The Breakfast Club on Tuesday (November 12), co-host Jess Hilarious brought up the song “Pool,” where the Harlem rapper goes into detail about the harrowing ordeal.
“At ten I was drowned and touched when I was in the pool/All the breath left my body where I couldn’t move,” he raps on the song. “Violated, hand on my private by a bigger dude/Seconds felt like forever, really wasn’t cool/When he seen me ’round the block, he’d smile and laugh/As if we had a little secret, and I hated that/Thinking ’bout what he did really made me mad/Even thought about murder, wanted to kill his ass/Told nobody except my cousin/One time, he made a joke, but he ain’t know nothing/I asked God, ‘Why me? Let me know something!’/I like girls, fuck he thought, that n-gga on something?”
For FERG, he explained that it was something he’d been wanting to share for a while.
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“It took me eight years to write ‘Pool.’ It was three songs that I had wrote to get to that point,” he said. “I wrote a song called ‘We Don’t Judge’ and Chance The Rapper‘s on there and Stacy Barthe. I’ma still put that out. Then I wrote another song called ‘Innocent Child’ which was like three different stories about three different people [and] the last story was mine.
“I was just trying to refine it and then I linked up with my boy Kerby – he’s the designer and owner of Pyer Moss. I just love his storytelling through his clothes and how he speaks to the world. We got in the studio and he was just like, ‘Yo bro, you inching towards it and you’re scratching the surface when you need to really just dive in and just go crazy.'”
And the A$AP Mob rapper knew that sharing something so vulnerable would help others.
“I wanted to basically create a piece of art that my kid could find or like kids could find and and listen to it,” he said. “I’m still jiggy, I’m still this person or whatever and let them know that the things that happen to you really happen for you but [also], the things that happen to you – it doesn’t define you. […] Not just in the hood, I feel like this is going on everywhere and people just not going to talk about it. And I’m like yo, what am I talking about? I didn’t make that happen to me. That ain’t mine to be trying to hold inside.”
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The convo begins at the 12-minute mark below.
On the title track of DAROLD – which was released Friday (November 8) – FERG proclaimed that he belongs in the upper echelon of rappers in the game today alongside the likes of Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole.
“Who the top rappers, hmm?/ Kendrick, J. Cole, any list, I’m on that,” he raps over airy, ominous production from Kash Beats, Powers Pleasant, Tweek Tune and Manny Laurenko.
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Elsewhere on the song, FERG namedrops a number of other rap legends while revealing his biggest influences: “I’m a bit of Busta, Common, Hova, Dark Man X, put ’em all in a bag.”
The album also features the Future-assisted “Allure,” which finds the duo trading bars over a Mike WiLL Made-It beat built around haunting synths and trap drums.
During his guest verse, Hendrix warns an unnamed enemy: “You took a plea on my slime, won’t be surprised you ended up dead.”
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Fans were quick to connect the lyrics to Gunna, who controversially accepted an Alford plea in his and Young Thug‘s YSL RICO case.
The apparent shot is just the latest from Future, who began jabbing Gunna earlier this year when he deleted a social media post promoting the rapper’s “Prada Dem” single with Offset.
