Von Pea (from Tanya Morgan) has been posting up the liner notes to Brooklynati over the last few months and it’s a great read.  Here’s his notes on “On Our Way”, I highly recommend you check out VonPea.com for more insight into one of 2009’s best albums:

When i first heard the OG for this i knew what i wanted to do right away. back in the moonlighting days my production wouldnt do much at all (as far as changeups and variation) and for the bridge ep i was more focused on just cleaning my sound up, making everything sound better. when it came time to produce brooklynati i wanted more variation in the way i used samples while still sticking to my style of beatmaking. this is probably my favorite beat because i was still able to have certain repetitive elements while having the music totally change and “keep it moving”. the very beginning of the song lines up with the very end of moonlighting so you could play them together like one long album. as i was working on the music i was ad libbing to myself the same adlibs from “if the papes come” so i threw them in the background as percussion as my nod to tribe. same time i wanted to have a nod to jay dee so i played on the keys an interpretation of “nothing like this” for the chorus. my personal “thank you” to tribe and jay’s “beats, rhymes and life” collaboration. that album taught me how to make beats and this track marked a new progression in my sound. I guess its like thanking your 9th grade tutor on the day of graduaiton.

before i get further, i should let it be known theres a demo version of almost the whole album (dont even ask! maybe in 10 years…ha!!) and we stopped the album to go on tour with hieroglyphics and the blue scholars for what ended up being 3 months of being away. i should also mention that for those 3 months it was only myself and donwill out as TM because ilyas couldnt be away at the time for family reasons. that 3 month gap lead to frustration on all parts. while he was home not working on the most important album of our career up to this point, we were away not working on it, and realizing how divided hip hop truly was while on the road. we all got back to work november 2008, rerecording and reworking music we’ve been working on since moonlighting dropped in 2006.

ilyas had this new verse that was based on frustration and he was damn near screaming in it, it just didnt really work as the first verse on the first song on the new album. we know how short attention spans are now, new potential fans wouldve heard that and probably turned it off. when it came time to try and convince him to change it the argument was “nah man, i feel like they got us in this box, we’re bigger than this box, im trying to get where we need to be, get our money, etc…” and all i could say is “hmm…sounds like you been feeling like manute bol when the roofs too low, the box they put us in aint big enough for you to grow!” haha…he had actually said everything he felt he said in the rewrite, in the original verse. and better. more thought out and less emotional. the verse you all ended up hearing is the equivalent to telling someone youre mad vs punching them in the face. the punch wouldve been too much.

also, i apologize for my “wack dance” line, i now feel like theres space for everyone and everything. that probably was written around the time cranking everything was in style. crank the superman, crank the spongebob, crank every damn thing. i was hating in retrospect, but i still say the line at shows haha…dancing is apart of hip hop, and just because someone has a dance to their song that dont mean its killing hip hop. thats a cop out, and i dont believe that anymore. muhsinah was supposed to sing the hook to this song, just the part im singing. id written it and wanted someone else to do it, she had offered to do so but she then had to leave for the common tour so we never got around to it. in the end it all worked out, rick v got me sounding like i can really sing! ha!!!!

Check out the rest of the Brooklynati liner notes at VonPea.com…