This song is based on an acoustic guitar riff I created. This riff gave me strong country associations, and this formed the basis of the lyrics and message I was trying to convey in the song.

When I started freestyling, I was focusing more on melody and delivery rather than words, and started oscillating between two notes, allowing the autotune to work heavily. After repeating the line a few times, I started saying “bor på landet men jeg er en ku”, feeling that the words fit the melody and rhythm I was mumbling. However, I didn’t like the words I had picked, so after freestyling I thought for a bit, and ended up on the words “bor på landet men jeg har det smurt”, roughly translating to “live in the countryside, but I'm well off”. I felt these words painted a nicer picture than the words I had freestyled. I think I chose this word partly because I freestyled “spurt” at one point. 

I found it difficult trying to rewrite this song. I was stuck on the first line as the word “smurt” can be directly translated to “smeared”, but if said in the context “du har det smurt”, it could imply that you have it covered, or that you are well off. Ultimately, I decided on the line “from the country but I got it good” as it allowed me to rhyme the next lines with a similar message to the Norwegian version, rapping “yeah you’re saying something that is should. Used my legs to sprint as fast I could”. 

However, on the fourth line I was again stuck, as I couldn’t find a rhyme that allowed me to say that I didn’t believe what you would do. Instead, I decided on omitting the last word, rapping, “I did not know what you would”.  The next line posed some difficult challenges as in the Norwegian version it ends with the name “Kurt”. I managed to circumvent this by placing the name earlier, writing “like evil Kurt on the stage I stood”, although I feel this line might seem a bit forced. 

Following this line, the Norwegian version ends with “skurk”, saying “living life like a thug/criminal”. I was not able to find a suitable way of conveying this message, so I chose to alter the line by saying “living life like a piece of drift wood”, as I felt it painted a somewhat similar image. Ending the hook, I felt I found a nice line conveying the same message, rapping “would you be jumping if I said you should?” 

The start of the verse was quite easy to translate as I had used English end rhymes in the Norwegian version. However, the lines preceding this were again difficult, and I had to change the rhyme scheme in order to preserve the message, rapping “got to stop using trams now”. For the next line “I didn’t know that you use it”, I attempted to morph my pronunciation of “it” to sound more like “et”, allowing it to rhyme better with “wicked”. However, I felt it worked as the rhyme scheme changes after these lines. 

Since there isn’t any way to translate “bane” in reference to the “Bybane”, I decided to use “metro” instead. This set up the next line “it’s a habit that I can’t let go” quite nicely. I struggled on the line “jeg føler meg som en ny gen begynner på nytt hvert år”, translating to “I feel like a new gen, I start again every year”. I landed on “I'm a new gen give me power, I start again every flow” as I felt this had a similar message. 

I also struggled on the last line “jeg har bod for lenge inne I byen, jeg vil tilbake til min gård”, translating to “I have lived to long in town, I want to go back to my farm”. I decided to rap “I'm too deep in the fucking towers, it’s the farm that I wanna know”, where I struggled managing to put all these words into one line. 

Quite quickly after freestyling, I started punching inn lines, I tried to write lines that would rhyme with “smurt”, finding the line “ja du sier noe som er lurt”, translating to “yeah, you’re saying something smart”. There was an element of the mumbling delivery from the initial freestyle which I really enjoyed, and started imitating this. This led to me adding a “(yuuuh)” infront of each line, oscillating between the notes I used in the freestyle. After doing this three times, I changed the notes I hit during the “(yuuuh)” as I felt it had become a bit too repetitive. 

When freestyling, I felt I had a quite angry delivery, so I tried to continue with this delivery, creating a raspy and hard voice, although it also had some hints of sadness. I rapped the line “finner meg på scenen med min Kurt”, translating to “find me on the stage with my Kurt”, which was a reference to the movie “Kurt er grusom”, and I found this fit the picture I was painting well. After completing the hook, I moved on the verse. I did not want to continue the “(yuuuhhh)” flow here and opted for a different flow, using a similar delivery. 

When I started the first lines of the verse, I used English words as end rhymes. I did this for no reason other than I felt the words sounded cool and fit the feeling I was currently in. After three lines, the words were hinting to me saying something vulgar, but I did not feel this would fit, so instead I used the omission of the expected word as an effect. I continued in a similar flow after, changing the rhyme slightly by using the word “trikken”, which means “a tram”. I continued with this rhyme scheme and flow for a bar, quite quickly punching in lines that popped into my head. 

The next bar, I started using an ABAB rhyme scheme, saying “vi bruker bare en bane, og den går igjennom byen”, translated to “we only use one lane, and it goes through town”. However, when I said it in Norwegian, I was referring to the “Bybane”, a tram found in Bergen. I continued following this flow and rhyme scheme until the end of the song.

5.2.1. Creation phase

5.2. Guitar Jerk

Norwegian without drums:

English without drums:

Norwegian with drums:

English with drums:

5.2.3. Rewriting phase

5.2.2. Writing phase