#72—Inner left forearm. This one’s pretty self-explanatory. I’ve been gradually piling up my discography here since HERE we Go dropped five years ago. I haven’t included all the EPs or the Christmas tracks or the feature spots I’ve done on other people’s shit, because if I did that, it’d cover my whole arm, but this list is all of my albums so far. There’s: I. Be My Baby, II. HERE we Go, III. Roses and Mud, and then IV. with a blank space next to it for whatever the video game’s gonna be called. I don’t get the ink until they’ve been officially released, because sometimes I change my mind about the title at the last minute, and obviously it’d be a hassle to change the tat. The “IV.” is just kind of sitting there as a reminder to get to work.

I guess it’s worth mentioning that, like, when it comes to Roses and Mud, all the shit that happened with Mandy in Berlin and France had a pretty major effect on what would eventually become the second half of the album.

In the months immediately following my father’s suicide, I was kind of lost in terms of, like, what I was supposed to be doing with the album. I mean, you know, at the time that he did it, I was halfway through recording all of the stuff in France, and all of the songs I had recorded at that point were like, these super-low-key, super-delicate piano songs, and I had originally wanted to make a whole album that way, but then with my dad killing himself the way he did, the album just started making less and less sense—just going to the piano felt like an escape, you know? It felt sentimental—and so I was actually sort of at a loss for how to proceed. But then the shit with Mandy happened, and it was just like: Oh, okay, I think I see what this has gotta be. I mean, that’s when all the grunge found its way onto the album, you know, and when you think about Roses and Mud, you think grunge, right?

This is super-dark—like, this is a kind of crazy thought—but sometimes I think my dad was trying to send me a message with his suicide. I mean, obviously he was trying to send everyone a message, but sometimes I think he was trying to specifically send me a message about the direction I needed to take my career in. A part of him must’ve known that something needed to HAPPEN to me, you know? I think a part of him knew that I needed to GO THROUGH something or else, like, people were gonna be done with me. Because how long is anyone really willing to root for a kid who’s been famous since he was twelve? After a while, that becomes a story that’s pretty hard to relate to. And so this really dark part of me thinks that my dad almost did what he did so he could give me some edge, you know? Or send me off into a different direction. I mean, I don’t know. This is the kind of crazy shit that being famous does to your head: A suicide isn’t just a suicide. You start to think of it as just another ingredient in the story of your life, another facet of your brand.