It’s so easy to get caught up in your own head. Especially in the world today, there are so many feelings tied to everything around us. Even one mistake can feel like everything when the weight of the world crushes down. But, it’s important to process these things. It’s important to feel these things. It’s a step of planting our seed of growth and change within the world around us. That’s something helpful to be gathered from California-based music artist Shawn Chasten’s latest track, ‘Too Much Time.’
The way the production makes the opening percussive beat in ‘Too Much Time’ find its way into the back of your head is immediately captivating, and then the music comes into its full and wonderful clarity. It comes to life. The smooth drum beat and piano tune have an encapsulating presence, and the bass comes in with a nice bounce to it. The vocals are powerful and very controlled, and the more rapped portions have a nice snappy hit to them. The tone of these vocals is a bit jazzy, and there’s so much emotion behind them, the rapping allowing a lot of humanness to shine through the voice. There’s something refreshing about the acoustic piano sounds mixed with an almost trap-sounding beat.
‘Too Much Time,’ according to the artist himself, “is about overthinking.” Something many of us know and have been through all too many times. It’s about worry over your own choices and what you could have done better in the past, and as the lyrics state, “Gut words don’t go so well inside me / Get them out / Grow inside.” Though it’s about this pain, it’s about processing these emotions and growing through them. And it’s a beautiful tale of growth at that. Extremely poetic!
Shawn Chasten is a multitalented wonder of an artist, writing, playing, singing, producing, and mixing all on his own. His ability to put together an entire piece is greatly shown in ‘Too Much Time.’ Chasten’s Mac Miller influences definitely shine through in their own way in this one, as the start of this track began with him playing a riff by Miller on piano and being filled with absolute inspiration. This is an artist who lets his inspiration guide him, which is a notable quality to have.