When South African rapper FLVME first started recording Germander II, he had no idea it would become his treatise on heartbreak. “The main thing for me was just chasing peace,” he tells Apple Music. “Before releasing the project, I had fallen in love, then I fell out of it. I was on an emotional rollercoaster but I enjoyed every second of it.” Here, FLVME wrestles with success and the fog that comes after a break-up over music that’s fascinatingly introspective without becoming insular—and below he runs through the experiences that shaped each song. “JUS AN INTRO II” “I wanted to start the album by venting some of my frustrations. As much as I know how powerful as an artist as I am and how great I am, I just feel like people overlook that. So that was me trying to let that out on the song. The skit you hear at the end of the song is actually my mom.” “WHAT A FEELING” (with Kewand & Mellow Don Picasso) “This is a continuation of the intro. I was trying to make people understand that I’m not just trying to also make some party songs, but I’m also trying to make a very cohesive album with a storyline.” “VIBEZZZZZ” (with Die Mondez) “There’s a line here where I explain how the song and project came about. I say: ‘Flew my n**gas out the country with me, we had them busy on ‘WHAT A FEELING’’. I was talking about a trip we had in Namibia a while back. We went on that trip and recorded so much music and when we came back, I knew I wanted to create this record.” “PRAYERS UP” “This is a homage to some of the West Coast hip-hop I grew up listening to. I wanted to inject some nostalgia into the project. The first three songs are really dark so I wanted to a song about gratitude. A song that says, ‘I’m glad I’m still here, doing what I love.’ I wouldn’t necessarily say I was trying to be experimental. I just wanted to showcase my different inspirations.” “NO DISCUSSION” (with Yung Tyran) “I’ve always been an R’n’B artist at heart but I just felt like hip-hop was the easy way out because I found it really easy to do. ‘NO DiISCUSSION’ is a song about having a fling with a girl. On the song, I’m just a straight-to-the-point type of guy. I don’t have time to beat around the bush. And that’s why the name of the song was ‘NO DISCUSSION’. I was essentially saying: let’s skip the whole ‘nice-to-meet-you’ part and get to it.” “OUTSIDE” (with The Big Hash) “Me and The Big Hash are super tight. That’s one guy I know I will have a phone call with and could be on the phone for six hours or more. This was actually supposed to be his song. He sent me the beat a while back and said: ‘Yo, I have a little bit of mind block, so I need you to write a song for me.’ So initially I was just a songwriter for this song—I was not even supposed to have my vocals on it. He liked it, but he just chilled on it for way too long. When I was putting this album together, that was one of the songs that stood out for me. So I asked him if I could take the song back and feature him on it. That’s how ‘OUTSIDE’ came about.” “FALL THRU” (with DaVionne) “My homie Vic sent me an Apple playlist with old-school music for inspiration and in there was a whole lot of Usher. When I played ‘You Make Me Wanna’, I immediately chopped it up and put it through FL Studio. We had a problem clearing the sample and that’s why I ended up replaying the sample. I also felt like replaying it made it sound a bit more sophisticated. That’s one rule I’ve always had when I sample: you cannot sample a classic song and not make it better. The DaVionne feature was requested by my fans. They’d been asking that I work with her for a while. I sent her eight bars to work with and she extended her verse to 16.” “LIKE I SHOULD” “This is also a sample. I sampled Keith Sweat’s ‘Twisted’ but I also had a problem clearing the sample. It was taking too long and it was almost release day, so I got session artists to replay it. I wanted to give my song the same feeling I had when I first listened to ‘Twisted’. So I tried to keep the subject matter the same and I think it worked out pretty well.” “ROCK FOR LIFE” (with Stogie T) “This was a tricky one to actually get down. Stogie T had reached out to me because he needed a hook for one of his songs. I agreed but I was asking myself how I can also make something that accommodated the both of us. He’s an OG so I sampled ‘Rock with You’ by Michael Jackson for this joint. As soon as I was done with the beat, I recorded the song on the spot and sent it to him. He sent his verse back in an hour. He told me I could keep ‘ROCK FOR LIFE’ and that he still wants me on a different song of his.” “WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND” (feat. Jay Millian) “It’s not really a love song. It’s in between being a love song and a heartbreak song. It’s a song about ups and downs in a relationship—when the honeymoon phase is over. When I broke up with my girl, I didn’t talk to her while I was recording. I express myself best through my music so I deliberately said what I needed to say on the songs so that when we got back in touch, I had cleared my mind. I was discussing how we’re fighting about me not being able to communicate with her because I was focused on my music.” “BE OKAY” “I sample K.P. & Envyi’s ‘Swing My Way’ here. It’s a continuation from ‘WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND’. I was saying I’m starting to notice a few storms in the relationship and things aren’t as sweet as they were. I was trying to explain myself to my partner and tell her that I know how she’s feeling about what’s going on. I was acknowledging that I know she needs more time from me, but I just need her to trust the process—things are definitely going to be OK.” “WORKIN’ ON ME” (with Ben September) “This is the conclusion to ‘WHAT’S ON YOUR MIND’. The song was about that moment when things start getting out of hand in a relationship. When you’re way past fixing things and the end is near. So the song was about me trying to find clarity about what’s going on between me and her now.” “LET ME DOWN” “‘LET ME DOWN’ is a continuation of the previous two songs. I was accepting that we’re at a point where I expected things to fall apart. And it happened. But it was also in a universal sense, it wasn’t just about my former partner. It was about all the other people in my life that have let me down. On the surface, the song is about my ex but universally it’s about friends, family and business partners that have let me down.”