Mike Shinoda releases new solo song 'About You', a homage to Chester Bennington
Linkin Park co-founder Mike Shinoda is set to release 'Post Traumatic', his debut solo LP later this year. The follow-up to his EP of the same name, the record will feature 16 tracks, two of which, 'Crossing A Line' and 'Nothing Makes Sense Anymore', were released last month.
Now, Shinoda is back with a third preview single 'About You', which features contributions from rising hip-hop producer blackbear, reports CoS.
Shinoda debuted the song on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 radio show, describing it as an amalgamation of multiple rap songs that he smashed together.
“So if you listen to the track you’ll hear like multiple moods in the track,” he explained, “and then when it hits after the second chorus from there out it was me and [blackbear] and a duo named Bass Camp and we all just kind of cooked up that end section together.”
Shinoda also spoke about the influence of the passing of his former bandmate, Chester Bennington, although he did clarify that not all of the material was inspired by him, but his shadow still looms large.
“You know part of the thing about the lyrics in this song, which I know you’ll appreciate, is I was writing all these songs and a lot of the early stuff on this album was about what had happened and it was about Chester and all that,” he told Lowe, “and then I started trying to write some songs that weren’t about Chester and weren’t about that whole thing and I realized that people would hear them as if they were about him. I was like... man even when I try and make a song that’s not about him, it still feels like it’s about him.”
This revelation reportedly gave way to the chorus of the song: "Even when it’s not about you, all of a sudden it’s about you.”
Listen to the new song below: