This song is about death and mortality. Everyone on this song is young, black and talking about their funerals. This is because it’s commonplace in America for black people to be thinking about their mortality at such a young age. So many black lives are taken so soon and it has been this way for generations. This song explores that indirectly without explicitly stating what it’s actually about.

The nightingale symbolizes those departed souls. Those who have lost their lives too soon to violence of all kinds as a result of systematic oppression, from the days of slavery all the way up to the present. This song is wishing them a peaceful rest. It literally reads like a prayer for those fallen ancestors; hence the church/gospel influence in the beat. It’s funeral music.

The Shadow Man is the black man/woman in America. “Please keep your hands up” means to keep fighting, but it’s also an allusion to the “hands up, don’t shoot” mantra that protesters chanted in the aftermath of the Mike Brown shooting.

Shadow Man also features Ralph Gene on drums as well as additional lyrics and vocals by theMIND & Cam O'bi.