It was 1997 when Madeline Ludlum, then in her early 20s, met her father for the first time. Clean and sober following a longtime heroine addiction, he said he was ready to start a new life. Tragically, his sentiments were short-lived: two years later, he died of an overdose.
Ludlum, by then an aspiring hip-hop artist known as Mystic, later recorded "Fatherless Child," a rueful song about her nonexistent relationship with her father. This poignant chunk of personal history is one of the many inspirations that power the reissue of her debut album, "Cuts for Luck and Scars for Freedom ... (Learning to Breathe)" (2003, Dreamworks Records).
"I only met (my father) twice, and meeting him affected me because I was someone who had peace in my life and all of a sudden I had all of these questions," explained Mystic. "His body had been broken down, but he told me he was clean and that he had things together. Then he had his ultimate high and I remember thinking, 'You told me you'd never leave me again.'"
As a young adult, Mystic immersed herself in the hip-hop scene and wrote a collection of original poetry. Mystic and her mother moved to San Francisco when she was in the fourth grade. The urban setting exposed her to the gritty and sometimes unpleasant reality synonymous with a bustling metropolis. During her summer months, Mystic would visit her godmother in Santa Cruz. Life there was quite different compared to the rest of the year spent in the city.
"This was a place with solar power and a wood-burning stove," said Mystic. "Our water came from a stream and if we wanted hot water, we had to heat it ourselves on the stove. It opened my eyes in so many ways."
Mystic ended up spending her eighth-grade year in Santa Cruz and eventually moved back with her mother who relocated to Oakland. As a high school freshman, she cut classes and rode the train into San Francisco to visit with friends. Mystic's then-English teacher suggested she apply to the California State Summer School for the Arts. The school accepted her, along with 500 other students, and she spent a month at a university honing her skills as a creative writer, specifically poetry.
By the age of 16, Mystic was a published poet and she turned to music as a way to express those thoughts she had written down on paper. She eventually left high school, but received her GED and enrolled in a nearby community college. Through a mutual friend, Mystic met Shock G, the frontman to the hip-hop group Digital Underground. Shock G later asked her if she would sing Billie Holiday's "Gloomy Sunday" on the soundtrack he produced for the 1996 film "The Funeral" and she agreed.
Following the recording, Mystic quit her job and took off for Miami to record a demo with her best friend. She spent six months in town working on rhymes and lyrics.
"It was wonderful," she recalled. "I worked with a producer who had a studio in his house, and it was the first time no one was telling me what to do, or even suggesting what I should do. I had the space to develop my own sound."
She later toured with Digital Underground as its only female performer. She was dubbed the "Digital Underground Goddess" while on the road. She dedicated herself to music after spending time with the members of Black Eyed Peas and later collaborated on the debut album by Outkast.
While working on her songs for "Cuts for Luck and Scars for Freedom," Mystic worked at a temp agency and flew down to Los Angeles to record three songs at a time. Independent label Good Vibe Recordings released the album in 2001. Dreamworks reissued the work in late July as "Cuts for Luck and Scars for Freedom ... (Learning to Breathe)," with five new songs.
A diverse host of producers helped Mystic in the creation of this record, which features scattered cuts of spoken word, rhymes and vocal tracks, demonstrating her vocal and lyrical prowess. The album brims with wonderful images and it also encompasses heart-wrenching tales of Mystic's own life, as well as her observations on institutionalized racism, the socioeconomic degradation of the inner cities, and the cultural misperceptions and frustrated expectations that are their results.
"(The album title) developed into my philosophy, which is that over time we all go through experiences that cut us, where we break down but we heal and it's all right," she explained. "But there are other experiences that we go through that cut us and we're scarred for life. They dictate whether we're able to love or be loved, whether we're parents to our children, whether we choose to live legally or illegally."
Mystic collaborated with numerous producers to record the five new songs on "Cuts for Luck" - such as Kanye West (Talib Kweli, Jay-Z and Mos Def), Darren Henson and Keith Pelzer (Jill Scott and Floetry) and Dave West (De La Soul, Meshell Ndegeocello).
Those who produced the original tracks include Shock G, jungle/hip-hop producer The Angel, The Elements, A-Plus (Hieroglyphics), 427 (Cali Agents, Planet Asia), Spontaneous and Amp Live (Zion I) -- all of whom contributed their own style of presentation.
"Everyone added their own musical tastes in a dope way," she said. "They all added their own season to the pot of gumbo. It was dope making the album, and it was so personal and internal because most of the time it was just me, the producer, the engineer and maybe a friend would stop by every once in a while, but that was it."
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