The track's genesis reveals a peculiar chronology. Originally penned in spring 2022 as an acoustic duet with Brian Montanaro exploring romantic nostalgia, the song's first iteration never saw release—a fortunate omission, as events would prove. When Art passed away during their collaboration on "Catch'n Licks," *Vaticide* found its true subject. The lyrics, once concerned with relationship archaeology, suddenly resonated with deeper frequencies. Tragedy, as it often does, revealed latent meanings the original composition couldn't have anticipated.
This process of resurrection and recontextualization informs the track's emotional architecture. Je Bonus—a New England artist whose work occupies the provocative territory between gritty folk and hip-hop—has created something that honours both origins: the raw vulnerability of folk storytelling married to hip-hop's unflinching honesty. The production deliberately eschews polish, those unprocessed vocals arriving like field recordings, documents of feeling caught in real time rather than manufactured in post-production's antiseptic chambers.
The incorporation of Arthur Comeau's voice—those fragments singing "Let it go"—operates on multiple registers simultaneously. These aren't mere samples but spectral collaborations, the deceased artist contributing to a work he could never have known would exist. The phrase itself carries weight beyond its musical function, becoming something like a governing philosophy for both the album and the grieving process it documents. Art encouraged letting go, we're told, because "anything worthwhile we'll lose." This paradox—that value and impermanence are inseparable—underpins the entire composition.
Je Bonus positions *Vaticide* as the "focal point" of *What Would Art Do?*, a December release described as a family compilation album. The project's scope extends beyond solo artistry into something more collaborative, more communal. This approach feels consonant with the track's emotional register, which resists hermetic mourning in favour of shared remembrance. Grief here becomes not isolation but connection, a reminder—to quote the artist's stated intentions—that "you are not alone."
The folk influences manifest in the narrative drive and emotional directness, while the hip-hop sensibility emerges in the track's rhythmic backbone and refusal of conventional song structure. Je Bonus navigates this crossroads with confidence, creating hybrid forms that feel organic rather than forced. The result speaks to perseverance and connection without lapsing into platitude, maintaining an "edge-born soul" that prevents sentiment from calcifying into sentimentality.
"Vaticide" itself—the neologism demands unpacking—suggests destruction, the deliberate ending of something. Yet the track's emotional trajectory moves resolutely toward affirmation. One suspects the title operates ironically, or perhaps dialectically: the killing of the container so that what it held might be released. This tension between ending and beginning, between holding on and letting go, propels the composition's narrative arc and mirrors the grieving process itself.
The decision to follow this family tribute with a solo debut—*Serena's Lake*, slated for spring/summer 2026—suggests an artist moving through distinct phases of artistic development. If *What Would Art Do?* processes loss through collaboration and commemoration, the forthcoming work promises to explore "the tension between reflection and rebirth" from a more singular perspective. Je Bonus describes his philosophy as "every bridge burnt leads us back into another chorus"—a worldview that transforms destruction into cyclical renewal.
Whether *Vaticide* will find purchase beyond those already invested in Je Bonus's trajectory remains to be seen. The track makes few concessions to commercial considerations, preferring artistic integrity to easy hooks. Yet for listeners willing to meet it on its own terms, it offers considerable rewards: a meditation on mortality that feels genuinely earned, a processing of grief that honours both the dead and the living, and evidence of an artist willing to transform private sorrow into something approaching universal truth.
What makes the single genuinely compelling is its refusal of emotional simplicity. Grief here is neither romanticized nor pathologized but simply present, acknowledged, worked through in real time. Je Bonus understands that mourning contains multitudes: rage and relief, numbness and feeling, paralysis and release. The music reflects this understanding, shifting between registers with the fluidity of thought itself—grounded in truth, driven by passion, and shaped by the belief that loss, properly confronted, can become a kind of compass.