You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
One note before we get started,
this episode contains explicit language and also a mention of suicide.
If you or someone you love is having thoughts of suicide, confidential help is available for free.
You can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
You can also text the crisis text line.
Just text HELLO to 741741.
There's also a comprehensive list of international crisis lines on Wikipedia,
and we'll link to that in the show notes.
Okay, here's the episode.
Bakar is a singer and songwriter from London.
In 2018, he put out his first release, Bad Kid.
A year later, he put out the EP, Will You Be My Yellow?
And this September, he's releasing his second full-length album, Halo.
One of Bakar's tracks from the EP and the upcoming album is a song called Hell and Back,
which went to number one on Billboard's AAA charts and eventually went platinum.
For this episode,
Bakar told me how he wrote Hell and Back and all the unexpected twists and turns it took.