"I realllllllly struggled with this one. Sometimes I overthink when I get beats, and this was one of those cases. There was no set path or concept. The hook made no sense to me. Luckily, I happened to get a call from my ex. Then a call from her ex-fiance afterwards. Yup--that pretty much wrote the record instantly, probably 3-4 months after working on it here and there and getting pissed off and frustrated. Lyrically, I borrowed HEAVILY from my man Halfcast from the glitch hop group Aunt Jessica from Philly, who are on Rope-a-dope Digital. There's bars in there that are direct bites from his shit. He's one of my favorite cats ever and knowing his sound and style helped me craft my own work to "Stay Clean". Plus, not enough break-up songs reference Capone-N-Noreaga lol."
-Zilla Rocca

" "Stay Clean" came about because I really wanted to sample that part of Elliott Smith's "A Distorted Reality Is Now a Necessity to Be Free," because it sounded almost like something from a blaxploitation flick, so I put it over the drums of Al Green's "I'm So Glad You're Mine," because I thought those drums would go well with the sample. But it sounded incomplete. So, I decided to sample Smith's voice on the record, as well, and that totally made the song. The "Distorted Reality" sample is what gets talked about the most, but I also sampled Smith twice on that track. The guitar that sounds kinda like a train? That's from "Pretty (Ugly Before)," one of my favorite latter-day Elliott Smith songs. This was the track I was most iffy about, but Zilla's lyrics made it a must-have for the album. However, if I could go back, I'd EQ those drums better, because they sound really weak as-is."
-Douglas Martin

As told to No Trivia blog 6/30/09