In 1969, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross theorized that everyone faced with a loss undergoes five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Those first four can take a long time to get through, but as any writer knows, putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys) can help with reaching number five.

Todd “Speech” Thomas was having a rough year. His favorite grandmother died and the family met up for her funeral in Tennessee, but, as if that wasn’t enough, this solemn occasion would mark the last time he would see his brother, who also died soon afterwards. Speech hadn’t even fully come to grips with the grief of his first loss when he was faced with a second.

Retreating to his bedroom studio, Speech began constructing beats for a song built around a sample from Prince. He had already decided to title it “Tennessee,” after the last place he had been with his brother and grandmother, and the lyrics poured out of him without thought or calculation. Bandmate Aerle Taree added her own lyrical and vocal ideas but Speech decided the song needed a little something extra, and so he brought in a singer he knew named Dionne Farris to add an emotional vocal hook over the end of the track. Arrested Development had a record label and a little money at this point so they were able to go into a real studio to record Farris’s part as opposed to continuing in Speech’s bedroom.

Despite its somber inspiration, the spirituality and positivity of “Tennessee” struck a chord with listeners upon its release as a single in the spring of 1992, especially as an alternative to the gangsta rap still dominating the airwaves, and the song ascended into the US Top 10 (#1 Hip-Hop). Tennessee — serving as both a geographical state and a metaphysical state — was a necessary stop on the journey, a part of the plan, somewhere Speech had to physically go, before he could emotionally go.

So let the ghosts out of your skull ….. with Arrested Development.