YOU'VE GOT AN ENEMY

With Pizza Bear laying dormant for decades and Honey Bear obsessing over her second album (though it was never released), the gap in bear beatmakers had swelled from a crack to a canyon. Enter Beans. Orphaned when he was just a cub, he too drew on the inspiration of New Bear City, not of the dizzying highs but of the scummy lows. The southern neighborhoods of NBC were often coated in a mist, the sun rarely shining due to the pollution pouring forth from factories making cheap knock-offs of well-known products. Here, the rain was not a weather event but a guarantee, a soggy neighbor who would not stop borrowing your stuff. Beans did not seek the shelter of the streets, which the citizens often did (illegal substances, gambling, crime, and the like). Instead, Beans filled his time with studies, novels, and the excitement of ragged comic books. These worlds sheltered him from disappointment and allowed him to create a version of himself that he thought he could never become. Beans, as we know him, has returned to the City that made him, but he is not a prodigal son; he is a force of change. Looking into the heavens, he counted the rhythm of the rain and formed the basis of Toy Glory in his head. With the help of his computer, he tapped away at a keyboard, fully aware that his understanding of music composition was limited. With time, frustration, and the beats in his brain, his debut album was born. Harrowing as it is toe-tapping, this was the other side of the New Bear City coin. While Pizza Bear had lived for the moment, Beans lived to survive. Within is the fuzzy warble of passing cars, the driving, twinkling rain, and the heartbeat that drove the beatmaker through the smog and into the heavens above. Toy Glory symbolizes his need to regain his confidence after being thrown away as a young cub, and the essence of this sadness permeates the album. Sharing in his misery was a cure, not the poison, and listeners went bonkers for the album, outpacing production. Beans did not go on to have a storied career (his next album flopped due to production issues which replaced the drum tracks with the sound of him eating cheese doodles), but his influence is still felt in the southern reaches of New Bear City.