PIVE Keeps It Personal on His New Album ‘Forever I Will Be’

Ryan Mullane has spent more than two decades working on his music. His new album as PIVE, Forever I Will Be, came out September 25, and it’s a compact one, with 10 songs running 29 minutes in total. For an artist with that much time behind him, it’s a fairly lean statement.

Mullane was born and raised in Spokane, Washington. Over the years he has overcome homelessness and addiction, and he’s open about both in his music. He connects with listeners by writing about the real world he’s lived in, and he doesn’t hold much back when he does it. That honesty has been a big part of why his audience has grown, and it has earned him attention from ThisIs50, MTV and Hip Hop Weekly.

The album is out now on Apple Music. It opens with “Roll With It” and closes with “Play My Game.” In between are “Sway,” “The Drop,” “Old Days,” “Down This Road,” “All I Do” and “Real Ones 3,” with “Soul Of A Broken Man” at No. 2 and “Former Self” at No. 9. Those last two titles point toward the personal history he tends to write about, and with the runtime averaging under three minutes a song, none of the tracks overstay their welcome.

The fifth track, “Old Days,” has a music video on YouTube. Mullane wrote the song and directed the video with Rob Miller, who also handled the cinematography. Freek van Workum produced the track, and Sherman Ewing mixed and mastered it. Co-directing gave Mullane a say in both what the song says and how it’s presented on screen. For anyone coming to PIVE for the first time, it’s probably the easiest way in.

What sets PIVE apart from a lot of newer artists is that he writes songs people can relate to without giving up the technical side of rapping. Those two things don’t always go together. Some rappers focus on wordplay and lose the thread of the story, while others tell a clear story and let the craft slip. Mullane tries to hold onto both, and two decades of writing give him plenty to draw from.

His music comes out of experience, pain, ambition and perseverance, and he has been building his catalog one release at a time. Forever I Will Be is the newest addition to it.

Given what Mullane has been through over the last 20-plus years, the album’s title comes across as a plain description of where he is now. He’s still here, and he’s still making music.