NYC rapper and poet Luna Clipse harnesses the fire of his bipolar disorder and forges it into a gift on his new LP LUNAtic, a collaboration with GRAMMY-winning producer Jerry Wonda (The Fugees, Mary J. Blige, Santana, John Legend, Beyoncé). LUNAtic tells LUNA’s story from first diagnosis, to forced institutionalization, to Judgement Day itself.

Album opener “Lunacy” encompasses the spark of his diagnosis and exposes the nightmare of greed surrounding the American dream. “It was 2005 / those visions popped into my eyes / so either I’m a prophet of our times / Or the world just hadn’t yet become as psychotic as my mind,” raps LUNA.

That leads into his song “Twin Towers.” A New Yorker through and through, the birth of LUNA happened in Los Angeles after a manic bipolar episode led to his being falsely charged with assault and arrested. He was sent to the Twin Towers correctional facility in Los Angeles where he learned first-hand the plight of the poor and mentally ill when he was abused by guards. There, he met others who had similar delusions and they’d spontaneously rhyme, spitting bars about the biblical apocalypse.

“I was down in the bowels / Of the twin towers / No, not the ones which blazed in flames… / That prison for the criminally insane / So inhumane to sick brains / That inhumane I became,” LUNA raps on “Minds on Fire” over a boom bap beat and a walking bass line.

“The Belly of the Beast” has a hopeful choral beat and its R&B choruses dip into funk bass and ambient elements as LUNA’s lush, poetic lyrics convey to us the experience of bipolar depression, and the inevitable ashes of the ecstasy of his mania.

“Van Gogh” is a tribute to his bipolar hero, highlighting the struggle of those living with mental illness who are misunderstood and mistreated by society. It opens with a gentle piano, moves into hard futuristic production and Camp NoWhere’s rich and soulful choruses.

LUNA embraces this quote from Van Gogh himself, from a letter to his brother, “What am I in the eyes of most people – a nonentity, an eccentric or an unpleasant person – somebody who has no position in society and never will have, in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then – even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.”“He didn’t see that dream,” says LUNA, “even as he hangs in the pinnacle of prestige. People leave MoMA or his interactive exhibits and see one of his own homeless and alone. When they see the crazed look in his bloodshot eyes, gushing with the fire that brushed the sky they just admired—they’ll walk across the street apart from him, and me, and his dream. Van Gogh is a reminder of all the broken hopes that made his bold strokes—the manic twitch of his hand that managed to dance his panic into a perfect flow, and make his stars glow.”

At one point at Twin Towers, LUNA was gassed, passed out, and woke up in solitary confinement. He had a hard time distinguishing reality, and wasn’t sure if it was all a delusion, but other inmates assured him it happened. He punched the window and broke his knuckle. He stared at the window and started convulsing. “I wanted my soul to escape through my eyes and out that window,” LUNA says.

The magically celestial and bittersweet “Starry Nights” continues his love affair with Van Gogh, and is about finding a home in an uncaring world. Van Gogh saw the night sky as wild swirling orbs of color through the barred window of his asylum. LUNA savors the magic of those manic nights, a time when the world comes alive, that sweet spot before the music of his mind crescendos and crashes. “Glimmer in the Abyss” confronts the darkest pits of depression, from suicidal idiations to wrestling with the devil. “Hope blows away / And all my feelings start to fade / They say it’s an eternal flame / I could use a glimmer in the Abyss.”

“Dr. Feelgood” deals with LUNA’s revolving door of doctors, medication and institutions. “They pumped me full of meds,” LUNA says. “I gained like 50 pounds, and I was like a zombie when I finally got out.”

After LUNA was released, he had a chip on his shoulder from the abuse at Twin Towers and the discrimination he felt from being mentally ill. He just started getting it all out. “I was angry,” LUNA says. He fell in with a battle rap crowd at the legendary Pyramid Club on Ave. B “Everyone there would wear their pain like a badge,” LUNA describes. “They were the voice of the voiceless.”

LUNA was rapping for Wyclef Jean at an event, and one of those verses involved The Joker, and prophesied the tragedy that was soon going to befall his brother. Later, Wonda cast LUNA as a Joker-like figure in a video for Camp NoWhere, another artist Wonda was producing.

“Joker” feat. Tiffani LeBlanc brings us this Batman villain inspired take on mental illness, building masks, and the joke of the American dream from the persona of the Clown Prince of Crime and Harley Quinn. LUNA’s sing-song slam-poet rap style dances with Wonda’s propulsive and cinematic beat as he lyrically confesses his metamorphosis from the nice boy you knew growing up to the catalyst for the Apocalypse.

LUNA was scheduled to record and mix in the studio the day after his brother died in a car accident. LUNA was heartbroken. “Then,” says LUNA, “Jerry [Wonda] passes me the phone and puts Wyclef on. He said, ‘I want you to put the pain you’re going through into some lyrics.’ I got off the phone, and Jerry said, ‘I’m gonna give you two hours. I want you to do it while the pain’s inside you.’ “

LUNAtic is one man’s journey through bipolar and the stigma surrounding mental illness. The songs flow like episodes to a narrative that dramatizes how LUNA went from hating his bipolar and considering it a curse, to being proud of it and considering it his greatest gift. It’s a manic-depressive cycle that’s equal parts heaven and hell, from depression that’s taken him to the brink, to being an overmedicated zombie, to the spiraling mania that created this album.

“The most difficult part of the battle,” says LUNA, “was fighting the discrimination that leads us to see ourselves as small, that creates shame, robbing us of our pride and crushing our hopes. The hell I went through became my power. The ability to apply that drive to the creative gifts that come with bipolar, a gift that accounts for the statistic that 38% of Pulitzer poets were bipolar. My biggest hope for the album is to change the world’s perspective of bipolar disorder.”