“Time Moves Slow” by BadBadNotGood (ft. Samuel T. Herring)

By the looks of things, the primary purpose of the title (“Time Moves Slow”) is to serve as a poetic metaphor for the less-than-ideal emotional state the vocalist currently finds himself in. And he is so due to being the victim of what he explains as an unreciprocated love. 

Thus the addressee is his significant other, or perhaps at this point we might as well as his ex. And the way he describes the scenario is something like she just one day bounced on him. He also seems to imply that the addressee is dealing with some type of unfavorable emotional reaction to taking such an action also. 

Indeed analyzing the aforementioned metaphor which lies at the center of this track is not an easy task. But going a bit out on a limb, what it appears the vocalist is saying is something like breaking up with someone is the easy part when it comes to terminating a romance. 

But the real challenge lies thereafter, in trying to actually compensate for the role said individual played in your life. Or as Samuel himself puts it, “time moves slow when you’re all alone”. And again, this is apparently something which both he and the addressee are going through at the moment. But that said, it was obviously she who, to his dismay, called the relationship off.

The “IV” Project

This track is from a BadBadNotGood (BBNG) project entitled IV, which as its name implies is their fourth (non-collaborative) album. And to date it remains their most successful, having topped Billboard’s Jazz Albums Chart. 

But to note in 2015 they dropped a collaborative album alongside Wu-Tang alum Ghostface Killah, entitled Sour Soul, which also did pretty good for itself in the US as well as Australia.

BadBadNotGood and “Time Moves Slow”

BadBadNotGood is a band from Canada. The members of the crew when this track was released on 8 July 2016 were:

• Chester Hansen (bassist)
• Alexander Sowinski (drummer)
• Leland Whitty (guitarist)
• Matthew Tavares (pianist) 

And as of the writing of this post, all of them with the exception of Tavares remain down with the band. And you may have noticed that none of the above are listed as being a vocalist. That is because BBNG is actually an instrumental group. And as such they regularly collaborate with outside vocalists, sharing a collaboration history with the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Daniel Caesar, Snoop Dogg and the aforementioned Ghostface Killah. 

And in the case of “Time Moves Slow” they teamed up with Samuel T. Herring, a singer/rapper from North Carolina who most notably fronts a band called Future Islands.

Facts about “Time Moves Slow”

This song does not have a chart history to speak of. However, it did appear on a couple of TV shows, as well as a cover of the tune being featured on a PlayStation 4 videogame entitled Dreams (2020). 

That being said, the track experienced a newfound popularity when it was sampled by Vano 3000, a producer from Florida, on a song he released in June of 2021 entitled “Running Away“. That is to say that said remix, if you will, has been utilized over 2 billion times on TikTok.

At first Vano did not acquire permission from BBMG to use their song, and as such “Running Away” was not officially available for purchase. However, he did eventually do so, and it ended up being officially released by Innovative Leisure, the same label that put out the original “Time Moves Slow”.

The entire BBNG crew is credited as having written and produced “Time Moves Slow”.