Songfacts®:

• "The Manifesto" is a track from Gorillaz's ninth album, The Mountain. It explores themes of mortality, rebirth, and the soul's journey through life and beyond.
  
  "We call it 'The Manifesto' because it kind of embodied a lot of the ideas that are explored on the record," Damon Albarn told Apple Music. "Not so much lyrically, but sonically. There's three, four parts to it, so it goes around a lot of places, and you could take bits of it off."
• The track opens with Argentine rapper Trueno, who delivers his verses partly in Spanish, partly in English, all existential. Albarn credits his daughter for the collaboration: "She was way, way, way ahead of me on Trueno," he said. "Then we were in Buenos Aires and invited him to do 'Clint Eastwood.' He's a brilliant freestyler, I'm very jealous."
• D12 member Proof, who was fatally shot in 2006, contributes a posthumous rap verse. He previously appeared with his D12 colleagues on Gorillaz' 2001 standalone single "911," recorded when they were stranded in London after 9/11.
• Proof's verse was captured during an impromptu moment of freestyling, minutes before he officially entered the booth for an early recording session. It was likely recorded during Proof's time collaborating with Gorillaz in the early 2000s and posthumously released with his estate's approval.
• The Mountain also resurrects performances from Dennis Hopper, Bobby Womack, David Jolicoeur (De La Soul), Tony Allen, and Mark E. Smith, all former collaborators who now form something of a celestial supergroup. "I wanted to meditate on loss," Albarn told Apple Music. "Jamie (Hewlett) and I were thinking about our fathers, how do we do something in Gorillaz that has that resonance? Looking through old outtakes, it seemed like a really nice thing to do. Animate something that's lost."
• "The Manifesto" doesn't sit still for long; no Gorillaz song ever does. It slides from hip-hop to electronic to Indian classical, stitched together with the meticulous chaos of a dream you don't want to wake from. Albarn enlisted sarod virtuosos Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash, seventh-generation musicians from the Gwalior lineage, alongside folk and brass outfit Jea Band Jaipur, who've been soundtracking Indian weddings since 1936. Add Ajay Prasanna on bansuri flute and The Mountain Choir led by Vijayaa Shanker, and the result feels like "Dirty Harry" wandering into a Bollywood version of "White Flag," somehow making perfect sense.
• Trueno's contribution to "The Manifesto" came about after Damon Albarn invited him to be part of the album, appear in the video, and open for Gorillaz on their UK tour.
  
  Trueno told The Sun he sat down and listened to the concept, which deals with the idea of transcendence between life and death. He saw it in a positive, almost lesson-like way: "This journey through life only happens once and you have to enjoy it." He then poured all his energy into the lyrics and was delighted that both Albarn and the Gorillaz audience liked what he came up with.