Noah Weiland has had a hard life. He may be the son of one of the biggest rock stars of the '90s, but recently revealed his dad Scott Weiland was actually millions of dollars in debt when he died. Like his dad, Noah has struggled with addiction and his solo music has been an outlet for reflecting on that dark time in his life. On Tuesday (April 23), Noah shared a song called "Time Will Tell" that features his late dad's vocals. In an Instagram post, he admitted he was hoping to hold onto the track until later in his career but was forced to release it after someone threatened to leak it unless Noah paid them $2,000.
"Can’t believe i’m saying this right now but basically i been getting blackmailed by a random number that somehow has a very old version of a song i have with my father," he revealed in the caption. "And because of that i am basically forced to release a song i had no intentions of releasing until way further into my career cause this coward rly thinks i’m about to send them $2k to not leak it. sooo, i beat em to the punch.. funny enough, i saw ‘TIME WILL TELL’ written on a bathroom wall the day i got that txt, maybe my dad thought it was time?"
"After years of struggling with addiction, homelessness, ppl hiding my dads $, liars, backstabbers, growing up too fast, losing my bro Gio, old friends turned foes, i been through a lot but the person i was years ago is FAR from who i am now," he concluded his message. Noah also shared screenshots of the blackmail text he received, along with his response.
Noah went into more detail about the song and situation in an interview with Rolling Stone, saying Scott's vocals came from a "super-unfinished" solo demo. “Due to the fact that nobody who ‘represents’ my dad actually cares to give the fans new unheard music, let alone keep his name alive in the first place, my friend Spencer Carr Reed and I decided to turn it into a more modern sounding song as if he was still alive and just decided to hop on one of my songs. That was the concept behind it,” he explained. “I’ve always sort of been conditioned by my family and certain people around me to hate my father growing up. But after all this time I realized it wasn’t his fault and he would’ve never let me go through all the chaos I’ve had to go through these past years of my life.”
Listen to "Time Will Tell" and see Noah's Instagram post below.