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Good Morning: Self Reflection and Mac Miller

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[Cover Art] Mac Miller ~ GO:OD AM designed by DJNowGraphics / @djnowgraphics

Photo by DJNowGraphics

 

The past month and a half, for me, has been a candid reminder of the fragility of human life.

I had just recently lost a friend to drug-related issues, so the death of Mac Miller was a profound blow to me. On September 7, 2018, hip-hop lost a very talented artist.

Mac was someone whose music I had become increasingly more drawn to since he released Macadelic in 2012. He had, in my eyes, expanded his artistic palette much further, honed in his lyrical ability, and created a unique little niche for himself within the genre.

I also understood his personal demons. He was never shy about discussing his struggles with depression, loneliness and addiction within his music. Albums like Watching Movies with the Sound Off and his most recent release, Swimming, are just a few of Mac’s projects where he is brutally honest about his struggles. On “I Am Who Am”, a song off WMWTSO, carries these sentiments:

 

“Forfeit in the war, he lays a sword down and walks away

Grabs a 40 from the corner store and begins to contemplate

Dealing with death like he work in the morgue, absorbing the souls

Forgotten, he lost his way

Starring down that barrel, thinking not today…”

 

After his death, I played his music for the entirety of the day. After listening to said albums above, along with others such as his 2014 release, Faces, I came across an album I hadn’t touched in several years: GO:OD AM. I remember playing that album heavily when it came out in 2015 because it was released during my last semester at environmental school. My college experience had changed me permanently. One of the main contributors to my depression is my muscular dystrophy, but the stresses of schoolwork, the potential future, and my chemical imbalance due to excessive drug use only amplified my depression and near-brush with suicide during that time in my life.

As I listened to GO:OD AM again, I began to have flashbacks. All of these past emotions resurfaced once again.

Eventually, I got to “Two Matches”.

I was outside my dorm building smoking a Newport near the bench behind the building. The bench overlooked a cemetery that was also located behind the building.

It was nighttime, and I was all alone, something that became common for me that semester. I would deliberately procrastinate on my assignments to go outside and smoke, whether it was weed or cigarettes. It was how I listened to albums.

I had forgotten how gorgeous that Sounwave beat sounded. I would walk outside with my headphones, pray no one was out on the bench, and walk over by my lonesome and listen to whatever I had found that day. GO:OD AM got that same treatment.

“Two Matches” in particular stood out to me not only for its production quality, but for the sentiment of risk and wonder regarding the future the song discussed:

“Hey, blow out your candles, make a wish

What’s a life if you never take a risk?

Ain’t a place too far, ain’t a dream too big

Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a little bit of fun (let’s have some fun)

Ain’t nothin’ wrong with a little bit of fun…”

 

To a budding young nineteen year-old, lyrics like this made the song feel like an anthem.

Some nostalgia kicked in as I replayed songs like “Time Flies” and “Weekend”. I remember having “Time Flies” on repeat for WEEKS. Mac really rode that bouncy, beat beautifully: “You can’t expect the unexpected, these dreams are manifested, from my head into reality, they seems a bit excessive”.

Every track returned me to a another memory. The song “Clubhouse” brought me back to a particularly vivid one.

I’m crumbling weed onto a frisbee inside a cemetery mausoleum with a few friends (the cemetery was a common chill spot for myself and fellow students who lived at the dorm). I had my portable speaker next to me blaring GO:OD AM. I was always keen on showing off my music collection to my college buddies. I became known for it (I may have over-requested the aux a few times). “Clubhouse” was currently the song blaring out of my speaker: “If there’s a list to the top you could sign me up”. God, that hook was catchy. The scratching mixed with that little faint xylophone only amplified the vibe.

Almost every night, I was partying and smoking. However, this particular night would be cut short. After rolling up, a cop decided to pull up to our location. I spent the next thirty minutes ducking from his spotlight behind gravestones until I could make a break for the dorm room. Luckily we all got out without getting arrested.

The loneliness and boredom of being at school triggered my drug use, which ultimately led to me doing poorly in school, which would then lead to me being kicked out of school.

“Perfect Circle” began to play.

Those opening, haunting vocals smacked me with a wave of sadness.

This was a song I used to play a lot during my time at school. A song I always played when I was depressed and alone. I was depressed and alone a lot.

I started to remember the day I found out I was going to be kicked out of school. That night, I got an acquaintance to pick me up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the liquor store. I went to the graveyard by myself and chugged half of that bitch in less than an hour.

I didn’t give a fuck anymore.

The next thing I remember is waking up with dried vomit on my clothes. It was still pitch black outside and I was still drunk. To this day, I have no idea how I found my way back up to my dorm room that night. It’s honestly a miracle I made it back safe.

As I continued to listen to “Perfect Circle” with tears in my eyes, I began to see the parallels between my prior lifestyle and the one Mac was describing:

 

“I wash these pills down with liquor and fall

Leave it to me I do enough for us all

Got what you need if you like breaking the law

My mother raised me a God”

 

So much similarity between us, yet, I’m still here, and Mac Miller isn’t. Another wave of sadness hits me when I hear:

I’ve been a sinner, I’m just tryna stay

Warm through the winter, and I’ll be on my way

I’m just a drifter, in endless seas of whispers

I just need shelter, give me shelter from the wind.”

 

By the time “Perfect Circle” turns into “God Speed” I’m bawling, knowing the potential fate he wished to prevent had come to fruition:

“But white lines be numbing them dark times

Them pills that I’m popping, I need to man up

Admit it’s a problem, I need a wake up

Before one morning I don’t wake up…”

 

I cried because Mac Miller never had the chance to heal himself, and now he’s gone.

I cried because my friend met the same fate as he did.

I cried because, in reality, it could’ve been me.

I pushed through the tears and eventually finished the album. What had started as a tribute to a fallen artist, turned into a powerful segment of self-reflection and thankfulness for life:

“Gotta thank God every morning that I woke up…”

One of the truly great things I loved about Mac Miller was his relatability to the people of my generation. A piece of Mac Miller existed in everyone. There are “Mac Millers” out there everywhere that struggle with the same issues he did whose fates have yet to be decided.

I guess I survived because I found a balance. That balance was my passion for music and writing.

My demons aren’t completely buried, and my vices still tug at me every so often. I’m not perfect, nor will I ever be. But I feel like I’m in a state of balance in my life currently that I’m comfortable with. To quote the late rapper himself: “But I think that the beauty is in being able to be in both places […] I really wouldn’t want just happiness. And I don’t want just sadness either. I don’t want to be depressed. I want to be able to have good days and bad days. I feel like that’s really important”.

R.I.P. Malcolm McCormick

To Rap Like Water: A Review of Noname’s “Room 25”

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Noname “Room 25”

“We Tell Ourselves Stories In Order To Live”–Joan Didion

Right now in hip-hop, there is truly no one rapping like Noname. She is not “the anti-Cardi B”. She is not, nor has she ever been, “the female Chance”. Born Fatimah Nyeema Warner, the Chicago-native exists in a lane of her own making. She came into the public eye by way of featuring alongside Chicago contemporaries such as Mick Jenkins and Chance the Rapper. While battling her own demons (depression and alcohol) held back the long-awaited debut, in 2016 Telefone emerged into the world and fans embraced this new, vibrant voice in hip-hop. From Telefone to now, Noname has pulled back her layers and revealed so much more. If Telefone was a delicate conversation in the quiet, tender hours, Room 25 is her pulling back the night’s curtain, letting the sun in, inviting everyone to bear witness.

She stakes her claims from the start with “Self”, a soothing, light-hearted, yet sharp-tongued meditation towards those who believe they believe they have Noname all figured out: “Y’all really thought a bitch couldn’t rap, huh?”. While she boldly addresses those who fail to box her with labels, she reminds all of us: she does all this for herself. In “Self”, Noname is sexy, flirty, and audacious in a way we’ve never seen her before. She enjoys what her body is capable of: “My pussy teachin ninth-grade English / My pussy wrote a thesis on colonialism”. Here the Chicago-native subverts the ways in which the feminine body is often portrayed in hip-hop: “I know niggas only talk about money and good pussy”. She claims her pussy and its powers so no one else can. She is irreverent, disarming, and it feels like we’re being reintroduced to the Noname she took the years in between albums to cultivate.

In “Window”, much like the title of the song, Noname is wide open from her adventures in love and sex. Self-love, romantic-love, love as forgiveness, and more are translated into a delicate background of xylophone, and hi-hats. In her interview with The Fader, Noname is very candid about coming into her sexuality and the heartbreak that came with it: “My only reason for not having sex was purely insecurity, purely like, I’m too afraid to be naked in front of somebody. A lot of people feel like that but the horniness trumps it, the horniness is slightly more than the insecurity”. Though the four-month relationship came to a crashing end, Noname emerged with a mature sense of self-love and how humans love one another: “And all you got was me-me-me / But I love you even though we’re not meant to be, I still love you / I hope you find everything that you want, and she loves you / Everything is everything just know that I love you”.

Courtesy of The Fader

Along with her budding sexuality, stepping into darling self-affirmation married to a smooth, sweeping crescendos of sound, she leads us into “Don’t Forget About Me”, a song in which Noname confront her mortality, a theme often visited on Telefone, except this time she is more at peace her sense of fragility, and therein lies her strength: even with mortality a horizon that stretches as far her eye can see, she just wants to be remembered–like any of us would. We want to believe our labor in this world will immortalize us. Death does not kill us, but being forgotten does: “I know everyone goes some day / I know my body’s fragile, know it’s made from clay / But if I have to go, I pray my soul is still eternal”.

In this album, Noname experimented and found her secret weapon in a full-live band, which she admits blew through her self-funded budget: “Man, that shit is fucking expensive as hell. Someone has to arrange all the parts and then you have to then hire, like, 12 people, this big-ass orchestral thing,” she says. “[I paid for] the whole album, everything, myself. And I was like, Do I want to spend this much money on something that’s so minimal?” As minimal as the rapper claims it was, it lifted Room 25 into a simple heaven. Orchestra-driven tracks such as “Montego Bay” are a melodic, quick-paced, lush tapestry of dreams. Scat singing in the background, Noname raps, and with ease, keeps up with the jazz.

Notable features such as Ravyn Lenae on “Montego Bay”, Smino & Saba on “Ace”, Adam Ness on “no name” attribute to Noname hometown, yet larger-than-life music. These features are humbling because Noname looks towards home for those to help her sing her truest songs. Ravyn Lenae’s vocals romance us on “Montego Bay” much the way she did on “Forever”. Smino and Saba double-dutch a skittering of rhymes on “Ace”, while Adam Ness brings us home on “no name”

The final track on “Room 25” is a song of victory, of ascension. More than a resolution, Noname’s refusal to be attached to names and labels (“because when we walk into heaven / no one’s name gonna exist”)  is further synonyms with her outlook on mortality: “Only worldly possession I have is life”. It’s never safe to assume anything about a rapper like Noname, a rapper who crafted a persona piece about being a woman who lost a baby, but one can deduce age 25 was a critical age for this rapper. Maybe the room, then, is the space of her life and how this album is a timestamp of that. There isn’t a skippable track on “Room 25”; what Noname has created here is a dense menagerie of sound that is calming and feels like a slice of home. Where Telefone often was an album of loss and mourning, Room 25 is an uplifting gesture of gratitude and reverence for life. Noname’s patience and deliberate execution is what will ensure she maintains a long and successful career. In the age of mass-production, Noname moves at her own pace. She will be heard when she is ready and you will say ‘thank you’. Noname is exactly what hip-hop needs right now.

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I.S. Jones is the Managing Editor of Dead End Hip-Hop. You can tweet at her here

Thank You, Mac Miller

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Thank you Mac Miller.

And I’m sorry. That’s the first thing I want to say and I’m sure it’s something a lot of us would say to Mac Miller if any fan got to see him before September 7, 2018. Because as of that day, we lost one. More specifically, I did.

There are plenty of artists I have grieved for and still do whenever I play their music; however, when it comes to Mac Miller he was different. He was someone that helped me acclimate to my new life.

In August 2011, I moved from Dallas, TX to Greenville, NC to live with my dad. It was just before the start of my sophomore year in high school. It was a time where I didn’t know anything, really, because I was still trying to understand who I was in the world. While I had been in the area before, I didn’t live there. I had no friends. All I had was my dad and music.

I was nervous to talk to other kids but the music was my entry point to other people. I could speak about it and my presence was known.

I was on every new release but it wasn’t until Blue Slide Park came out that I couldn’t join the conversation. The discussion had shifted to someone who I had no clue about. I had to ask my classmate, Kelsey Holder, who he was. Come to find out, he’s a rapper from Pittsburgh who was only 4 years my senior. I had to find out what all the talk was about so I downloaded the project, listened, and found something and someone special.

I was on a bit of a high horse when I was 15 and didn’t listen to rap like that. What did some white kid from Pittsburgh have to teach some fifteen-year-old black kid trying to figure it all out…? He helped me find a part of myself I had lost in trying to find other things. From there, I went back and download K.I.D.S. and Best Day Ever with the latter being one of the projects that really shot me over the moon. “Wake Up” was the morning jam I played on the back of the bus.

As the years went by and I got older, so did Mac. Growth that I don’t think anyone expected him to show emerged; he gave us steady, progressive change that was reflective in other people’s lives. It’s part of the reason he resonated with so many younger fans and opened doors for older fans to appreciate him. Before most, he was one of the first real, relatable guys of the new school. He was unabashedly human.

But of course, like anyone who ages in hip-hop and isn’t on top, jokes were thrown his way. A lot of them too. Not reflective of his character but any white rapper that appeared on any preppy frat boy’s playlist was ridiculed. Ask Asher Roth. Even if they have shed that persona ages ago, it’s an easy point to pick at for any “hip-hop head”. It was unfair but life doesn’t care about unfair.

Stating himself that fame had been one of the reasons, Mac struggled with depression and substance abuse. He never strayed away or hid it from his fans. It was a fact he made clear on 2014’s Faces. It was my last year of high school and by then I wasn’t listening to Mac as much as I used to but I still respected him a lot. It was the year I finally tried to get help for my depression. Mac was open for anyone to look and see him. He also advocated for bettering one’s self even when he was done. It was another part of himself that he didn’t have to share but he did. And I wanted to do the same. So I gave part of myself to others to find love.

Now it’s 2018, I have graduated from college. Mac Miller has long graduated from the young class to a young vet with almost 10 years into the game. We had both made strides in our life. Still struggling but working through demons. It’s August 3rd and Mac releases Swimming. His fifth studio album. It so happens to be on a day that also has the major releases from Travis Scott and YG.

It’s a hectic hip-hop day but instead of listening to the others, I want to listen to his project first. For the simple reason, that I might find something in it that’ll help me again. Why? Because it’s the Friday before I made another big transition of my life by moving from Greenville, NC with my dad to Decatur, GA that Sunday. I thought more so than those other projects, that I would find some solace in his because I was in a rut. I didn’t have a job yet and I only had enough money to last me a month. Like that album in high school, I needed something. So I went to Spotify and pressed play. While it didn’t make me feel the same way Blue Slide Park did in high school, it did something else for me instead. It made me feel okay and that was all I needed.

Fast forward to a little over a month later, I’m at work. It’s a slow day and I decide to check my phone just because I was bored. So I go to Twitter and I’m scrolling and I see Mac’s name. Thinking it’s a new song, I scroll back up. But instead, the news brings tears to my eyes: “Mac Miller has passed away at 26”.

I keep checking my timeline to see if it’s true and I was unfortunately right. It was real. My throat was dry. I couldn’t speak. I was in a daze. My co-worker asks me if I’m okay. I said, “I don’t know but did you know Mac Miller?” She says no and I start to describe him and the tears well up some more and I have to go to the restroom for a sec. Just to wipe my eyes.

Mac had helped at two pivotal moments in my life. I never went to a concert and I wasn’t the biggest die-hard fan but his death hit me. More than I honestly thought it would. I didn’t expect someone four years my senior to suddenly pass. It made me think about death and the brevity of living but then I listened to his album again. Like I am now. Even with water welling up my eyes, I know it’s going to be okay. He gave too much and changed too many lives for me to wallow in sadness. It wasn’t what his music was about. He was more than that. It’s obvious to see when no one has anything bad to say. Hip-hop and fans alike collectively mourned for a soul that made them feel better without trying.

I salute to Mac Miller because he didn’t know it, but he helped me grow and find parts of myself. If there is a heaven, I hope you’re finally at peace.

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Tyler Jones is a freelance writer based out in the ATL area.

 

Judson Wright cuts loose on “I Ran”

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Mississippi’s fastest rising singer Judson Wright comes through with his latest offering titled “I Ran”. The heartfelt song is layered over an upbeat soundscape laced with anthemic-like guitar riffs and atmospheric instrumentation. The artist goes deep into his personal life on this record as he details his exit from a shaky relationship.

“I Ran” shows Wright’s versatility as he taps into a myriad of musical styles ranging from RnB, Trap and pop.

The sombre single that is “I Ran” marks the third release from Judson Wright following “Palm Trees” and “Original”. It can be found on all streaming services now.
Get “I Ran” On Spotify  and iTunes

Judson Wright online : Soundcloud | Twitter | Instagram

Centric, Lil Fame (M.O.P), Rock (Heltah Skeltah) & Joshua Gunn

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M.O.P. meets Heltah Skeltah. “Gutta Rap” is the epitome of undiluted, unadulterated Hip-Hop music. Oakland, CA producer Centric links up with Lil’ Fame [M.O.P.], Rock [Heltah Skeltah] and the self-proclaimed ‘best rapper you never heard’ Joshua Gunn [NC]: scratches courtesy of DJ Flipflop [CunninLynguists]. With so much new music being released on a daily basis its difficult to know what’s worth your time but when you see those underground Hip-Hop legend’s names you know exactly what to expect, back-to-back bars over some A+ production. This song isn’t part of any particular project (yet!) just a stray bullet in preparation for Grand Opus [Joc Scholar & Centric] sophomore LP “High Power.”

Hip-Hop Steps Outside of Himself: White Supremacy & Hip-Hop

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I don’t trust white people. I have lived long enough to know that feeling any empathy for them can and will kill me. The stakes are high for Black folks in America and I don’t have time to waste. Hip-hop works in similar extremes, with little grace and generalizations that serve its own survival. Hip-hop works to find ways to reinvent itself all the time; whether it be Gogo music, mumble rap, or random subcultures, Hip-hop has always meant varying things to Black people—all made at the expense of needing to find joy and a voice out of the muck of this world. Hip-hop at its core is about Black culture and the ability to subvert the systems that work to try to kill us.

Yet, it would be naive to think Hip-hop doesn’t exist in a world of labor exploitation. A world ready to make any song, person or trend cultural capital for the next ad agency, all the bite pulled out with the bones barely hanging on.

I read The Tanning of America by Steve Stoute when I was 16 years old. At the time, I thought I wanted to do the same thing as Stoute. I wanted to break glass ceilings and get into those boardrooms that made the big decisions. It took 4 years and some life experience to realize Stoute was wrong; that Hip-hop is, in fact, Black in every way possible and is an act of resistance in its primal state. However, it is still, in many ways, a good ol’ boys club. I began to realize that Hip-Hop throughout history wasn’t growing to hold more ideas of blackness but that it was simply becoming a beacon of capitalism that I never knew to fear.

Via Youtube

It feels like blackface in action to see a white person rap and be given more praise than the people who put bone to concrete to build this thing we call hip-hop culture. How did they learn to speak our language? To steal a thing we kept hidden? To have successfully stolen our tongue and I have to bob along to the music. Not because I want to but because I could be killed for questioning why the white person is even allowed in the room…most times by the black men in the room. Rap is a sport—a sport that favors those in power; one where I have to write about how we should give Macklemore another chance while black queer artists are still ignored regardless of their talent. It is a balancing act, to be in the culture but also on the chopping block.

I can never really tell if white artists care about the culture or are simply good at avoiding questions. And If I’m being honest that’s what it feels like…a convenient costume that can be altered to make it in this industry.  Where they can be on a Coachella stage one year and then next defacing the thing that put the silver in their mouths. Normally it takes an EP or at least a solid project until I can buy into the idea/notion that a white artist isn’t repeating the legacy of colonization that has plagued black and brown folks for centuries. But most times my cynicism stops me from giving most a second chance because I know the culture will praise them regardless of my opinion.  

That white boys with grills in their mouth, humble beginnings and enough lyrical talent to make it to the stage are praised for doing the bare minimum. A bare minimum that gets lower day by day. White supremacy shows up in how little grace we give to women in rap to fail, it’s about who we let in the door and most times it is never black queer artists.  We can see it in how whiteness is centered even when it isn’t in the room. It shows up when you try to pitch to publications about black queer rappers but editors only want to hear about Lil Dicky’s latest single with Chris Brown.

It is exhausting but I can’t run away from it.

Capitalism and White supremacy are big words but they show up in similar ways.  Capitalism tells us we can only work with what makes the most money and that thing is always whatever is closest to whiteness or has the most cultural capital. Capitalism is always looking to silence those of us who have no choice but to have to write the thing anyways. Who have bills to pay and not enough clout to say no. There is no space in hip-hop to question white rappers, to ask why they are here? To ask why they can spit 16 bars on Hot 97 but can’t speak on their own privilege? To take and never give back?  To critique why we feel awkward questioning the racial elephant in the room that we didn’t create?

That’s the joke of it all, that black folks have ownership of anything, that even the black folks running the culture are also selling us down the river. The world tells black folks that we have to be accommodating.  That we have to let white folks get a piece of the pie even if we never asked them to join in. White supremacy looks like white men running hip-hop critique, looks like only using black writers when it allows the most clickbait but never a staff position, it looks like black women in rap supporting abusers in order to stay relevant, it’s a 17-year-old black rapper falling for the lie of upward mobility while sitting in an empty mansion.

via Gazette Review

It’s all a joke really if you think about it, a system set up for us to fail, a tragedy in many parts, white women becoming hip-hop influencers as they step on the backs of black women, realizing most of the best rappers in history have all abused the women in their lives.

It’s hard when you realize the culture you love will never love you back.

It’s all a joke I never get to laugh at. 

 

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Clarissa Brooks is a Staff Writer with Dead End Hip-Hop. You can tweet at her here