"Not Rap, Please"

I wrote a slightly awful excerpt several years ago that I published on Vocal two years ago–it received zero traction. A young, drug-addled, and confused 500-ish word attempt at writing anything significant about the work of a man whom many consider one of the best lyricists and rappers alive today. One which didn't resonate with my (at the time) three readers; perhaps seeing through it or considering it sub-par.

I have decided to give myself another shot. Hopefully, this one turns out slightly better. Thank you, angela. This is a wonderful prompt.

Jermaine Lamarr Cole released his fifth studio album, KOD, appositely, on April 20th, 2018. The title, having three distinct meanings, reveals the thrust of the work, and the problem that inspired his conversations: Kids on Drugs, King Overdosed, Kill Our Demons.

The first track, "Intro," was not the first song I heard from this album, although now I wish it had been. Like only listening to "Swimming Pools," or "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe," by Kendrick Lamar, but not giving the entire album, good kid, m.A.A.d. city a try, a full sense of the messaging intended couldn't be revealed to me. I found myself listening to "Motiv8," KOD's high-energy sixth track, on repeat as an anthem to just about any debauchery I found myself getting into. "Intro," however, is quite soft. Gentle piano and wind instruments lull you into receiving the words of the steady vespers that enter next. Not quite intone, but chant-like nonetheless, these words crescendo and wane quietly in the background: "Can someone please turn off my mind?/My thoughts are racing all the time./There is no reason or no rhyme./I'm trapped inside myself."

As if I needed to explain the relatability of this sensation–being trapped, relentlessly ruminating, and unable to find peace.

A lilty, but significantly louder Siri-like voice interrupts with a muted trumpet adjusting the mood with a jazzy riff. "A newborn baby has two primary modes of communication: Laughter, which says, 'I love this,' or crying, which says, 'This frightens me, I'm in pain.' Life can bring much pain. There are many ways to deal with this pain. Choose wisely." Ominous advice or warning.

I primarily choose three outlets for my pain, only two may be considered wise: I write. I engage with people, culture, art, etc. And I self-medicate.

The title track is next, and I must say, I'm not sure a song has more accurately captured my twenties than this one. "KOD" shifts gears entirely. A standard "banger," as the kids would say, sets the scene for a "Hard as shit," addict living fast and loose, whose "Life is too crazy no actor could play" him. Letting us know this would be the story of "Power, greed, money, Molly, weed, Percs, Xannys, lean, fame. And the strongest drug of them all. Love," in a three-minute-eleven-second song.

The following tracks seem to tell the tales of such men who fall victim to these addictions and vices. "Photograph" describes the way of love addiction in the social media and digital age. "Fell in love through photograph/I don't even know your name/Wonder if you'd follow back/I hope to see you one day." While "The Cut Off," seems to lament the struggles of unlearning people-pleasing behaviors and cutting off those who take advantage of help or kindness. The next two tracks, "ATM," and "Motiv8," discuss the capitalist grind and the haunting allure of the omnipotent dollar, with choruses pronouncing, "Count it up," and "Get money." "BRACKETS," the eighth track, rounds out the discussion of financial freedom with a cool reflection on taxes and profound economic disparities. The seventh track, "Kevin's Heart," openly explores the relationship between celebrity (fame and money), substance abuse, and infidelity. Lyrics like, "Slip me a xanny at once (somebody)/I got the earth in a blunt (smoke)/I get the skirt when I want (skrrt!)/Due to the money aroma (somebody)," demonstrate the similarities of these different temptations. While slower lines like, "She my number one I don't need nothing on the side.../But my phone be blowing up, temptations on my line/I stare at the screen a while before I press decline/But she plants a seed and it still lingers in my mind.../But I'm only human, I know loving you's a crime/If I take this cookie now one day I'll do the time," express a deeper understanding of the nature of temptation, its prevalence in our culture, and how it can destroy lives.

J. Cole, you brilliant bastard, you taught me something new.

I realized I was an addict when I considered my habitual and near-constant consumption of marijuana. I didn't think I was an addict before that when I was taking (abusing) prescribed painkillers, dating (fucking) serially, or eating (binging) with abandon. These tracks introduced me to a novel concept, which I learned was not so novel in NA meetings, but I still preferred to hear it from J. Cole: addiction has little to nothing to do with the type of substance you use, your ability to quit or take breaks from it, or how functional your life is while using. Addicts of every variety exist on a spectrum of preferences, boundaries, and functionality; no one is more of an addict than another. Addiction has mostly everything to do with the 'why.'

Why did I use and depend on any substance at all?

In the ninth track, "Once An Addict (Interlude)," Jermaine, in the form of that floating Siri voice again, conceptualizes pain as a lack of understanding. The thought conveyed is that if you could only understand everything then you would feel no pain. “God must feel no pain,” the voice muses.

However, there will always be pain for us. Provided the frontal lobe remains intact and firing, there will be pain. To live as a human is to be in fluctuating states of pain, reprieve, joy, grief, sadness, etc. There is no escape from the variable emotions and physical sensations of existence while still breathing. That is the beauty of it all, though: experience. Whatever may come, we get to feel it.

But what if something makes all that feeling too much? What happens if you feel compelled to escape? My mother was an alcoholic, like Cole's. Albeit, seemingly more functional, if I am to trust his lyrics about his mother, which I do. My mother was what they call in the program a dry drunk. 'Dry,' meaning she didn't touch alcohol. In her case, she didn't drink for over twenty years, but she didn't do any recovery work, thus still referring to her as a 'drunk.' The root of the addiction was never addressed, and eventually, she began drinking again. "Once An Addict" acknowledges this hard reality as Cole grapples with his mother's consistent drinking and dysfunction, as well as his habitual use and functionality. He ends with the wish that he had intervened more.

I often wish I had not selfishly enabled my mother's drinking in her later years. The thought that we need "liquid courage" to connect and be vulnerable with each other is a dangerous belief. I learned that too late for my relationship with my mother, but I won't make the same mistake again.

As if these revelations aren't hard enough to have, Cole keeps going for another three tracks.

"FRIENDS." This one hit me so fucking hard. So hard that I'll post it here in all its glory, instead of just the hyperlink. It's just that good in my humble opinion. Hopefully, you have been listening along as you read. If you haven't been, start now! They're all worth it, but this is the one that helped me the most. "Meditate, don't medicate," became my mantra.

I had already had a bit of experience with meditation but had never developed a consistent practice until Cole told me to. It certainly helped that he spends over three minutes of a four-minute song expressing his frustration with friends who are still caught up in their addictions and his understanding of their frustration with attempts to quit.

"Fuck did you expect, you can blame it on condition/Blame it on crack, you can blame it on the system/Blame it on the fact that 12 got jurisdiction/To ride around in neighborhoods that they ain't ever lived in/Blame it on the strain that you feel when daddy missing/Blame it on Trump shit, blame it on Clinton/Blame it on trap music and the politicians.../What I'm tryna say is the blame can go deep as seas/Just to blame 'em all I would need like twenty CD's."

I couldn't help but imagine my friends feeling or telling me these same things in response to my myriad excuses for using and not checking my behavior. "I been saw the problem but stay silent 'cause I ain't Jesus/This ain't no trial if you desire go higher please/But fuck that now I'm older I love you 'cause you my friend/Without the drugs I want you to be comfortable in your skin." I mean, I would have wept so hard if a friend had ever said that to me. Then he drops it, the advice that changed my life: "I understand this message is not the coolest to say/But if you down to try it I know of a better way/Meditate."

I didn't care about cool according to other people. I left parties to meditate when I was tripping too hard to be social or just generally too overstimulated. Meditation was cool to me.

Yes, this track is very much a significant part of my decision to fuck off to a monastery in China to meditate for a month. I wanted it to be a bigger part of my life and establishing a practice in the conditions of the Shaolin Temple was a gift I knew I wanted to give myself.

Anywho, Cole wraps up this whopper of an album with a beautiful proclamation in "Window Pain (Outro)." It opens with a little girl's horrifying account of her cousin's murder. Cole spends the remainder of the nearly five-minute song listing the things he wants to do with the remainder of his connected and sober life–the people he wants to help, the vengeance he wants to enact but won't ("What I reap is what I will sow."), and the intentionality he strives for in his actions now. Hauntingly, the song ends with Cole asking the child why she believes bad things happen. The child answers with a vision of the apocalypse–God's retribution. "He's gonna restart the world." A warning or divine promise. The final words are, "Choose wisely."

The last track, "1985 (Intro to 'The Fall Off',)" is a bonus. More of a call-in than a diss-track, Cole offers sage advice to stay relevant and successful in the rap game. He tells young rappers not to make the same reckless decisions he did, to keep their music introspective, and to be wise and sustainable with their spending. Not a bad way to end an album that begs his friends and loved ones to live high-quality lives. Why not extend such thoughtfulness to your colleagues?

I love listening to this album and I love listening to J. Cole. I understand he is a flawed man and certainly not the first to address addiction in his music, but surely you agree, he does a pretty stellar job of it, right?

I still meditate regularly. I don't divine plans for my day from the bottom of bottles or the end of a spliff anymore. I don't need a handful of Vicodin in the morning to get going. My commitment to improving my relationship with substances like caffeine, marijuana, sex, love, nicotine, etc. is stronger and more developed than ever and I owe that in large part to the music I listen to. Artists like J. Cole plot for us. They stain our experience and shift lines for us. It's power and I love that he chooses to wield his wisely.