Thanks to Kanye, Kid Cudi and A Batch of Rookies ”they are helping to generate visibility about mental illness.
The best Kanye West line of 2018 isn’t even a Kanye line. It’s on her brilliant collaborative album with Kid Cudi, Kids See Ghosts. Cudi, who has been sincere about his fight against mental illness, but had not been so transparent in his music, sings in “Reborn”: “Sometimes I wonder what my purpose is / Easy to feel it is worth nothing / But peace is something that starts with me ”. He repeats the word “with me,” making them a mantra and a critical reminder to both him and the listener. He sounds relieved just to say it out loud.
He was far from the only one. It was hard to ignore a (very) public acknowledgment of mental illness in hip-hop, or anywhere else in pop culture, this year. Kanye’s meme on Ye’s cover evoked her bipolar disorder, adding important context to her outbursts and which have been in the headlines of the world. Mariah Carey acknowledged having the same disorder. Ariana Grande and Shawn Mendes offered musical performances between stopped seeing in “Breathin” and “In My Blood” these songs are deeply felt, respectively. Also, a lot of rap beginners have rewritten the rules of what it means to be masculine while showing you their torment and then trying to find a solution.
This is not entirely new, of course. Musical artists probe the depths of their inner lives, especially in a confessional and verbally gymnastic genre like rap. “The things we hear today tend to have predecessors in the history of rap music,” says AD Carson, a hip-hop professor at the University of Virginia and a rap artist. “We can see rappers who have had open and frank discussions about things that we would fit into the broader category of music that deals with mental health issues.”
He points to Geto Boys’ 1991 “Mind Game Tricks on Me” (“I’m paranoid, I sleep with my finger on the trigger”) and Jay-Z’s “Song Cry” in 2002, in which the MC makes more hidden references to being “sick” (“Although I can’t let you know it, pride doesn’t let me show it,” says one line). “He’s emotionally muted, so it’s going to make you cry the song,” explains Carson. “He’s rapping to somehow defend what he can’t do to resolve his emotions about a complicated abusive relationship.”
Something has changed profoundly. This year’s direct confrontation with mental illness and its treatment as such “reflects the ways in which society at large seems to be more engaged in discussions of mental health,” adds Carson.
An undeniable shadow hangs over this consciousness. Several prominent rap stars died in 2018, including rising sensation Mac Miller, who died at age 26 of an overdose of fentanyl, cocaine, and alcohol. That was shocking, but sadly not surprising, given that Miller himself communicated with his demons throughout his life.
Reaction to Miller’s death, however, felt like a revelation. There was great support from Donald Glover, Chance the Rapper, and Vince Staples. It should be noted that French Montana and Bow Wow expressed great concern about the drug culture in hip-hop regardless of whether they may seem “soft.” Miller’s ex, Ariana Grande sings about her latest big hit “Thank U, Next,” “I wish I could thank Malcolm / because he was an angel.”
It’s hard to imagine it in 1994 when Kurt Cobain’s suicide joined a less serious conversation about mental health disorders and focused on almost addictive notes on conspiracy theories about Courtney Love’s involvement in his suicide.
This reflection has everything to do with the facts on the ground. Miller’s fatality comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that drug overdoses killed more than 70,000 Americans in 2017, a record, which topped car crashes and gun violence. fire in their beaks. This increase corresponds to the use of the type of synthetic opioids that affected Miller and extend far beyond the young, wealthy, and famous.
The rumors of those news could be heard in the rise (and rise and rise) of “SoundCloud rap”, also known as “emo rap”, which despite being based on familiar party tropes, also cleverly subverts them, forcing us to look at the false causes and consequences. No one saw the rapid rise of pop from Juice WRLD, a 20-year-old prodigy with a strange name, with more hooks on a single track than can reasonably be counted. An icon of the broadcast-powered hip-hop era, he scored the number 2 hit in the country with “Lucid Dreams,” an infectious disorder of a breakout anthem.
As other critics have pointed out, it can seem terribly antagonistic towards the woman who rejected him. But Juice WRLD is also, to say the least, honest to a certain extent. The most surprising part of “Lucid Dreams” is Juice WRLD’s admission that his pain is self-medicating in no uncertain terms. “I take recipes to make me feel good / I know everything is in my head,” he says, a sign that he is more aware of his conditions than he seems. The bottom line is when he groans in a low register, “Now I’m better off dead.” It’s hard to remember a more dizzy tune.
Not long after that song came out, Juice WRLD’s partner XXXTentation was tragically murdered in June at age 20, amid monstrous allegations that he had abused a pregnant woman. His murder seemed to inspire a change of heart in Juice WRLD, who released “Legends” as a tribute to his fellow rapper. “I’m trying not to,” he says. “I am trying not to change the world.”
Hip-hop is changing, and the world could be catching up, especially on mental illness. “I think a lot of public work has been done to talk about how we could be involved differently when it comes to mental illness,” says Carson. In a candid interview with the New York Times last year, Jay-Z discussed how entering therapy made him a better man with more empathy. “It makes it easier for all kinds of people to see themselves in that situation instead of what they have talked about in the records before when they were looking for help, it was perceived as a kind of route ‘for the weak'”, He says. “To listen to your favorite rapper talk about getting treatment, I think it definitely changes the way you have that conversation.”
Cudi’s rhymes in Kids See Ghosts help create the space for such conversation (the ghosts in the album title, of course, are the same ones that haunt him every day as an adult). The feeling was even erased with her old “enemy” Ye, who sincerely apologized to “Reborn”: “I forgot about the medicines, they called me insane / What an amazing thing, wrapped in shame / I want all the rain, I want all the pain / I want all the smoke, I want all the blame. “
Pop’s symbol of narcissism that he peers into himself for the reasons he’s been ridiculed? It may not be a recovery, but it is a step forward especially if they talk about mental illness. Along the same lines, the prominent “Freeee” in Kids See Ghosts is less a boast than a wish to fulfill. Starting with a quote from Marcus Garvey praising “man with full self-knowledge,” Kanye and Cudi yell over thick guitars, “I don’t feel pain anymore / Guess what, baby? I feel free!” Looking in has helped them get out.
The transformation has taken a long time. In a terribly uncertain world, a younger generation of hip-hop fans has been eager for a little more love, a little more tenderness, and, well, much more self-reflection. How to explain the business success of Brockhampton, the 13-member hip-hop group and newcomers to the self-styled “Best Boy Band Since One Direction” that debuted as part of a deal with RCA worth more than $ 15 million, in 2018. All this excitement for a band that deserves it a lot, but despite a devoted cult of followers, it has not been proven with a single hit that is memorable.
Brockhampton often seems to be designed to specifically circumvent the conventions of rap (and pop in general) by talking about mental illness. De facto leader Kevin Abstract, a 22-year-old gay black man from a Mormon family in Corpus Christi, Texas, likes to annoy listeners with references to pleasing his man. It also becomes almost uncomfortably real about the psychic costs of growing up in the music world with the band’s magnificent, genre-less, kaleidoscopic album, Iridescence: “And she was pissed that I never want to brag about it,” he says in “Weight. “And every time I took off my bra, my dick softened / I thought I had a problem, I kept my head on a pillow screaming.”
Real success may come from troubled stars who decide to let their guard down. The proof exists in Brockhampton’s “St Mark”, a tear in which members take turns uncovering difficult truths. “Suicidal thoughts, but I won’t,” sings Joba. “Take this as you like, it’s important, I admit it.” It is just as important for trampled children treating Brockhampton as The Beatles to listen to the choir at the end, singing euphorically, over and over, “I want more from life than this.” That is not drowning in misery; it’s a way out