The Great Depression; What Kendrick Lamar, Joey Badass and Earl Sweathshirt’s new album all have in common.
How the most recent album releases by these young artistes speak about rampant depression in young people.
In every era, there are themes that define it as a period of time. I’ve been hard pressed to seek out these themes in my time, using the expressions that are put out by the taste makers of that time. Last week Kendrick Lamar stunned the world with the release of his album To Pimp a Butterfly, which is a grueling, honest and thorough evaluation of self and environment. Generally Kendrick tends to speak a lot to his peers and his audience in a very unorthodox way with a lot of shocking honesty. But To Pimp a Butterfly, was unmerciful and explicit down to the very cover art.
An article online ended up describing its “overwhelming blackness” as uncomfortable. The album speaks on some very human, yet scary and unnerving issues.
Joey Badass managed a similar commentary on the darker issues that we can all relate to, from having loved ones passing to, dealing with expectations versus reality and so on. Joey did it in a very different way(even teaming up With Chronixx in his crossover track Belly Of The Beast), which is perhaps more palatable with the youthful charm carrying throughout the entire album.
Earl sweatshirt’s album embodies this idea as we can see from the very title and it’s cover.
However, digging through the actual body of work we find Earl speaking very honestly about his own issues and vices as he sings “Step into the shadows we can talk addiction” , from the very first single Grief.
There is a collective depression, because the larger and perhaps more powerful portion of the population fail to concede that life doesn’t have to be like this. There are better, more progressive ways to go about our activities as human beings. There are a lot of things that we are uncomfortable about, but not many of them we can immediately affect. For example the city dump has been burning for the past ten days here in Kingston, but what are we to actually do about it? We have to wake up every day and pretend it’s not happening to keep ourselves from exploding, which is what everyone expects. Kendrick sees racism and all forms of ills all around him consistently, with not much power to change it. Yes! To Pimp A Butterfly makes perfect sense, it’s not overwhelming for no reason, it’s because we live in an overwhelming time. Yes, “ I Don’t Like Shit. I don’t go outside.” might be a phase. This whole thing may be reflective of passing frame of mind, but it is expressed for a reason, it is indicative of a larger picture. A lot of young people are battling depression, it is a real issue and we shouldn’t pretend it’s not. Like a wise friend said to me last night depression is a “human” emotion.
Not to be misunderstood, we are living in a beautiful time where a lot of great things are also happening simultaneously, I’m sure young people are aware of that. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows at this point, we can see that, and it must mean something. The message? A lot of things need to change in our societies still and until then, the commentary will continue.
