monks in a mosh pit

     Kendrick Lamar released his last studio album, DAMN.,  when I was in seventh grade. In the 1855 days since then, I have grown up. I went to high school. I learned that I loved to speak. I started dating a girl. I am going to college. And the world has changed too. Economies collapsed and a pandemic raged. Cities burned and were invaded. The influence of social media is more pervasive than ever, and polarization is worse than ever. The world has gotten more complicated, which places a heavy burden on Kendrick, as someone who must now juggle being a 34-year-old with a fiancee and two kids with discussing a range of societal issues in his work.     But luckily, Kendrick delivers, remaining just as introspective and forward-thinking as he always is.  His albums have always raised the stakes by complicating the topics they bring up and introducing additional perspectives—you never finish a Kendrick Lamar album feeling a sense of clarity, only more unce...

Sometimes, I like to listen to music with lyrics when I read. My brain naturally tries to comprehend written and spoken word together, which can cause confusion, but when records are familiar or mumbly enough, lyrical music enhances my experience of reading. Cadences can change the way I hear sentences in my head, and sometimes I literally read words in the artist's voice—different filters to the same picture. Similarly, the ideas of books bleed into the meaning of the music—and that’s what happened this week, when I accidentally juxtaposed a book I was reading on the political application of psychoanalysis, Enjoying What We Don’t Have by Todd McGowan, with the mixtape I have had on repeat: Future’s Beast Mode.  The book discusses Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic ideas and how they can be applied to society as a whole. Freud’s main argument is that members of society satisfy psychological needs and obtain enjoyment through an unconscious impulse called the death drive: a tendency ...