A Collective Memorandum

At some point, you have to ask yourself whether or not this whole life thing is a joke. Every day, we wake up in another episode of one big fat sitcom together. Sometimes, there will be a whole lot of chuckles, in other moments, things might get serious. Today may not be the best day of our lives, but tomorrow is something to look forward to, even if it isn’t guaranteed. We spend most of our time on this Earth constantly searching for purpose, trying to top our previous endeavor, and proving all those who stood against us, pejoratively wrong (regardless of whether that’s the right thing to do). Yet, a huge question that always arises once we think we’ve done it all is, “What’s next?” You see, we might all be a part of the same hit television show, but no one in the industry seemed to care enough to pass out scripts for us to follow. Depending on our travels, the answer to our questions can be dark ones—if not a twisted form of funny—because all in all, no one can tell us our futures. But, “all good jokes contain true shit,” and who would I be to not laugh along?

Joke numero uno—April 20th (or "4/20") is the pseudo-holiday for America’s increasingly favorite (and decreasingly illegal) pastime, “Marijuana Day.” On this specific day of all days, you’re supposed to dust off your grandfather’s vintage bong, buy yourself some self-medication and at 4:20 PM, begin to surf the hidden waves of the atmosphere from the safety of—well—pretty much anywhere you choose honestly. Now, bear with me for a bit. Would you like to hear the first punchline of this piece? It’s quite the question actually.

Who even made 4/20 a thing?

I guarantee you’ve probably heard about this yearly event already from someone, and if you haven’t, just ask any teenager what “4/20” is and they’ll crack a smile before speaking; they know. The joke here though is that only a rare few of those teenagers will even know of the true holiday’s origins. In fact, Warren Haynes, a guitarist who routinely plays with surviving members of the rock band the Grateful Dead, could only slightly recall “420” being a police code for marijuana possession (which is false by the way) before being notified by The Huffington Post that five San Rafael high schoolers coined the term in 1971 as a way to talk in code around their parents and school administrators. The five San Rafael boys, nicknamed “the Waldos,” became an influential myth for weed fans of the Grateful Dead, ending up on flyers and having stories spread from one smoke session to another about their lives. But, over time—fast forward to 2018—not a single soul is aware of 4/20’s origins and that it has roots in Rock n’ Roll during the heydays of legendary innovators like Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and Pink Floyd. History has begun to elude us, and it might be reasonable to say that while an event like this is supposed to be revolutionary and appreciated in terms of the liberation it’s hopefully presenting—sadly we simultaneously discover that perhaps no one cares or wants to care that much about it. None of you know what it means. None of you may ever find out.

How much would you like to bet that ignorance is multiplying?

Let’s put all that to the side. Recently, hip-hop idealist J. Cole decided to use “4/20” last week as a release date for his fifth studio album, KOD (a.k.a. Kids on Drugs, Kill Your Demons, Kings Overdosed, etc.). As per usual, Cole released the project to the public with a small window of time between his announcement and the project’s arrival. Cole’s fourth studio album, 4 Your Eyez Only, had just about two weeks between announcement and release—KOD only had four days—but it by surprise immediately debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. But obviously, that type of clout must not mean anything. That entire week and still today, left and right, critics (Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, etc.) and moreover, Cole’s general haters, have dispelled the record as nothing more than a “preachy” attempt at “focusing on virtue and vice” while traversing and critiquing indulgences and abuse as a form of escape. To me, KOD had hit a gold mine. Meanwhile though, everyone was praising Drake for his upcoming album Scorpion and screaming Kendrick Lamar’s name in the streets after his glorious win of a Pulitzer—but where does that leave Cole?

Joke number two—I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing at 4:20 PM on 4/20. All my friends were out smoking “Kabbalah” and singing “Kumbaya” around their televisions or at parties, while I was neck deep in workload at Mass Appeal Magazine. Ironically, I got to hear the entirety of KOD while working, due to it blasting from the speakers above me and fellow colleagues. Get ready for a punchline again—nobody around liked Cole’s album except me. As a matter of fact, whoever was playing the album only meant to play the title track, but Spotify thought it would be funny to continue playing the entire album after the song that was originally queued. Plus, everyone in the office was too lazy to do anything about it (so look at that; no wonder me and Spotify have stayed friends). The project was neatly served as twelve slices of simple 808 driven beats, minor chord progressions, and a little boom bap every now and again with an extremely dark atmosphere. This is the usual palette of Trap artists, the only difference here being that Cole mixed trap style with “conscious rap.” But, from the grunts, groans, complaints, and chatter in the room—you would have assumed the album was a flop—that was all until I recognized no one was listening to a single lyric. Why? Because there’s this preconceived communal notion that J. Cole was or is supposed to be, a "trash," "boring" rapper.

On the cover art of KOD, there is no title—only a warning which reads, “this album is in no way intended to glorify addiction.” KOD itself is a social, political analysis and commentary by Jermaine Cole on our American values and strife (more specifically the effects of drug abuse, greed, the genre of Trap and government corruption on society). He raps on “BRACKETS” (a solemn crooning tale of taxes in America) that “One thing about the men that’s controlling the pen that write history / They always seem to white-out they sins / Maybe we’ll never see a black man in the white house again.” He then tackles black mental health in the track “FRIENDS” saying, “There’s all sorts of trauma from drama that children see / Type of shit that normally would call for therapy / But you know just how it go in our community / Keep that shit inside, it don’t matter how hard it be.” And it goes on and on, from personal anecdotes about his mother’s alcoholism to the adultery of Kevin Hart. Sure, KOD is not as vigorous, cohesive or perhaps as elegant as a Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, but Cole’s message is a clear, useful and powerful one. During a time when no one is necessarily taking a stance against any of the gloomier issues of the world, he discusses these issues on the album. It’s timely—Trap lost one of its upcoming stars, Lil Peep in 2017 to an overdose, our President is surrounded by misogynistic and racist scandals, JAY-Z cheated on Beyoncé, and hell, we can’t even trust that Kanye is still Kanye. The world seems unhinged by too many a number of things—but perhaps Cole’s reputation isn’t stemming from a joint disliking of his music—maybe it’s more so that he’s speaking too often about the many things we’ve been desperately trying to escape. Is that why he’s “preachy?” Is that what makes him unappealing?

If we can’t talk about our issues openly, then how do we move forward?

During a lot of my time in high school, I used to nerd out over psychology and whether we were all clinically insane. I know, that’s pretty odd—whatever. But, with questions probing me lately about the future of entertainment and what is acceptable as “good art” or “bad art,” I took a step back to see if I could find a larger picture. The painter I was introduced to happened to be Carl Jung, and he had a plethora of art for me to decipher about us human beings.

In his 1916 essay, “The Structure of the Unconscious,” Carl Jung adds a second construct to the theories of Sigmund Freud. It’s a bit heady for some, but Jung essentially deduces that while we all likely repress our own private memories and desires separately (as Freud suggested)—we also are very much involved with influencing each other without warrant. Jung writes in a later essay entitled, “The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology” that, “The existence of the collective unconscious means that individual consciousness is anything but a tabula rasa and is not immune to predetermining influences. On the contrary, it is in the highest degree influenced by inherited presuppositions, quite apart from the unavoidable influences exerted upon it by the environment.” You know those classic phrases, “We’re products of our environment” and “things are what you make it”—those were the epitome of Jung’s discovery. Humans develop their own individual beliefs, declarations, life paths, and choices. However, before we even get the chance to develop on our own, we’re influenced by our parents, who in turn were influenced by their parents and so on. But even still, we’re all affected by those around us—even those we don’t even see. Joke trois—at this point, everyone knows about 4/20, but only a sliver of that amount knows where “Weed Day” came from. It's become almost second nature to not really give certain artists a listen because of a viral epidemic of negative thought preceding them—thought without reason at that.

A constant push and pull I have with this issue as an artist myself from time to time is where I personally fit on the roster of the music industry and whether I actually am up to par. The way things are now, it doesn’t always look like my closest friends nor myself could end up being star players unless we give into certain trends or modes of thinking we may not always agree with. Nonetheless, understanding that if I’m feeling that way, that likely, we all collectively are considering where we fit is an important point. There are too many times I’ve been in a room with people and we’ve said the same thing without planning to. I’ve crafted lyrics and melodies that I ended up hearing on the radio anywhere from a week to maybe a year or so later—never sure whether I was the one who came up with it or heard it somewhere else first—even when I know damn sure that it was me. Am I lost right now? Am I inexplicably falling down a rabbit hole I wasn’t even meant to venture? Am I drowning in political confusion? Is my identity under attack? Am I safe? Is this actually my music? Are these truly my words—or did the artists I listen to cause it to come out the way it’s forming?

How much of this is really original? How much of this is really me?

Trap music has become the pinnacle sound of the 2010s. Conscious hip-hop artists like Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, & Joey Bada$$, pop artists ranging from Miley Cyrus to Taylor Swift, to artists like Drake and Logic have all in one way or another succumb to its popularity—so much so that trap music is arguably a new form of pop music. There’s something to be said about a return of escapism in our culture during 2017. Artists like Migos (“Walk It, Talk It” music video), Bruno Mars & Cardi B (“Finesse” music video), Childish Gambino ("Awaken, My Love!" album)—they’re all making us fall back into past (resurging 1980s/1990s musical tropes, paying homage to 1970s fashion and vibrant rainbow colors, etc.) or light-speeding us into the future (mixing current trends with older ones, the continuation of digital MIDI music)—but not all of it is authentically real. There’s a shimmer of fantasy and a taste of illusion. We were fed up with politics so we voted people into office that had no political background. We’ve became tired of the protests and weary of our safety—so we’ve clung closer to Instagram and partied to more party music. That’s our current era—it wants to be preoccupied with bliss and happiness since we seem so deprived of it.

I’ve always believed that music, out of all the forms entertainment is the most visceral, tangible representation of society throughout history. Depending on the stratosphere and spiritual climate of an era, the music will defer. Blues was the culmination of melancholy and poverty in the deep south. Jazz was the expression of freedom and free thought. Rock was the youth’s rebellion against their parents. Hip-hop was the African-American youth’s rebellion against systematic oppression. And today, Trap and Pop seem to be the escape from history’s climaxes. There is a fair balance that can possibly be produced, copied, and distributed throughout the industry. Nevertheless, to do so means we must all as individuals want more intellectual, thought provoking work from the artist to influence as Carl Jung posed, the collective unconscious. So, I guess the final punchline would be that there isn’t an end all be all, for we are both the artist AND the audience—nothing operates if we can’t operate ourselves.

REFERENCES

- Cole, Jermaine. “‘Fire Squad.’” Genius, 9 Dec. 2014 | http://www.genius.com/4476778.

- Grim, Ryan. “420 Meaning: The True Story Of How April 20 Became 'Weed Day'.” The Huffington Post, 21 Apr. 2017 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/20/420-meaning-the-true-stor_n_543854.html.

- Bromwich, Jonah. “J. Cole: KOD.” J. Cole: KOD Album Review, Pitchfork, 24 Apr. 2018 | pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/j-cole-kod.

- Serrano, Shea, and Justin Charity. “The Great J. Cole Debate.” The Ringer, 9 Dec. 2016 | http://www.theringer.com/2016/12/9/16039126/the-great-j-cole-debate-31eb37c2a094.

- Jung, Carl. “The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology.” Carl Jung Depth Psychology, 7 Apr. 2018 | carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2018/04/07/the-significance-of-constitution-and-heredity-in-psychology.