“There’s no bigger disappointment than sitting down to write another Illmatic, and by the end, it reads more like Nastradamus.” – Kendrick, Knxwledge & Finding the Good in Oversaturation.

I was looking for an answer to a question without an answer. Another way of saying, I was en route to a destination that wasn’t there. With nowhere to arrive, the journey became a loop, circling around the edges of inspiration but never touching a good enough idea. Good ideas are like nourishment for starved writers hungry in the head. It’s a well-grilled, perfectly sauteed steak that fills the brain and fuels the soul. 

The problem is, not every idea will be good. Some of them are practice for the next one. A small fish that won’t make a splash in the ocean of human consciousness. I, at times, ignore the small fishes. Treat them like unloved stepping stones to skip over. I want the big fish. I want the idea that will make a splash, create a stir, crash a boat. The big one. 

Kenny Mason has a song called “Get An Idea” that tackles this dilemma. Over softhearted piano keys and a steady drum beat, he meditates on personal history in a stream of lucid consciousness. The lyrics delicately flow out of him like organs being extracted for donation, gifting the listener a glance at what transpires within and outside his head. 

“Rippin' out pages in blind rages from shitty ideas

Go through my motions feelin' like I ain't got any ideas

Thinkin' 'bout quittin' at times, it seem like a pretty idea

Thinkin' 'bout freein' my mind from thinkin' of any ideas

Then think about people that might have a similar idea

Then I see that ego ain't been bringin' me any ideas

Then think of times when people told me my singing ideas was they only reason they lived

It made me rethink an idea…”

Kenny’s transparency aligns with what Kendrick Lamar was saying on “Worldwide Steppers” about his writer’s block experience. “For two years nothin' moved me,” he rapped, a confession by a prolific artist whose voice touched hundreds of songs and moved millions of people, but as I wrote some years ago, greatness is both his final destination and his biggest obstacle—I believe falling short is a fear that he carries. He, too, wants the big one. 

I also think Kendrick, like Kanye, doesn’t do sequels. He refuses to repeat himself. That can be its own box. Trapping an artist in a maze of running from their own shadow. Something magical might be at the end of that labyrinth, but will it be worth all the time spent in the search for something new to say? 

To make matters more complicated, music is in a time of hyper-constant content. Making the prolific paid and powerful. So much so that the breaks between releases have only gotten shorter, but is the music getting better? Does that question even matter when a prolific artist like Future is able to already sell his 612-song catalog like cashing in a lottery ticket?  

To be fair, Future deserves every penny for his consistency. From the 2011 release of Dirty Sprite to this year I NEVER LIKED YOU, he has been the Stevie Wonder of trap singalongs. The Elton John of aspirational anthems. The Walt Whitman of promethazine prose. He changed the game by being the melody master with vampire charisma and a pool shark passion for running it up until, artistically, there was nowhere left to run. 

The more he made, the more he became the architect of artistic proficiency. His brilliance wasn’t brief, but bountiful. It wasn’t until WRLD ON DRUGS with the late Juice WRLD did I feel exhaustion in his art. That was followed by The WIZRD, an album I remember liking, but it marked the end of his classic period in my opinion.  

The next three albums–Pluto x Baby Pluto, High Off Life, I NEVER LIKED YOU–didn’t move me the way they moved others. They had fewer ideas that produced the excitement of tracks from tapes like a DS2, a Monster, a HNDRXX, a Purple Reign. But Future never appears to struggle with finding a way to flex, to flaunt, to be the larger-than-life superstar. He became more of a caricature, but has done so without losing confidence in his ideas and the character his ideas are built around. 

I see that same quality of character in EST Gee, who hasn’t slowed down releasing quality street music since dropping his 2019 mixtape, El Toro. EST Gee sounds like Future’s “Live From The Gutter” verse if it materialized in Louisville, Kentucky. A brand of trap music that sells the danger, the paranoia, and the diabolical determination of beating the odds and reaping the rewards. 

His second album of the year, I Never Felt Nun, does in 20 tracks what Scarface does in 170 minutes, sets a scene of one man’s documentation of the underworld he’s fighting to overcome. As much as I like the idea of EST Gee, a modern-day Jeezy producing thug motivation in the time of  TikTok, the music feels familiar. Done and re-done to the point where the songs sound like a new voice repeating ideas that have been said before. 

I don’t believe that entirely. The evolution of rap has been accelerated by it never being a short supply of voices adding something unique to the ever-growing cultural zeitgeist. To have both a GloRilla and an Al-Doms, Real Boston Richey and Van Buren Records, EST Gee and Babyface Ray, Kenny Mason and a Baby Keem all releasing music while a Future, a Kendrick, a Lupe, and a Cam’Ron are all still active shows the many opportunities rap has created for every kind of artistic expression across the boards. 

But are the ideas still good? Or are we in an age of ouroboros? Where rap is just eating itself in a cycle of rebirth and not revolution. Maybe the revolution already happened, untelevised, and what we have been left with is the liberation of every kind of song, by every kind of artist, appealing to whatever you want to hear whenever you want to hear it. 

What a dream it all should be, and yet, it’s so easy to complain that new music doesn’t live as long. That it doesn’t stick around. What is sticking around anymore? What is living with an album? These concepts seem dated. Viewing the current landscape by old metrics is to see through archaic eyes and that does nothing but lead to blindness. 

It was Chuck D who said the music business has gone from a sound business to a sight, sound, story, and style business. He went on to say that the latest generation, they see music. If they can’t visualize music, it’s almost like the song doesn’t exist. Then, Chuck completes the thought with, “I think we are at a time when people kind of listen a little bit too much with their eyes.” 

It’s true. When music becomes about the numbers, the followers, the streams, the sales, and not the sound, what happens to the art? I don’t know. As I stated at the beginning, I was looking for an answer to a question without an answer. Another way of saying, I was en route to a destination that wasn’t there. Until the next ride, may the Fall bring ideas and art for rebirth and revolution. Selah. 

-Yoh