K.O.D. WHAT WE ALL NEEDED TO HEAR
Emmanuel Iheke
Aug, 4th, 2018
“There are many ways to deal with this pain…choose wisely.”
K.O.D., American rapper J. Cole’s latest album, brings to light important issues that surround the ways we choose to deal with the pain that comes along with life: drug addiction, lust, alcohol addiction, etc. For artists in the hip hop genre, this is not common. It is more common to hear musicians sing about their crazy drunken weekends and their obsessions with marijuana. However in K.O.D., Cole challenges his listeners to put down the unhealthy habits and confront their problems head on. This is a message a lot of people might’ve not agreed with, but hey, it’s J. Cole. The message was delivered with such great wordplay that even a cocaine addict could shamelessly play the album out in public.
Cole’s album is something we all needed to hear. Even if you’ve never tried any drugs, we can all think of a time when we handled our problems in an unhealthy or irresponsible way. This happens. Does this make us bad people? Of course it doesn’t. And Cole does a great job of not placing any judgment. And to be very clear about not being judgmental, he makes a song all about his own mother’s problems with alcohol addiction as she coped with her heartbreak. J. Cole also included a satirical take on this message in order to get his point across when he mentioned money obsessions in the song ATM. Using satire in that sense gave him the platform to speak from first person, as he played the money hungry character in the music video. Here he allowed himself to look like the same people he was preaching to, theoretically writing his own name on the list of people who have dealt with pain the wrong way.
A lot of people may not see much of a big deal about substance abuse and loving money. However J. Cole did not waste time on arguing about the effects drugs have on one’s body. He went straight to the mental aspect of the entire ordeal. He went to the “why”. Why do we look to these substances and money to make us feel good. Why are we all for these things. And the answer he came up with was because we are running away from our problems, refraining to face them head on. At the end of the day, we can all agree that it’s better to stand and fight rather than run.
No one can judge. We all have our different convictions in life each day. One thing we all must understand is that our problems are like long distance track stars. We can never outrun them. However, when we decide to face our problems head on, we win every time. It isn’t an easy thing to do, however, nothing worth having comes super easy. We at Un-Associated don’t encourage running, we encourage standing tall and facing the storm head on. At the end of the day you can do two things, run until you get caught or fight until you win. Choose wisely.