Long As My Good Days Outweigh My Bad Days

My love and appreciation for music as an art is sublime. My ear drums and spine have fallen in love with 808 frequencies, snares, percussion and chords over the years of my physical existence. Just as food, music has become an essential nutrient in my life. I can’t fathom going several days without having consumed somewhat of a concordant audio frequency. I won’t even attempt to try it out.

With that said, over the past couple of weeks, my life energy hasn’t been anywhere close to what I’d consider normal. Bare in mind, my norm could be considered by some as being a low. IT IS WHAT IT IS. I’ve really been contemplating this whole idea of human existence. The idea of us being on a humongous large rock [earth] that is floating around a universe of similar rocks and stars. The idea of TRULY not knowing where we came from and where we’re TRULY going. Anyway, this low got to point where even my favorite albums and songs were not making a dent on energizing my soul. One would assume since we’re living in an era saturated with music output, I’d find a song to match this particular feeling and emotion. However, it seemed as if listening to new music releases would aggravate my vibration.

I woke up one Sunday morning. I don’t even remember whether it was a sunny day or not. My being hasn’t been conscious lately. As the day progressed, I was scrolling through my social media and to my pleasant surprise a new album had surfaced — DONDA. Oh my.

Here’s a lil’ backstory — Kanye West is easily in my top five of artists who’ve impacted, and have been a soundtrack to my life. I won’t give out too much detail about my age, but what I can tell you is that when Mr. West’s magnum opus, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy“ was released, I was too young to have listened to the album, top to bottom. Now imagine for all his prior work, “College Dropout”, “808s & Heartbreak” etc.… But here I am, having only truly listened to Kanye’s second half discography, I still rank his art high up. I’d say fourth on my personal favorites list. I really don’t like parallel rankings, but here I am ranking something as pure as art. I’ll charge that to the hip-hop culture.

Okay — so DONDA drops, twenty-seven demos are on the record alongside an immense lineup of contemporary rap’s most important artists appearing as guest features. Well, allow me be VERY HONEST with you. I’m from Harare. A 3rd world capital city located in a southern African country named Zimbabwe. Where I’m from, only the upper class have access to purchase digital music. I have never purchased a single song in my whole life. I’m extremely not proud of this, but it’s THE TRUTH. Politics, sanctions, classism and capitalism take major blame for this. I’m a creative artist myself and it pains me that I’ve never purchased music. I’m working on that; LIKE I REALLY AM WORKING ON THAT. With that said, I opened my laptop and immediately went to my go to bootleg music site. The same CDQ files you’d find on Apple Music are the same files found on this website. Just like Soulja Boy would say, “Word for Word, Bar for Bar”. Anyway I’m done defending myself.

The download happens. I transferred the L.P. to my phone and pressed play. I then embarked on a mission to clean out my room and organize my clothes for the next day. And yes, before you really ask, it really was a mission. I staggered past the album prelude “Donda Chant” and as soon as “Jail” started playing, I knew it was one of those albums. An hour of great music went by and as I picked up my phone I realized I wasn’t even half way through the project yet. Wow. The next song that came on is “Jesus Lord”. This song has a 32 second “weird” build-up and I remember thinking it might had been an interlude of some sort, judging from the prior intro chant. The beat drops and the chorus comes in, “Tell me if you know someone that needs —Jesus, Lord”. As the chorus progressed I restarted the song. The chorus came back and I restarted the song again. This time, I was amazed. The vocal delivery, the 808s knocking powerfully behind the vocals and the loop, together making up what I term “Heaven’s Gate Music”. Music I would play as I transcend from this life into the next. As the first few lines of Kanye’s verse came on, it felt as if I had penned the verse myself — as if Ye had asked me to pen the song for him. Usually people would phrase this by saying, “It felt like it was written for me”, but in this instance it felt like the opposite for me.

“ Sittin’ by myself, I’m just thinkin’
About all I’ve been through, I wish I was dreamin’
Man, it’s hard to be an angel when you surrounded by demons
I watched so many people leave
I see ’em change by the season…”

These opening lines explained how I’d been feeling last couple of weeks. And guess what, I had to restart the song again. Well, I kept on restarting the song, I lost count how many times I did. Eventually I managed to get through the song and the song was AMAZING. The other fifteen songs before it were great, but this one was AMAZING. I felt alive. I felt present. This is probably the purest song I’ve heard all year. The instrumental is simple and spiritual. Kanye’s verse is very structured and I can tell he sat with that verse in his notebook for a very long time. I think in a follow up blog I’ll solely breakdown the song. I really love how the song is structured. Without the lyrics the song sounds phenomenal. With Kanye’s verse and chorus added, the song sounds complete. Jay Electronica’s verse made me realize the song was far from complete. Jay’s verse made me go listen to “A Written Testimony” again. This time, a year later and with a more open mind. I did and I loved it. I also loved the Larry Hoover reference and I felt it painted a very vivid picture of the U.S.A. incarceration system.

After several replays and rewinds the song ended. By this time, I realized I had ten more tracks to complete the album and I eventually paused it. I told myself I’d get back to the album later that day. I scrolled through the follow up songs and my eyes ran into “Jesus Lord, Pt. 2”. Ohh my.

I clicked on it and essentially re-experienced the first version of “Jesus Lord” until I heard a new familiar voice on the track. A braggadocios street rap flow coupled with “Jesus Lord” high pitched vocals appearing after every four bars felt like I was attending an American hood funeral. I’m telling you. The third verse ended and as soon as I heard “Viral pictures, Bible Scriptures”, a smile erupted on my face. Jadakiss’ voice is a very distinct rap voice. I put two and two together and figured there’s only one other guy who usually raps with Jada that would pen down : “You see it on my hip, just know that it’s cocked.” Well it’s actually two rappers who’d meet this criteria but either way, I knew “The LOX” were in the cut and that Styles P was somewhere lurking with sixteen bars right after the Jadakiss verse was done.

And well, “Jesus Lord, Pt. 2” sparked the energy shift for me to write down this piece (a first), and helped me re-energize my being.

Yeah, viral pictures, Bible scriptures
One thing ’bout the devil, he’s liable to get you

Long As My Good Days Outweigh My Bad Days

— gilchrist™️