The Reoccurring Black American Nightmare
J. Cole’s album, KOD, is a mirror for drug abuse and mental health issues within the black community and shows how legacies of racial violences spur negative coping behaviors. The generational effects of racial violences result in a cyclical haunting, thus creating a relative success rooted mainly in money and showing this money, thus creating an aspiration towards an American Nightmare due to its lack in longevity. Intro and the title track KOD, highlight the legitimacy of the otherwise marginalized genre of hip hop. Through the power of rhymes, beats, and sounds that elicit specific emotions the listener is able to hear and feel the haunting the speaker in this album is experiencing.
In the first track from KOD, titled Intro, a haunting is manifested through the ominous jazzy sounds and song lyrics. This jazzy and melancholic opening uses the fluttering sounds of the flute to set an ethereal, yet eerie tone that leads into the speaker’s subconscious.
A distorted, echoey male voice is manifested about ten seconds into this jazzy instrumental opening. The voice pleads, “Can someone please turn off my mind, my thoughts are racing all the time, there is no reason or no rhyme, I’m trapped inside myself” (J. Cole). This plea to turn off his brain due to racing thoughts that have “no reason or rhyme” alludes to some form of trauma that has been left unaddressed because they essentially make the speaker feel as if he is trapped. This notion of an internal struggle is further pushed when a female voice enters. This female voice is low and soothing, and this new female narrator speaks in a slow simplistic manner as she describes how humans deal with life circumstances. She discusses the simplicity of a newborn baby’s laughter connoting loving something, whereas their tears connote being in pain or afraid. She sets all of this up to state that “life can bring much pain” and “there are many ways to deal with this pain” so “choose wisely”. The female narrator acts as potentially another side of his subconscious that is trying to lead him out of the dark, mental state that he feels lost in.
The speaker’s subconscious comes back after the female narrator heeds the speaker to choose how he deals with his pains wisely stating:
At the bottom of the hourglass
Lies sand that represents the past
In which all my demons rest
I’m calling out for help (J. Cole).
The main speaker’s subconscious is acknowledging the haunting he is experiencing that is a derivation of the past. Gordon would attest, noting that a haunting is an “animated state in which a repressed or unresolved social violence is making itself known” (Gordon XVI). Through this subconscious plea, the demons of the speaker that have essentially been concealed at the bottom of this metaphorical hourglass are being revealed, the speaker is being notified that these demons that have been meticulously covered are “alive and present, and are interfering [. . .] with the incomplete forms of containment and repression [. . .]” (Gordon XVI)—i.e.-the speaker’s coping mechanisms.
The female narrator then comes back in and reiterates that there “are many ways to deal with this pain. Choose wisely”. The main speaker’s subconscious then repeats “choose wisely” after her. He repeats “choose wisely” for the duration of the intro. However, his already distorted voice becomes more distorted each time he states this phrase. His intonation goes up and down and his words begin to slur as the jazz instrumental in the background begins to die down, as the intro slowly begins to fade to its end; each phrase is more slurred with drastically different intonations than the last. The slurring of his words and drastic tones switches suggests some form of possible drug or alcohol influence. Prior to the female narrator coming back in, the main speaker’s subconscious stated that he was crying out for help, and it appears he turned to a substance for this help, but he was still trying to remind himself to choose wisely. The title track KOD, which follows the Intro,highlights that drugs are exactly what the main speaker ends up doing as a remedy for the pain he does not want to address.
The opening for the track KOD differs exponentially from the Intro. This track has a trap beat with heavy bass, with undertones of a high pitch, dissonant synth sound that comes in every other beat in the chorus. The synth gives of an eerily, yet playful thriller-eqsue vibe—similar to what would be attributed to a scene, from a movie or television series, in which the main character is getting chased…much like a haunting. The upbeat tone of the song seems to be a play on the front the speaker is putting on, i.e.- the arrogance exuding from his words and attitude. However, the playfully eerie beat underneath the main beat is this little reminder to the speaker that he still has some unfinished mental business to attend to.
In this track the male voice is no longer distorted, or echoey. The clarity of this voice insinuates that the listener has now entered the speaker’s “normal” conscious state, which is a complete switch from his previous tone, both vocally and attitude-wise. The speaker’s voice has a tone of arrogant pride in this track as he boasts about the type of person he is—one that does not need anyone else—as well as the amount of money he is making. The speaker opens with the chorus which starts:
This here’s what you call a flip
Ten keys from a quarter brick
Bentley from him Mama whip
K.O.D he hard as shit. (J. Cole)
This phrase is said in a prideful manner. The speaker’s tone with this line is one that exudes confidence because he’s talking about a “flip”, in which someone purchases something for cheap, then sells it for more than what they initially purchased it for, thus garnering a great profit. A “brick” refers to a pound cocaine. The speaker is saying that he is able to get “ten keys” (ten kilograms) from only a quarter of a brick of cocaine, this is boast worthy—especially because he is able to essentially get a Bentley with the profit that he is making off of selling drugs, as he states. The luxury that a Bentley car alludes to is a prime example of showing success as a means to live out a pseudo American Dream.
However, his inner demons still manage to make an appearance in the midst of his bragging spree. There’s more of an inside look into his mental state or deeper issues from his subconscious. While his subconscious thoughts may not sound as vulnerable as it did in the intro, it is highlighting troubling social circumstances that insinuates the speaker is not as confident or carefree as he is trying to portray. The tone of the speaker changes at the portion that follows the second chorus, at time stamp 1:35. His tone is lower and takes on more of a mumble flow; his tone now gives off more of a lackadaisical feeling, despite the emotional weight of the information he is disclosing. He opens with “How I grew up only few would’ve loved / ‘member I got my first view of the blood/ I’m hangin’ out and they shoot up the club / My homie got pharmaceutical plug” (J. Cole). The speaker is acknowledging from the first line of this verse that the circumstances that he grew up in where less than ideal. He remembers gang violence, witnessing a club shooting in particular that traumatized him to the extent he turned to drugs (via the supply from a friend) as means to cope:
I smoke the drug and it run through my vein
I think it’s workin’, it’s numbin’ the pain
Don’t give a fuck and I’m somewhat insane
Don’t give a fuck and I’m somewhat insane (J. Cole).
Armstrong would contest that this coping mechanism of drug usage is due to a tenet from Robert Merton’s Strain Theory, in which negative experiences causes “emotional problems such as anger, anxiety, and depression” (Armstrong 234). In turn these negative psychological problems lead to deviant coping behaviors to alleviate the strain and unpleasant emotions (Armstrong 234). The repetition in this verse highlights the problem with the speakers coping mechanism to his negative experiences. He repeats the line, “Don’t give a fuck and I’m somewhat insane”. Him not giving a fuck seems to be yet another cover—another attempt to conceal the demons that are trying to surface via this haunting. However, repetition alludes more to him trying to convince himself more than anything else because when he repeats the aforementioned line, his subconscious—the voice heard in the Intro—is quickly manifested, before it goes away and the speaker gets into a slew of negative, destructive behaviors. He starts with his own behavior:
[. . .] at this shit daily, sipped so much Actavis
I convinced Actavis that they should pay me
If practice made perfect, I’m practice’s baby
If practice made perfect, I’m practice’s baby (J. Cole)
When the speaker says he “sipped so much Actavis” the distorted voice of his subconscious is briefly returns, resulting in a doubling effect in which the main speaker and the voice of his subconscious are slurred and mixed together. This is only for that brief moment when he is talking about sipping Actavis. Actavis is a global pharmaceutical company thus; this is most likely an allusion to a popular drink called lean—a drink composed of codeine syrup (sold over the counter) and soda and/or hard candy. Lean makes you high and can cause slurring of the words, much like what is heard in the mixing of the speakers two voices. While the main speaker’s substance use is a coping mechanism to get rid of his demons, this brief manifestation of his subconscious (who reveals his demons) highlights how these substances actually help in revealing what he is trying to conceal. The speaker then gets into the destructive behaviors he sees around him:
My nigga sell crack like it’s back in da 80
Know a young nigga, he actin so crazy
He serve a few packs and he jack a Mercedes
He shoot at da police, he clap at old ladies
He don’t give a fuck if them crackers gon’ hang him (J. Cole).
This verse alludes to the connection between past and present as the speaker highlights his friend’s tenacity when selling drugs, as he makes the connection to the 80s and the crack epidemic that plagued the black community; this shows how different time periods don’t necessarily breed different results. The speaker than refers to a young man he knows who is recklessly causing physical harm to people, stealing cars etc. and not caring about the consequences. As opposed to just being a “nigga” who started acting “crazy”, he’s a “young nigga actin’ crazy”. The emphasis on him being a young black man and already engaging in this kind of destructive behavior suggests a hopelessness among the youth. The speaker makes a parallel to times of slavery stating that this young man doesn’t care if the “crackers” hang him, pushing the notion of racial violences from the past still being remembered in the black community, to an extent that such a metaphor is the best parallel to make to the hopelessness prominent in the community. The two references to significant events that explicitly affected the black community once upon a time in one verse highlight a certain level of stagnancy within the community because parallels can be made to events that are supposedly “over-and-done-with” (Gordon XVI). This stagnancy in social progress highlights how the American Dream is not truly attainable by everyone equally because mental health plays a large role in motivation and the belief that one can attain the American Dream. When the plights of the black community are not addressed beyond umbrella laws that do not acknowledge the socio-psychological aspect of problems prominent among members of the black community, it further perpetuates a negative narrative that does not take generational traumas into account as to why some members of the black community resorting to selling drugs to make money and experience some form of success that does not require them to be on equal footing. Thus, the tenet of the American Dream that anyone and everyone is able to pursue and attain the traditional American Dream (Hochschild 18) is false because it is not taking in the varying societal factors that affect one’s ability and belief to do so. As the track reaches its ends there is a switch. The speaker’s demons seem to be catching up to him. After the last chorus, the bouncy trap beat goes away and only the heavy bass with the eerie synth sound is left as various desires, mentalities, and drugs are listed out. The voices listing these out alternating between the female narrator, and either the distortion of this same female voice or another unknown female distorted voices that represent the drug vices, as well as a haunting aided by these drugs revealing itself even more.
J. Cole’s beat/instrumental choice, as well as stylistic approach to the vocals, etc. enables the listener to feel the haunting the speaker is undergoing. His in-depth description of the traumas haunting the speaker and their turn to certain vices highlights the legitimacy of hip hop in critical analyses of societal issues that concern black community. Hip Hop is the only genre in which black people are able to use their voices unapologetically as they represent themselves and essentially the demographic that has otherwise been silenced in other mediums (Karvelis 47).
Contemporary American Dreams & Nightmares 