Album Review: Spilligion

by Spillage Village

“Why do we live on the surface When our hearts search for the deep?”

by FEMI OLUTADE

Music has always been one of the most essential ways for Black people to reconnect with God and find hope amid hardship. In the nineteenth century, enslaved Africans sang songs, now known as Negro spirituals, that spoke of finding freedom in the world to come, even as they were being oppressed in this world. These Negro spirituals would later influence numerous music genres originated by Black artists, including gospel, blues, rock and roll, soul, R&B, and even hip-hop.

The album Spilligion, released in the fall by the Atlanta hip-hop collective Spillage Village, carries this tradition forward, exploring spirituality and the Black urban experience in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic and the recent lockdowns. The lyrics deal with a variety of religious faiths (with track names like “Oshun,” referring to a West African goddess of rivers and sensuality; “Cupid,” for the Roman god of erotic love; and “Shiva”, for the god of destruction in Hinduism), but the album is most heavily influenced by Western forms of Christianity. The cover art gives us a sense of what we’re in for. It parodies Renaissancestyle paintings of Mary, the mother of God, enthroned in the heavens holding baby Jesus. Jesus is replaced by a bear cub, in a playful reference to the group’s previous albums: Bears Like This, Bears Like This Too, and Bears Like This Too Much; and instead of angels, we see the members of Spillage Village, all wearing bear masks. But the most striking feature is that Mary is replaced with a skeleton, evoking the Grim Reaper. It’s an indication that death, judgment, and the afterlife will be central themes of the album.

The kinds of choices that can lead to life or death are illustrated in the album’s first eight tracks. Collectively, these tracks reveal how an individual’s pursuit of God’s spirit is often hindered by the pursuit of corrupting pleasures, most notably money, drugs, and sex.

The corrupting influence of money is depicted on the opening track “Spill Vill,” where a pastor steals money from a church to buy a luxury sports car, and also on the track “Judas,” where a romantic relationship dissolves over arguments about money. The influence of drugs is repeatedly highlighted on tracks like “Baptize,” “PsalmSing,” and “Ea’alah (Family),” as various members of the Spillage Village rap about smoking marijuana while reading the book of Genesis and trying to feel closer to God. The influence of sex is depicted in “Mecca,” “Oshun,” and “Cupid” as the group raps about having casual sex with women all over the world to cope with the daily frustrations of life.

However, as the album reaches its ninth track, “Shiva,” we find that this practice of using money, drugs, and sex as coping mechanisms has now led to anxiety, confusion, and depression:

Now that we're sittin' here reminiscin' I just picked a pen up to mention Maybe illustrate my tears on construction paper Cut it out, put it on the fridge to save for later Open up, I'm so cold inside from what's happened to us Maybe your daddy died, or you're hooked on drugs Stuck in the house of blues Can't find a way out, don't know which route to choose It's gettin' pretty hot in here The hotbox done turned to a coffin.

Here, one of the Spillage Village members, Johnny Venus, depicts himself writing tearful rap verses like a child making art to stick on the outside of a fridge. Johnny then realizes how the hardships he and his peers have endured (in his case, losing a father and being addicted to drugs) have left them empty and cold, like the inside of a fridge. He also describes them as being in the cold “House of Blues,” a reference to blues music, in which African American artists traditionally sing about their experiences of misery and oppression.

At the end of the verse, Johnny Venus changes up the imagery. “It’s gettin’ pretty hot in here / The hotbox done turned to a coffin.” This is a reference to “hotboxing,” or smoking marijuana inside a car or another enclosed space to inhale more smoke and get extremely high. While smoking marijuana previously provided an escape, the overwhelming isolation now makes the hotbox feel like a coffin, which reveals how

Spilligion (2020) Spillage Village, JID and EarthGang

Johnny and his peers are succumbing to a kind of spiritual death. Moreover, the repeated use of the word “hot” may be a subtle indication that Johnny and his peers are experiencing a taste of Gehenna, the fiery valley of destruction into which those who reject the Kingdom of God are cast at the Last Judgment. The idea of the Last Judgment at the end of times is then confirmed on the following track, which is appropriately titled “End of Daze,” in reference both to the biblical End of Days and the dazed state of mind that smokers experience after “blazing” marijuana.

While the “End of Daze” at first seems to focus on God’s judgment, the song’s outro takes a dramatic turn: It reveals God to be deeply compassionate, as God weeps at humanity’s failed attempts to find love apart from God:

The heavens in the sky start to cry as we look for love Dying deep inside, lonely kisses and empty hugs Why do we live on the surface When our hearts search for the deep? Please forgive me, babe, I'm nervous Scared to go to sleep Perfection is the goal these days But I want something pure All that life throws our ways A love that will endure

This search for purity and love ultimately leads to the song “Hapi,” in which the group sings about escaping from the overwhelming influence of their urban environment and retreating into the natural environment of the forest. This shift in environment seems to lead to a spiritual breakthrough, as members of the group look to turn from destructive pursuits, beginning with the pursuit of money:

So, you get rich, I'ma try to get free, but Not exclusive, mutually, but Oh, I, oh, I gotta find the balance between.

Here, Spillage Villager Mereba concludes that money cannot buy freedom and might even be a distraction from finding true freedom. At the same time, she recognizes that being rich and being free are not mutually exclusive but require a balance that remains elusive to her. Moreover, this theme of finding the balance between extremes leads directly to a verse that appears to be the central thesis of the album:

Some say, "Life is just a Hell And it's here we dwell until we're truly, truly, truly free" Some say, "Projects and ghettos and seeds that will never grow Is all there is to see” I'll stay with you through the night and in the darkest times We'll fight through it all until we reach that dawn.

Here Johnny Venus outlines two opposing ways of contextualizing the suffering that African Americans continue to experience on this earth. According to one perspective, life on earth will always be a living Hell that Black people can only escape when they die. This is a perspective that was widely adopted by enslaved African Americans who held onto the hope of being free in the world to come even while freedom seemed impossible in this world. In contrast, Johnny Venus also acknowledges that some Black people have become disenchanted with traditional spirituality and the idea that they will experience freedom in the world to come. This materialist perspective thus denies that there is any spiritual reality beyond the dilapidated housing projects and ghettos that are clearly visible in this world.

Johnny Venus is reluctant to wholly adopt either perspective. Rather, he tries to find a balance between these extremes, by committing to staying beside those who are suffering. He also vows to fight for the freedom of those who live in darkness until they reach the dawn of a new day. This idea of finding freedom at dawn mirrors the Exodus story, when God led the formerly enslaved Israelites through the Red Sea with a pillar of fire at night and led the Egyptian army to destruction at dawn. Similarly, the Prophet Malachi spoke of a day when God would burn those who are proud like chaff in an oven but would free God’s people like cattle released from their stalls when the “Sun of Righteousness will rise with healing in its wings.” It is this biblical vision of freedom that inspired civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as they sought to free Black people from racial injustice. Fittingly, Johnny Venus’s verse ends with lines that echo Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech:

I dream of a world where love is the rule Where hearts walk two by two; And I with you I dream of a place where a child's wish can always come true And the old and withered become renewed.

In this verse, Johnny Venus dreams of a world that is governed under the rule of God’s love. He describes this world as one where “hearts walk two by two,” like the animals who were gathered into Noah’s ark and delivered into a world where all those who practiced injustice were washed away. Similarly, Johnny Venus dreams of a place where the “old and withered become renewed.” This final line of the verse seems to refer to the final section of the Revelation given to St. John the Evangelist, in which God creates a new heaven and a new earth. Subsequently, St. John hears a voice saying:

“Behold, the tabernacle of God is among the people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

St. John’s vision thus epitomizes the Christian hope that Jesus will one day rule His kingdom, in which He has renewed all of creation and enabled humans to truly love their neighbors. Moreover, within the context of Spilligion, St. John’s vision also seems to be the ultimate hope that enables the members of Spillage Village to keep searching for real love as we hear on the album’s final song entitled “Jupiter:”

So hold my hands and dance with me tonight You know, they say we're all about to die And maybe it's the love we all are tryna find Who knows what lies, it's only by design.

Having taken the time to understand the themes and messages of Spilligion, what should we take away from the album as Orthodox Christians, most of whom are not African American? As with any experience of cross-cultural engagement, I would invite my brothers and sisters in Christ to approach an album like this as an exercise in Christ-like empathy, compassion, and humility.

In listening to Spilligion, we should be all the more aware of how a person’s environment in modern, urbanized America exposes them to destructive influences. These are the kinds of influences that drove Christians into the wilderness to become monastics. We should recognize that we are also susceptible to these influences. We should thus have a greater degree of compassion for those who are suffering outside the safe harbor of the Church and feel compelled to follow Jesus’s example of joining humanity amid their suffering. As St. John the Evangelist wrote, “If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Let us so love our neighbors, particularly those in the Black community who have opened their hearts to us in numerous ways, including on the album Spilligion.

FEMI OLUTADE is a software engineer living in Irvine, California. He is a parishioner at St. Paul's Greek Orthodox Church in Irvine. He was a writer on the fifth season of the podcast Dissect, and his cultural criticism and other writing is published at https://medium.com/@folutade.