geT ouT your Bag

geT ouT

your Bag

fighTing The culture of sadness

With the emergence of rappers like Lil Uzi Vert, XXXTentacion, Trippie Redd, Lil Skies, and Juice WRLD, an interesting cloud of sadness has been hovering over hip-hop. This new wave of rappers brought along a new subgenre of hip-hop, emo rap.

Emo rap is a combination of two genres: emo and rap. The emo genre is defi ned as a style of rock music resembling punk but having more complex arrangements and lyrics that deal with more emotional subjects. In the late 90s to early 2000s, this genre was mainly popular in the white community and was very rarely seen amongst young black kids.

Rap, on the other hand, has always been very popular amongst the black community. Many of these artists admit to being musically infl uenced by various emo and pop punk-adjacent groups like Paramore, Never Shout Never, and 3OH!3. Now, the combination of these two genres has produced iconic lyrics like Uzi’s “push me to the edge, all my friends are dead,” and X’s “suicide if you ever try to let go, uh / I’m sad, I know, yeah.”

Filled with dark, gothic, and abstract images and messages, emo rap attempts to shed light on the dark sides of mental health, heartbreak, drugs, and suicide. Although many of these artists are simply talking about the harsh realities that many people face with mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety, the somber aesthetic of their music has expanded into social media, fashion, and the youth as a whole.

I think it is fair to say that we live in a hyper-conscious society in terms of mental health. Nowadays, people have a clearer understanding of what mental illnesses are, how much they affect society and the youth, and how serious and crippling these illnesses can be.

The presence of artists like Trippie Redd, XXXTentacion, and Lil Skies in the music industry can symbolize a step in the right direction, as they are artists who blatantly talk about their struggles with mental illness in their music. Although the success and acceptance of these artists in the music industry highlight inclusion and diversity of thought in the hip-hop world—which is historically known for being very narrow-minded—it has also created a number of issues within the community.

Whether consciously or subconsciously, these artists have contributed to the normalization of sadness. Their catchy, mumble rap mixed with the dark, emo lyrics has led this generation to think that having a mental illness is “trendy” and has desensitized them to the actual severity of these conditions. Because of this, teens are ignorantly self-diagnosing themselves with serious mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, etc. all because their favorite artists have made these conditions look and sound “cool.”

Despite the prominence of these artists who constantly put us in our bags, there are ways to combat this sadboy/sadgirl culture. We, as a society, have many reasons to be sad. We’re young, in college, and are living in a world that may be completely submerged in water within the next fi fty years.

However, just as there are numerous reasons to be sad, there are a number of reasons to be happy. First, there is an infi nite list of feel-good rappers like Chance The Rapper, KYLE, D.R.A.M, Lizzo, GoldLink and more.

Despite constantly highlighting his marriage in his music, Chance’s upbeat mixes and catchy/funny lyrics are almost guaranteed to put a smile on your face and/or make you feel good. I don’t think there is anyone that can say they haven’t smiled while listening to songs like “GRoCERIES,” “No Problem,” and “Hot Shower.” In addition, if you look at pre-Kim Kardashian Kanye West albums, one could say that he falls under the feel-good category with songs like “Good Life.”

There are a number of reasons why these artists fall under the feel-good category. Whether it’s the upbeat tempo of their music, the positive lyrical content or playful music videos, at the end of the day, feel-good music is subjective. Although there are artists who make it their mission to create feel-good music, sometimes feel good songs/artists are those that remind you of a happy memory or time in your life.