The Bullitts, Jay Electronica, and Lucy Liu of all people combine for a song so purely odd that you won’t be able to categorize it into a genre, never mind decide if it’s pure innovation or straight up chaos.
The instrumental floods in at first with an orchestral, pulsing kind of quality. Lucy Liu opens the song by literally speaking vaguely religious minded words, and you already know: this song’s going to be one of the weird ones. And then a reverbed, layered, deep voice that somehow manages to be high at the same time comes into the mix, and all of a sudden it’s a gospel situation.
At the chorus, the drums and bass come in, and singing is layered with snippets from Lucy Liu’s spoken word spiel, and what the song is going for really starts coming for. The song is building it’s disparate pieces together in a way that shouldn’t work, but totally does, and it’s hype. Then comes the rap verse, layered over the same instrumentals and thudding beat, which has an OutKast kind of vibe.
There are definitely some interesting lines in here, from the strange:
Here’s dynamite sonic in real-time
This is your life
Cradle and knife
Everything grow until die
To the genius:
I was on the verge of dying like E.T.
In the bald spot in the forest, right next to the speak and spell
Tryna phone home but the signal wouldn’t reach the cell
Tryna hold on a little longer teeth and nail
Without a hand to wipe the tears away from my cheek when they fell
Not too many songs are motivational without being cheesy (see: Fight Song), but this songs on the True Motivation™ grind. Paired with the fact that the rap gives off major OutKast vibes, despite the weird bits (good weird, mind you) this is the song to blast after getting that 49% on your physics midterm (too soon? too soon). ← Don’t worry man, you’re literally just optimizing for Pass/No Record.
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You may also like:
cherubim by serpentwithfeet, which is also genius and lovely and different.
OLD TIME RELIGION by JAPA_KNEES. The song’s a really weird version of the old gospel song, but it’s also Innovation that Excites™. It was also in the Birdsong movie, so you know it’s confirmed Culinarist™.
Osaka Loop Line by Discovery — it’s another weird one.