My stone grey Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H7 wireless headphones are up there with the most important material possessions in my life. They are discontinued now, but at the time I bought them, they were on sale for $250.00. I have worn these headphones, on average, three times a day, every day for the past year, which means each wear only costs me 22 cents. By the end of next year, they’ll be making me money. This is not a conversation about money though. This is a conversation about music because music has been on my mind.
In January, 2019, Nick Cave was asked whether AI would ever be able to write a good song. In his answer, Cave referenced Yuval Noah Harari’s book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, which claims Artificial Intelligence will be able to write better songs than humans. In fact, it will create songs tailored to our own mental algorithms. If we feel sad, we’ll listen to our bespoke happy song. If we feel frustrated, we’ll listen to our bespoke calming song. While the claim suggests the entire music industry will be made redundant, Cave argues it won’t. While we seek out certain songs to feel particular emotions, this is not all a great song does. “What we are actually listening to is human limitation and the audacity to transcend it. Artificial Intelligence, for all its unlimited potential, simply doesn’t have this capacity. How could it?” wrote Cave. “Music has the ability to touch the celestial sphere with the tips of its fingers and the awe and wonder we feel is in the desperate temerity of the reach, not just the outcome.”
I was reminded of Cave’s answer a few weeks ago, when I listened to an episode of the 1619 podcast which explores the birth of American music. The New York Times critic at large, Wesley Morris, explained that what we hear in black music that is so appealing to so many people, across all races, across time, is this tension between possibility and struggle. “It is confidence, and that’s ironic, because this is the sound of a people who for decades and centuries have been denied freedom. And yet, what you respond to in black music is the ultimate expression of a belief in that freedom,” he said. “The belief that the struggle is worth it, that the pain begets joy, and that that joy you’re experiencing is not only contagious - it’s necessary and urgent and irresistible.”
The artist who embodies this the most for me is Kendrick Lamar. If you’re not familiar with Lamar, he grew up in Compton, California and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for his third major-album, ‘DAMN.’ It was the first for a rapper, and the first for a non-jazz or non-classical musician. He’s been described as “the poet laureate of hip hop” and raps about growing up poor, black and gifted in America, which has both validated the thoughts and feelings of those in his community and transcended them. As Pharrell told Vanity Fair, “He’s the Bob Dylan, the Miles Davis of our time, but he’s his own thing.” Or as Bono said, “For a gentle dude, he throws a righteous punch”. What you hear in Kendrick’s music is not just rap with a blues, jazz and soul influence, or a man who never seems to draw breath. You hear his pain, and this underlying belief that the struggle is worth it. The one thread throughout his work seems to be the tension between pain and joy, good and evil. As he states in his song, ‘DNA’, “I got power/poison/pain and joy inside my DNA.”
His song ‘i’ - which is essentially a self-love anthem - has been on repeat in my stone grey Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H7 wireless headphones for the last few weeks. I could psychoanalyse why, but I won’t. It’s contagion lies in the message of self-love cast against rap, which - as Zadie Smith articulated - is a genre some people feel “is not music at all but rather a form of social problem”. As a Youtube commenter stated underneath the music video: “Kendrick Lamar is one of the biggest rappers in the world & he has us screaming ‘I love myself’”. This subtle strategy epitomises his brilliance and it is this brilliance that I hear every time one of his songs comes on. As Cave explained, when we listen to a song by Nina Simone, we are really listening to all her anger and trauma stuffed into one of the most tender love songs. When we listen to Prince, we’re listening to him sing in the pouring rain at the Super Bowl. And when I listen to Kendrick, I’m listening to a man striving for joy and hope as he battles with pain; a man bearing the weight of an entire community on his shoulders; a man reaching to do the most he can within the limitations of his humanity. And in a year where our limitation has been broadcast and tested, good music that embodies “the reach” has never been more necessary and urgent and irresistible. In fact, it’s priceless.
Some related (and unrelated) recommendations:
If you would like to learn more about Kendrick Lamar, read this brilliant Vanity Fair profile or listen to his epic conversation with Def Jam co-founder, Rick Rubin, at Rubin's Malibu estate.
Read Nick Cave's entire answer to the AI question here.
I enjoyed reading how Architectural Digest Editor-in-Chief Amy Astley manages her days. On The Cut.
This article on the future of working from home was fascinating. It's from Anne Helen Petersen's regular culture newsletter.
This New Yorker article, titled 'Why Facebook Can't Fix Itself'.
This really extensive New York Times article on the future of the pandemic, which was slightly optimistic.
Yuval Noah Harari’s book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, is still excellent.
Obviously, ‘i’. The music video is also incredibly well done.
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