April 4th, 2024
Initial Thoughts
Knox's flows and doubles were great, as always!
Ca$his really does emphasize every syllable (this is only the 2nd time I hear him rap) - Knox once explained that's a typical thing for battle rappers to do.
This was another lyric video, I'm so glad he includes lyrics in every release now.
I don't like one of the fonts LyricVids Media chose for this one, though. No matter how big or small or frame by frame I look at the video, I can't make out all the lyrics based on that alone (feels like reading Russian cursive :D can read most of it but when you don't get a couple of the letters of a word you're looking at, you REALLY don't get any of them). They did much better on the previous Knox video.
Both are visually pleasing, but this one's not the most accessible.
I'm not kidding about the comparison to Russian cursive! Here's a demonstration:
A simple word, with very different looking letters, like Нокс Хил is still somewhat readable with a bad handwriting, although the end of Хил is a bit ambiguous - is it ил or is it ии? Now it looks like ии with the bad handwriting.
But when the word is a notoriously more complicated one, like лишить...The better handwriting (mine) takes a while, but is readable. The bad handwriting on this one isn't even that bad, I can still distinguish т (the one that looks like the Latin 'm') and ш from each other.
The song felt quite short, each of them only had one verse. But it's 2:34, it's a normal lenght song. Just felt short, I need more 😄
I really like the beats Knox uses as well. They have a bass with a very certain sound to it, and I like that sound - it's captivating, but not overbearing. Then there's always other instruments, creating some kind of short melody/hook, that sticks in my head and keeps playing after the song is over. It's simple enough that is sticks right away, but not too simple so it annoys me (I hate hooks that are too repetitive).
The beats and the thought-provoking lyrics are why some of Knox's songs are The Vibe.
Lyrical Breakdown
with lots of blabbering, as usual, and lots of bars I don't get (sorry not sorry)
"Everything that's happening to you, is God's processing. Every difficult moment you havin', he just processing you. That's all He doin'. Everything you're going through is preparing you for what you ask God for."
Hmm. I used to be religious, and I've studied theology at university level, so I've read my fair share of religious texts in my life. This sounds like it's from a sermon - it's an individual priest's thoughts that connect to certain Bible verses. The Catholics especially are big on this - I'm not sure about current day Catholicism, but back in the day, before Reformation, 1) the Bible only existed in the original languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and most Catholics didn't speak any of those languages 2) Many people couldn't read at all. So, the priests were the only ones who could read the Bible and interpret it's teachings to the public. Then Martin Luther was this monk who was like heck nah, this sucks, people should be able to read the Bible in their own language and make up their own mind about what it says, and thus the Protestant branch of Christianity was born, including Lutheranism, the branch most Finns are a part of. (I still belong to the church, I'm just not a believing/practicing Christian anymore like I was in my teens and early 20s.) Mikael Agricola was a Finnish clergyman who saw what Luther did and was like heck yeah, dude, 100% agree, Finns should also be able to read the Bible in Finnish! But oh shit, written Finnish doesn't exist, it's only a spoken language, and they're all poor peasants, most of them can't read any languages! Well, I guess I have to create a written version of this language and then teach the people to read it and then they can read the Bible! And so he did, the dude fucking "made up" an entire written language, first writing an ABC-book (literally, it's called Abckiria and 'kirja' means 'book' in Finnish). And then translated the New Testament into Finnish. And he did it all in just three years.
So, even if more and more Finns are leaving the church and we're cutting religious traditions off left and right, I don't think we can ever truly get rid of the church. It's too big of a part of our history and culture.
I think this priest might be referring to one of Luther's texts, actually (or at least this segment of his sermon made me think of it). It's at least one possibility, he might have been inspired by something else and not even be a Protestant, though he did kinda "sound" protestant - calm, not full of pathos. Anyway, one of Luther's teachings is that people should be "Christs to one another", and by this he meant that good things in this world don't just happen on their own. Christians should allow God to do his good deeds through us, be good to other people.
I still actually kinda live by this, even though I'm not religious anymore. The will to do good doesn't come from my religion, it comes from my sense of morality and also, I'd like to think, innate goodness. If I put more good into the world than bad, then the overall effect I had on the world is good.
The last sentence of this segment of a sermon is still a bit confusing to me. All the shit that you go through is God's processing in you, He's shaping you for a purpose He has, right? But then, all the shit is "preparing you for what YOU ask God for". For what I ask? Not for what His main goal and plan for me is? Hmm... He could mean, that I ask God for something, let's say, if I was still religious, I'd pray that I finally get a permanent job in the place I currently work in, and not just fixed-period contracts, one after another. And according to this priest, my prayer would be answered, but only when God felt I'm ready for it. In the meantime, He'd prepare me to receive what I ask for, i.e. give me more job experience.
Ok, the logic checks out.
And even if you're not a Christian - if you believe in manifestations at all, this is kinda the same thing.
I do believe in those in a sense. Lets use the same example again: I want a permanent job in the library I work in currently. This makes me, first and foremost, apply for any opening positions that library will have. Second of all, because I really want to work there, this drives me to do my best at the job, and keep up good relations with the coworkers and my boss (which is easy, they're nice people - I wouldn't want to work there if they weren't). Because I not only love my current position (if only it was permanent and I didn't have to worry each month if I still have the job a month in the future), work place, co-workers, etc, but I also love the library field, like, this is MY THING, I have found a field of work that feels just right, that also means I actively aspire to become a better librarian and keep up with the training and news of the field. All of this, all the stuff I'm doing because I WANT the permanent position, are things that help me towards that goal, towards actually GETTING the permanent position. And in that way, I think "manifestations" work. And affirmations, by changing the way you perceive the thing you're affirming yourself of (i.e. repeating to yourself every morning "I am smart" can/will subconsciously make you make smarter decisions and to strive to become even smarter). You make that thing happen, at the end of the day, and not God or the universe, but it doesn't really matter who or what makes it happen, in the grand scheme of things. If it helps you, an individual, to think it's God's work or the universe guiding you to a certain direction or anything, by all means, use that thought to drive you towards the goal. I find more strength in the thought that it was me who made it happen.
Try to call God but I'm set up
Got a lot of hunger and I'm fed up
Did a couple numbers now my bread up
Knox feels like God has let him down, he's been set up. Set up can also mean he's been readied for something - Knox has a goal and God is working on shaping Knox into the kind of person He feels is ready to achieve that goal.
Knox has a lot of hunger for this goal, he really fucking wants that thing.
Fed up, like been given food vs. fed up like sick of something.
Knox is sick of the waiting, he feels like God has been feeding him lies.
A couple of Knox's songs have been doing really good, like the Killshot Remix and Inner Circle. In December last year (when Spotify gave me my Spotify Wrapped and I was like "what the heck is 'Alt Z'???") I learned a little bit of how Spotify recommends music to people, make them curated playlists, etc. And they do this with this computer algorithm that "listens" to music and then assigns it one or more of these made up genres, and then if a person listens and likes some songs from any of the "genres", they're recommended more songs from that "genre". And this led me down a rabbit hole to find out what these genres are and what do they sound like, and I found everynoise.com, that lists all of the genres. And one of the things you can do on the website is look at statistics from last year - if you click 2023, and then write an artist's name on the box on top, it gives you all the genres where the artist was in the top 100 most popular artists of that made up genre. Or rather, a specific song/songs of theirs that achieved those spots on the list. And Knox's Inner Circle is #59 in "kansas city hip hop", #66 in "bc underground hip hop", #67 in "deep underground hip hop" and #77 in "boston hip hop". The YouTube numbers also speak for themselves.
Some of the genre names of Spotify are annoying, like "Alt Z" - it's alternative artists, who are Gen Z. That's it. They might not have anything in common musically, and it sucks they're lumped into one category like that. But I do get why it's a thing, and I did find many dope artists last year when I was apparently big on this "genre".
Some of them I find hilarious, like "escape room" - in theory, it's trap, but it sounds more pop than trap usually does, and that makes it the "opposite of trap" = "escape room" ... something along those lines, they explained it better. Other funny ones include "pink noise", "metropopolis", "otacore", etc... Life got too busy and I forgot about this website... I gotta dive back into it at some point.
Now I gotta settle with the Devil
I know that's really just code
The man in the mirror took my soul
So I took cold, turned it to coal/cole
Check my Js, I'm back on the road
I'm back on the
Yeah, I don't know what half of this means, but here's some guesses:
- he did something bad, as if he had sold his soul to the Devil, but irl, it was he himself who did it, and lost his own soul
- he could be talking about himself as being "cold", after selling his soul
- then he turned that coldness, that heartlessness, into something that can provide warmth - coal, which are used as flammable material when setting up various sorts of fires (usually for cooking)
- a song that's very good is "fire" in today's internet lingo
- the juxtapositions/opposites that rappers like a lot - coldness vs. the fire, in this case
- he also turned it into "cole", which is food - he might have done something cold to achieve it, but whatever he did, it fed his family
- googled, and "cole" is slang for "a penny" - he did the cold thing, but made money with it, and we're all part of this money game, there's no escaping that
- if I still had pennies, I'd give him a penny for his thoughts, lol. Finland's currency used to be marks and pennies, now it's euros and cents
- took some googling, but from the context I got the impression that Js are some kind of shoes or a vehicle. and yeah, they are shoes
Walk up in the booth, got my cape on
Y'all fake with the smoke get ya vape on
Never one to shoot but I break arms
I know I'm bout to blow when I make bombs
- he's got a cape on, he's a superhero. who just sold his soul to himself... huh.. actually, now that I re-think that, that's actually kinda wholesome. If you sell your soul, but to yourself, you still technically got it. And you're the boss of it, you decide your own faith instead of a God or a Devil doing it. Nice.
- I'm still pretty new with the slang word "smoke" both English speaking and Finnish speaking rappers like to use nowadays (at least in Finnish rap it's very new, and clearly taken straight from American rap, even though it is translated, it's not "smoke", it's "savu")... So I'm not 100% sure what it means, but it's some kind of "shade" or "being better" at something, beating someone at something.
- I think Knox is saying the other guy's "smoke" is fake - they got nothing that they say they have, skill-wise etc
- vapes are those plastic sticks that the teenagers want to smoke in our library's bathrooms 😒 I hate that that's the first thing that I think about when I think about vapes. Why can't it be Ian Taylor smoking a vape in the livestreams? A much more pleasant person to think about. But that's the second thing. Third is how they're really bad for you (the vapes, not Ian or the teenagers), they give you chemical burns in the lungs. Yikes.
- shooting with guns vs. breaking someone's arm
- I'm pretty sure I've heard a saying "break arms" but I can't find it, all google gives me is instructions on what to do if I have a broken arm... it had something to do with peace??
- it could be breaking someone's arm, but in a figurative sense - when you're figuratively "twisting someone's arm", it means you're forcing them to do something
- "blow up", figuratively, means to become successful
- when something is "the bomb" it's kinda the same as "fire", it's something very good, like an awesome Knox Hill song
- and obviously bombs are things that explode
If you want that sauce I got it
I got bars like Oscar Wilde
Writing like I'm frost with style
I get green like moss keep climbin
- sauce is slang for "drip", or "bling bling" as it was known in Finland in the 2000s :D at least among the teens I knew. The fancy jewelry that rappers wear once they're very rich. I've only seen fake bling bling (except in jewelry stores)... One of my friends actually gave me one, a huge "golden" cross (obviously not real gold, it's some kind of other metal though, and painted gold) with white and black shiny plastic pieces stuck to it. It actually looks pretty good, I'm just not religious anymore, so I stopped wearing crosses. But otherwise, I'm like a crow, I like shiny things. They don't need to be expensive, they just need to look nice.
- Oscar Wilde was a hecking badass, the more I hear about him, the more I love him. He sure liked his booze, and has some of the best quotes about it I've ever heard, like "Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness" - I mean, he's not wrong, lol - and "Work is the curse of the drinking class" :'D He was also imprisoned for sodomy = for being a proud bisexual and having a sexual relationship with another man. So there's the prison bars. And on top of the alcohol bars and prison bars, he's also one of the most successful authors ever to exist, which means he also got bars in the lyrical sense.
- I don't know for sure if Knox has ever been in jail, but he's had rap bars hinting towards that before. He does drink alcohol as well, he's literally at a Guinness factory in Ireland right now, celebrating his dad's birthday.
- frost, ice, drip, bling bling
- green like money, green like moss
- keep climbing up the figurative ladder, aka becoming more successful, vs moss that will grow and climb up pretty much anything
What the time is, watch audemars but I don't floss
Put pressure on this diamond cross
My faith get paid in rhymes and thoughts
- Wrist watches are clocks, they tell time.
- Didn't know what Audemars were, but they're expensive wrist watches
- you should floss, Knox. don't make your dentist angry at you.
- idk what the diamond cross is, unless it's literally a diamond cross that he's wearing, 'cause he's religious after all, and his faith guides him into writing rhymes and thoughts, which in turn get him money, which he can use to buy diamond crosses..?
I stay offline, no time for thoughts/thots
It's only fans, I can't be bought
They sellin dreams but mind the cost
Designer jeans disguise the lost
- I thought you paid your faith with the thoughts? you should have time for 'em
- thots are promiscuous women, on the internet
- Knox's entire career is online, so he's basically a liar ;D jk, jk, I know what he means. I don't mind the thots, though, unless they film their stuff in public places (other people there didn't consent to being in the shot nor seeing the nudity / sexually charged behavior). Otherwise, adult women are fully allowed to be as sexual as they fucking want (pun intended). Don't really care for others policing or looking down on that, especially artists of a genre where a huge amount of songs are about how much the men are getting laid. *cough cough* Why is a man being funny when he gets laid and talks about it, but if a woman is doing the same, she's a thot? What's up with the double standards, dude?
- OnlyFans is a platform where content creators can charge money from people for pictures and videos. They allow pornographic content and that's mainly what it's used for and known for. I've seen some sex workers talk about it online and they prefer OnlyFans and cam girl stuff over other kinds of sex work, where you're face to face with the client or a co-actor. It's safer, in multiple ways. First of all, physically. No risk of being assaulted, getting STDs, getting pregnant, etc. Second of all, mentally. If someone's bothering you, you can block them. Third of all, financially. They don't receive anything they want before they pay up, so there's no risk of them not paying. And there's no pimp you'd need to give some of your earnings to. Otherwise as well, like one being able to set their own hours and to have full control over what you will or won't do. So, overall, I think OnlyFans existing is a good thing. Sex work is going to exist whether OnlyFans exists or doesn't, so... Might as well make it safer and less exploitative.
- if we ignore OnlyFans as an obvious bar, it also says "only fans" - like, only me and the rest of the Hilltop Mafia, the Knox Hill fans... we do sort of pay his salary, but that doesn't mean we own him. He's still the one who owns his platform and decides what goes on there. I have some other thoughts on the next bars as well, but I don't want to say them out loud.
Chicks wanna love me but I'm AFK
My pain gettin paid but it's ey oy vey
But it's stickman/stick man / stic.man in the booth goin JFK
Dead prez when I run it MJ with the K's/cage(?)
She drop to her knees gettin spiritual
AFK = away from keyboard - again, mostly not true. His career is online. He is married, though, so if anyone has romantic feelings for him, there's no hope. Based on what I've heard about her (from Knox, on his videos) and how he speaks about her, other women don't stand a chance.
Same with me, my fiancé is the love of my life. Also, I'm gray-aromantic, I've only had three romantic crushes in my entire life, including childhood. When girls at school asked me "which boy do you like" I said the boy's name whom I thought was the nicest to be around. And then didn't get it, but played along, when they thought I'd feel uncomfortable (blush etc) when he's near, or that I'd want to kiss him or something. I didn't, I just literally thought he was the nicest boy in our class - he was quieter than the others (=more calm), didn't laugh at the other boys' childish jokes and the few times we were paired up or grouped up or just happened to speak, he was polite and pleasant to be around, and didn't try and make me do all the work in pair/group projects like the other boys.
I'm not a chick (I'm nonbinary), but I got plenty of platonic love to give Knox. I'm still gonna send it his way, whether he receives it or not (whether he's AFK or not, or reads my blog posts and messages and so on or not). Like I said earlier, I'm trying to put more positive into the world than negative. If he's AFK, I'm assuming he's with his family and doing ok. If he is online, he hopefully sees mine and other people's positive messages to him and those make his day just a little bit better. Even if it was already a good day. That's all I want.
Also, I've talked about this before on another post - that it's not healthy to focus on loving one person so much that you become obsessed with them. Because then it just creates anxiety for you when they don't reciprocate your feelings and effort and it also makes them feel anxiety and other negative feelings rather than positive ones, even if your intentions were good. The line can be a bit blurry, at least to me it can. I have a high temper, I feel all emotions quite strongly. And when I like someone, my first instinct is to let them know and not expect anything in return. Because I think that's shady, expecting someone to like you just cause you like them. No. I... I express my love for a person 1) because I want to put more positivity out into the world as a whole than negativity 2) because you can never know when they're having the worst fucking day and that one comment is the only positive thing they've seen all day.
So, because it's hard to know when it stops being positive for them and becomes intimidating or anxiety-inducing, I try to listen to my gut on that one. When I'm convinced they know I love them, that even if the whole world comes crumbling down at least I still care - I back off a little bit, I try to be more casual about it, on purpose. Because I have plenty of times been on the side of this interaction, where the adoration and attention from someone becomes too much, when it should technically be positive, and it turns sour. And I don't want anyone to feel like that. So, like I said, I intentionally let go a little bit, but then again, I still act like myself around them. Which sometimes includes i.e. writing a huge long ass blog post supposedly about their song but really just blabbering away about anything the lyrics make me think about. Or blabbering in general. I'm quiet when you first get to know me, but once I start to trust someone and become comfortable around them, I will not stop talking. The filter in my brain goes off and all the thoughts from my brain spill out through my mouth. Or keyboard. Even more so through the keyboard, I've always found writing to be easier than talking. I trust enough on my own instincts and that my realness is shining through, that people don't find all that (occasional) attention negative.
- At first I was like "stickman", isn't that that one game where you guess the letters of a word - but no, that's Hangman. In Finnish it's "hirttopuu" = "gallows".
- "stick man in a booth" like put a rapper in the booth, to record a song
- googled, Stic.man is a rapper, one half of a rap duo called Dead Prez
- JFK = John F. Kennedy, a dead president
- if only John Wilkes Booth would have been the one to kill JFK and not Lincoln :D would give another layer to the bar - it still kinda does, he did cause the death of a president
- I'm pretty sure I heard him say "cage" but lyrics only say "K's"
- She's dropping to her knees, praying. She's obviously a woman of faith. No sexual innuendos here. ;)
When I hail Mary it's a miracle
She stay low gettin cynical
Wearing all black for the funeral
When you hear the beat it's a burial
When you hear the beat it's a burial
Wearing all black for the funeral
She stay low gettin cynical
When I hail Mary it's a miracle
Murdering the beat, but I don't know what the rest means.
(I'm getting way too tired, I'm continuing this tomorrow...)
April 5th, 2024
Mary had a little lamb we sacrificed and buried
Then one night it rose and killed the shepherds
We're like Hail Mary
Reminds me of Ren's Animal Flow. "Mary had a little lamb, who's fleece was white as snow. It made the blood look so much redder when I slit it's throat" etc.
Both utilize the well-known children's song Mary Had A Little Lamb.
In this song, it takes a Pet Sematary twist, though, and the lamb comes back for a revenge.
I speak to God in my deepest thoughts
And my trigger hand's on the reaper's arm
I bring smoke like a beaker bong
So Ca$his is a bit more religious than Knox, based on these verses?
But his "trigger hand's on the reaper's arm", to me that sounds like if he shoots someone, he shoots to kill. That's just my interpretation, though, I don't know the man.
Beaker bong is probably some kinda device to smoke weed. I'm, like, 99% sure. ;D
I was born on blocks with no peace involved
Shootouts promised in the lease and all
Well that sounds like a bad place to grow up in - a place where shootouts are so common they mention it when you're about to move there. Jeez.
Finland's crime rate is much lower, and gun laws are much stricter than America. I only know one person who owns firearms, and those are hunting rifles. Finland had a school shooting earlier this week and the entire country acknowledged it, it was all over the headlines for days. It's the 1st school shooting in 5 years, and I think the 8th ever in the past 40-50 years. The perpetrator and all three of the victims (one dead, two in critical condition) were 12 years old, thought, so... there's that.
I've seen a handgun irl once, actually. My friend was broke and she had to move into a shadier part of her home town 'cause that was all she could afford, and me and my boyfriend of the time helped her move. When we got to the apartment building, another car pulled over at the same time, and three dudes got out of the car. One of them was wearing a ski mask and another was holding a gun. All three of us froze for a few seconds, but the guys barely even noticed us, they were clearly there for someone else... They went in through a different door (into a different staircase in the same building) than where we were going in, and we never heard a gunshot, so...
And once, when I was moving to an apartment building, for some reason I googled it shortly before moving there, and the first search result was a news article about someone being murdered there. It was about a drug debt.
But, you know, these are individual cases. And they have all stuck on my mind, because they're not something I'm used to seeing every day.
I made Femzino leave the beef alone
A real hustler so where the bul?
Bet bars ain't gon speak ramone(?)
Belt smack it'll welt rap
And the real real go respect that
Treat the vocal booth like a death trap
Femzino = Benzino. I'm getting tired of talking about the drama. To me, Benzino is just a very old man, stuck in the past, and looks like he's never gonna learn and grow. I officially give up on hope that he'd ever change.
I'm pretty sure I remember Knox mentioning that Benzino called himself a "bull" at some context.
If you a fake snake get ya neck snapped
To stay solid I'm adept at
Doin(?) big straps so step back
On a land mine cause this land mine
You gotta talk inside like a land line
"Fake snake", the internal rhyme, but also if you break the neck of a snake, the entire animal dies. All it is is a head and a spine.
"Step back on a land mine cause this land mine" :D I like these kinds of doubles, where you don't need an alternative spelling to understand it. "Land mine" like the bomb-like things that are put underground and when you step on that exact spot, it explodes. But also a piece of land owned by Ca$his, "this land [is] mine".
Finnish has a very regular spelling, meaning that the same letters are pronounced the same way pretty much every time. If you know how to pronounce each letter of the alphabet, you know how to pronounce Finnish. The only exception I can think of is the letter combo "ng", which is pronounced the same as in the English "-ing" suffix. Anyway, this means that when Finnish rappers make doubles, they're much easier for a Finnish speaker to spot than the doubles of a rap song that's in English are to an English speaker. At least I feel like they are. Or it might just be me - Finnish is my mother tongue, and even though I do speak English fluently, I'm obviously still better at Finnish than at English.
Oh yey, I'm old enough to understand the landline bar 😂 I refuse to believe anyone is so young they don't know what this bar means, but as usual, not judging and instead explaining it anyway: There was a time when cellphones didn't exist. All phones had wires and they had to be plugged into an outlet at all times, or they wouldn't work, at all. They also had special kind of outlets, so you couldn't just plug it into any outlet, and that outlet was tied to a certain phone number. Each house/apartment usually had just one of these special outlets. So, the only way to make a phone call was to sit or stand where the phone was. No walking around the house or going to another room for privacy, no going outside, etc. Entire family used that one phone. When technology advanced a little bit, the part of the phone you hold in your hand and talk to / listen from, became wireless, but it still had a dock part as well and you had to be close enough to the dock or you'd just hear static or the phone call would just end. Kinda like when you wear wireless headphones and get too far from the phone or computer the headphones are connected to. I was finally able to take the phone upstairs, and if I didn't close the door of my room and sat at the doorway, the receiver part would be close enough to the dock for me to hear what my friend was saying. :D
If the landline bar is still about Benzino, he might be talking about how Zino got into the studio with a bunch of guys to write his Eminem diss track. He and a bunch of other guys are "talking inside".
Women with switches on burners and purses
I stick to facts on all of my verses
Think I'm a G off the song, shit G
Wait til you see me in person
"Think I'm cool on this track, wait til you see me irl!" I saw the interview he did with Knox, he seems cool. So, yeah, facts.
I'm the most solid, merch it
Buddy you a bitch on purpose
I don't ride in no circus
Supply the hood like a merchant
All the haterz like Tommy(?) was
Cuz that shi*t not working
"You a bitch on purpose" 🤣 I assume he's still talking about Mr. Darn Old (Benzino).
I view my family with God's love
It's affecting me like hard drugs
Ain't no mark heart this is all plugged
Rep on my chest like ball club bogish(?)
N you know this with a gen 4(?) heavy in focus
Put out the signal to all of them vultures
Get em
I don't really get other than the first two bars of these last ones.
_____
Not Knox's best lyricism...
I mean, all the bars still make sense, like, there are no bars that make me go "well, duh!" Or make me feel like my brain is melting 'cause they're so dumb.
The doubles are ok. I feel like I've seen ~90% of them before, but the comparisons work, you know.
But when it comes to subject matter... C'mon, man! What is this mainstream shit, bragging about financial wealth? Booooring! I hope it's just this song and not something he'll be doing more in the near future... I've listened to his discography in total a bit over a year ago and he's had these mainstream phases before...
The biggest reason he stands out to me as a rapper is that he does NOT usually write about the typical hiphop subjects, like being rich, bitches and hoes, weed, and how big his ego is (and this song has all of those - expensive shoes and watches, thots, a beaker bong and boasting). Instead he writes about way more interesting topics, similar to the metal bands I listen to. (There are boring metal songs as well, I'm not saying it's better as a genre, as a whole. A big portion of the songs can be summed up as "I'm big and scary and I will kill everyone, rawr!", a topic that's been heard a million times, and if you get it you get it, but no one thinks it's groundbreaking in any way, shape or form.)
If I would take these lyrics the worst way possible (if I was having a very bad day and didn't know Knox at all), that would be: I'm paying him 11€ a month from my hard earned salary just so I can watch his reactions to songs other Patreon members have wanted him to react to, participate in Patreon lives on the rare occasion he decides to have them and to ask him one question a month. I spend countless hours writing blog posts about every single one of his songs that he puts out. Mostly I do all this 1) because I want to support a true political middle who wants to create civil discussion 2) because I want to support an artist whose music I deem valuable, and a reactor whose breakdowns bring so much more attention and appreciation to the work of other artists 3) because of what I get out of it, besides the music and the breakdowns. But if all I'm truly getting out of giving him money and sending love his way in the form of these blog posts and comments, and the occasional DM here and there, is him making a song where he brags about having money and not being on the computer making all the content and appreciating the love, then why am I doing it? He just stripped down all the reasons to do any of this.
But for real, I'm not going there. That'd be petty. And I know he's not 100% AFK and bragging about the money is just talk. I just dislike the lyrical subject matter of this particular song. But I like the beat and the flows. =It sounds good but that's about it. I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.
Not commenting on Ca$his' verse, I know next to nothing about him. I know he's a battle rapper and on his Knox interview he seemed cool and down to Earth, I liked him. Humility and realness is something I often miss when I see American people online. It's a very big virtue, humility, instilled into Finnish people's minds since we're very little, where as Americans are taught to be confident and let it show. We also don't have that small talk culture, where deeper topics make people uncomfortable, and so, Americans can sometimes feel shallow and fake. But not Ca$his. I may not understand his rap bars, but based on that one interview, I like his personality, I think we'd vibe well if we met irl.
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