I’ve had many ups and downs mentally for as long as I could remember. When I was younger they weren’t something I shared because it just wasn’t a common conversation amongst friends and family. These struggles have brought a lot of self-doubt into my thinking and have made me worry about anything and everything at all hours of the Day ‘N’ Nite. Then, they’ve also left me depressed, paranoid, and super emotional at times. Along with that, I’m hyper-sensitive and have an anxiety disorder that has kept me on a mental roller coaster for the past 5 - 10 years of my life. But if I look back to a younger me, the issues have been with me for some time. I’ve always lived in my head and once you’re in there with illogic thoughts it’s hard to get out.
RIP Mac
I’m doing a million times better now but I had some serious turbulence along the way before I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve seen therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and sleep doctors and have been on prescription meds including Klonopin, Zoloft, Ativan, Buspirone, Lexapro, Seroquel, and Wellbutrin at different times throughout the years. I’m still on some happy pills now and see a psychologist and a psychiatrist monthly. For the Klonopin I take, I know they’re Benzos and I literally dread the journey ahead when I try to get off those pills. The reaction I got from my friend when I told him I was just going to stop cold turkey was chilling.
In short, my mind literally plays tricks on me. There have been many nights where I can’t sleep and I’ve tossed and turned fighting the demons in my head.
As tough as it is to write, I’ve had suicidal and homicidal thoughts creep into my mind. If you know me, that line right there is going to scare you but just know that while I had a lot of thoughts, it fortunately was never close to reality. It’s crazy too because my life is great. I have an amazing wife, a loving family, a great support system of friends, and I’m successful in my career. So why would somebody like me be suffering then? Well, it doesn’t matter where you’re at in life. Anxiety, depression, and mental illness can hit anybody at any moment. But for me personally, I’ve been through mad different phases like mazes trying to find my way.
I have several key events that I look back on with fear and I have to quickly change the thought in my mind. Times I’ve held and stared at a large knife in my hands and fought the urge to do something unimaginable to myself. Times when I’ve walked across an overpass on a 2am walk with no destination, looked down, and thought what if I just jumped. Times when I was driving when I thought about just heading full speed into a wall without steering away or hitting the brakes just like Tiger Woods recently did. I mean, I was never toes over the edge to doing any of this but the thoughts alone were and are very terrifying. In the words of Isaiah Rashad, “I’ve been losing more than just my mind, gathering what’s left of self-respect.”
Suicidal thoughts of any kind are not good but those were the types of mental moments when I knew I needed to get help and get help quickly. Some of these thoughts are hard to talk to friends and family about as well. It’s not the easiest transition to go from watching NFL Redzone on a Sunday and get into some personal sh*t. You also don’t want people to worry about you so it’s just easier to keep it inside. But the anxiety, worries, and stress catch up to me in the middle of the night when something as simply as a clock ticking will keep me awake. Like Prince Po said, “the energy in me is a poison with no unfulfilled remedy.” Shout out to Organized Konfusion. Time to get those albums on the DSP’s! Fans need them.
I can’t tell you how many moments I’ve had crying uncontrollably in my kitchen where nobody can hear or see me. Looking at myself in the mirror and wondering what the f*ck is wrong with me. Driving in my car on my way to work and on the way home from work with tears running down my face. Punching the steering wheel at stop lights not caring who was watching. Praying that there was a way to just flip a switch and have my mind shut down for a bit instead of having thoughts of hurting myself.
I stress out about everything and when you sprinkle in a little OCD it makes me one unique dude. Worrying is in my genes (shout out to Mom!) but I take it to another level. I’ve always been super proactive about doing everything I can to “fix” myself though. I’ve tried everything that people have thrown at me. I’ve meditated, practiced CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), have done many different breathing exercises, memorized all of the cognitive distortions, written and analyzed thought records, utilized the Calm app so that Matthew McConaughey could try to put me to sleep, tried a heavy blanket, listened to odd podcasts of people talking gibberish to get my mind off of things, read therapy and depression books, tried progressive muscle relaxation (low key banger right there!), listened to ASMR thunder and rain sounds, contemplated a Psilocybin Mushroom trip, and so much more. My psychologist was also pushing me to talk to my work about taking a medical leave of absence for a month because I was in such a bad place mentally. And again, I’m doing better now but I’m fully aware that I can dip back into my old ways at any time. But therapy has given me some tools to help me be better prepared for any mental dips I experience.
One my favorite rappers Evidence has a quote on “To Make a Long Story Longer” that goes, “I’ve never been to therapy, for me that’s rap.” While Evidence has never gone to therapy, I’m right with him that I’ve found therapy in rap music. But rap alone wasn’t able to help get me better. While I respect every genre of music, I will go toe to toe with anybody who claims that rap and hip hop aren’t the best genres of music. From rap, I’ve been able to hear individuals truly express themselves through rhyme. They’ve talked about their struggles, their background, their family problems, their environment, and so much more through their poetry. The genre of rap is therapy to all of these emcees that we love. They are all authors and the way they rhyme words and utilize intricate rhyme schemes and amazing cadences with the way they recite their words is beautiful to us fans. That’s why I’ve always loved rap. I hear about others with problems and realize that I’m not alone. Like the underrated Elzhi out of Detroit states, “I always beat myself up, like a producer rhyming.” That might be my favorite bar of all time btw…
Then we got Kid Cudi who perfectly illustrates the issues so many of us have on this great chorus from “Soundtrack 2 My Life.” Speaking of Cudi, his debut album, Man on the Moon: The End of Day has been quoted to have saved so many lives through his complete transparency with his mental struggles in his lyrics. A quick Google search of “Kid Cudi Saved My Life” pulls up 686,000 results. Your favorite rap artists love Scott Mescudi and his vulnerability in his music. Dude has a long catalog of dope tracks too. Still getting love from Travis Scott, ScHoolboy Q, and many others in today’s rap world.
Kanye’s 808s and Heartbreak is another album that has to be talked about in the same sentence as Cudi’s debut album. They both really touched on mental health and the latter showed where Kanye was after the sudden death of his mother Donda and the breakup with his fiancé Alexis. That’s a lot to carry on your shoulders. I couldn’t imagine what state I’d be in if those events happened to me one after another.
I feel that it was Kanye and Cudi who opened the door in the mainstream for rappers to talk about their mental health. Yes, there were many other rappers who brought it to the forefront but Kanye and Cudi gave it mass appeal to a new generation of kids who needed it most.
I can’t write this article and not talk about Joe Budden’s mixtape Mood Muzik Vol. 2 which hit me in ways that not many albums ever had. Budden slipped into the underground mixtape scene when his debut album on Def Jam didn’t resonate with the mainstream outside of “Pump It Up.” But he was going deep with his lyrics in ways that not many rappers had done before. Joey built a cult following with his Mood Muzik series. But that Mood Muzik 2 mixtape really resonated with me. Joey was talking to me and a lot of rap fans when he exposed his inner demons and shared the struggled he has had/having with mental illness. If you have never listened to Mood Muzik 2, please do yourself a favor and give it a full listen with your headphones on. Follow the lyrics. It was a special album/mixtape in hip hop history. “Don’t ask for a cig’, I’m so self centered I won’t even share this cancer, look to the sky, talk to an invisible man and hope one day my prayers get answered.”
This clip below is a really emotional one for Joey and this quote is on point. “Most of our favorite artists suffer from mental illness.” You couldn’t be more right Joey. And I’d take it a step further and say that most of the fans of these artists suffer from mental illness as well. Some use the music to help them get through their problems but others need some serious medical help.
I wanted to write this article because I needed to get it off of my chest. While I’m doing so much better now, a ton of people aren’t. There’s also this stigma about prescription meds and therapy that people just need to get over. Prescription meds can (and are!) abused but they can also help if used as a short term tool. As kids we were raised to be tough and not to cry but to hold all of that emotion inside can be very taxing on yourself. We’ve all experienced trauma in some ways and if you don’t deal with it at some point, it’s going to come up and bite you.
For me, I’ve had a great life but I’ve also had some moments that affected who I am today. I had a girl who stalked me in high school who ended up getting sent to a psychiatric hospital where she would write me letters. Letters that told me that I was her only reason to live. She would keep sending me letters from the mental hospital and I barely knew her. That was a lot to carry on my skinny shoulders as a teenager. I also had a girl I dated for close to a year tell one of my closest homies that she was thinking about killing herself over our relationship. She wouldn’t answer my calls or respond to me when I reached out but she told my friend that and he was concerned and told me. Do you know how hard that is to live with knowing that people close to you are close to taking their own lives? It’s f*ckin heavy man.
One of my closest friends got stabbed in the stomach in 1999 during an altercation at a house party (raging btw) and I drove him to the hospital while he looked at his exposed guts and told me to tell his mom that he loved her. He lost 5 pints of blood that night during surgery and the knife came from within a half inch of his aorta. We pulled up to the front windows of the hospital banging on the glass trying to get help. It wasn’t on the Menace II Society hospital scene by any means but we were tripping not knowing what was about to happen!
I was at the hospital just standing there in a wife beater and fake gold chains (pimp and ho party, what can I say) while they wheeled him in not knowing if he’d make it. He thankfully made it out of there alive after a few days but we both walked out of that hospital with scars. Another one of my close friends went to the federal pen for a couple of years and not only could I not see him, but I couldn’t be there for him like we had been there for each other for most of our lives. Another one of my close friends died from a drug overdose and the fact that he isn’t here today still devastates his fam and our crew of friends. A few years ago I even thought my buddy OD’d right next to us on the couch at the homie’s pad and that was pretty scary too. These are just some of my experiences who have made me who I am today. It’s also shaped my childhood friends’ lives as well but we don’t ever talk about it. I know there are others who have had things wayyyy worse than me so I just hope that they’re able to talk about their thoughts with those around them or a licensed professional. Otherwise I fear for what’s next.
This therapy session with Joey Bada$$ was really moving to me. Joey lost one of his best friends and rhyming partner, Capital Steez back in late 2012 when Steez committed suicide by jumping off the rooftop of his record label to his death. Joey talks about it all here. RIP Capitol Steez.
I’ve always wanted to put together a Spotify playlist that pulls together rap songs that talk about anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, prescription meds, mental illness, and more. These songs have brought me therapy over the years as the rappers themselves went through a therapeutic exercise themselves of putting pen to paper to express their true feelings. The same feelings that they were too scared to shed light on with their friends. This will be a playlist that will always have songs added to it and if I can just make an impact on one person’s life with this playlist it would be dope. But even if not, this playlist helps me see that others are out there struggling.
If you are reading this and you are going through some sh*t, please do something about it. Talk to your friends, do some research, go see a professional….. Just don’t do nothing because I can tell you firsthand, it’s not pretty. No matter how much money you have and how successful you are, we all have some deep rooted problems that can creep up at anytime. The question is, how are you going to handle it? If you talk to your friends about these issues you will be surprised to hear that others in your crew are fighting these mental battles as well. And this playlist is also here for you guys if you want some therapy through headphones. Please drop some comments with songs that I missed. This is a community playlist y’all.
One last thing I wanted to drop on you, in 1998, 32% of the 25 most popular songs referenced mental health…. that share increased to 68% in 2018. Throw in a pandemic and ask yourself, how many people are out here struggling? Talk with your friends, get outside, seek some help, just don’t live in your mind.
