Cyberpunk Essentials: 5 Songs that Work
/These endless months have been a bit of a music desert. I’m still listening to a lot but I’m not grabbed by many. As we all know, everything sucks shit and feels pretty hopeless. The good news is, I have some songs that I turn to:
“Vegan Chicken over Rice with My Cougar Bitch Who Look Like Jada Pinkett Smith”
LORD JAH-MONTE OGBON
I love Lord Jah-Monte Ogbon. He’s a great lyricist: funny and using all the words that sound great running together, but still tripping on the beat, delivering with force. He’s confident - he calls himself Charlotte’s best rapper. Maybe this would be a somewhat innocuous statement to the greater US population 2 or 3 years ago, but DaBaby has been blowing out the top ten charts for the last year. DaBaby is from Charlotte. Lord Jah-Monte still calls himself Charlotte’s greatest rapper. Fuck yes. I am on board with that and I agree.
This song is triumph. It hits like a blunt instrument, but right into the part of your skull that holds a bloody ruby. When that ruby gets smacked it glows like a fucking boss fight on the N64, and by that point I’ve already turned the car I’m driving toward the nearest household. I’m gunning the gas. I smash through the wall of the modest multimillion dollar California property into their living room. Everyone is around sitting on the couch, looking at the blue Subaru that has ruined their home. My windows are down and I’m blaring this song. My forehead is burst open and within is my bloody ruby, screaming with light. I exit the car, heaving. My eyes are also blood red now. I open my mouth and a huge blast of energy wipes out all the app developers up to three blocks over. I get back into the car and merge back onto i-280. I really like this song.
Here are a few other songs that have me cruising into the blood zone:
“Fuck Rap”
18veno
This is a classic mean rapping tied to the sickest, sweetest hook possible. Totally perfect juxtaposition. Feels like a kick in the teeth that you are both giving and receiving.
“We Paid”
Lil Baby feat. 42 Dugg
Another crusher. Absolutely solid track that gets better with every listen.
“Dior”
Pop Smoke
RIP pop smoke. Hits hard. Perfect song
Finally, an old DIY folky from ’71:
“Another Normal Day”
Tucker Zimmerman
A perfect song for the times - a beautiful way of summarizing how the perpetual cruelties of life, played out in a roaring tedium. The singers exhaustion is palpable. You listen as the singer’s rage melts into a bitter apathy. Bodies ground up, blasted apart by some bloated middle managers half hearted shrug. Everything is perpetually stupid and miserable. But ah well, what the hell, Baby that’s life, and you can’t win em all.