Love is a pretty cliche trend, don’t you think? We’ve seen love with its petty face, misused and abused by those unversed in its true beauty. We’ve seen love at its finest, unconditional and often times irrational. Love… cliche, yet absolute, and the definitive goal.
With so much hate televised and publicized in the modern-world, one simply must raise the question: Where and HOW does love weave into all this? Can love still flourish with so much hate? Chicago-based rapper Mick Jenkins would have a word to say, with his debut album The Healing Component.
“Love is a conversation that we don’t really have at all. Especially not in rap,” explained Jenkins to The Fader. But pertaining to his new record, Jenkins breaks the silence, and opens listeners to a heartfelt dialogue, wherein Mick explores love in its numerous personas, such as self-love, romantic love, sibling love, love for you neighbors, family, and your culture.
“Just pray for me/ Holla at me, I can pray for you/ Try to make a play for you, why don’t you show me, love/ They said it ain’t no love here, but I do see blood, tears, and sweat, Moet/ We pour it up at gatherings that we’ll soon forget/ Because the day-by-day negatives be consumed, and hate is booming’ and love is what flowers and finished blooms we get/ Show me your plot and I’ll do the dirt ’till my wounds cement”
Captured in “Daniel’s Bloom”’s refrain, Jenkins conveys the dilemma while showcasing his clever wordplay and passionate poetry. The Chicago word-smith may be the first ever to begin a Hip-hop revolution, focusing solely on the concept of love—but its a movement nonetheless, and that’s Hip-hop in its pure essence.
The album succeeds at exploring love’s different facets. “Daniel’s Bloom” pertains to neighborly love, while “Communicate” conveys it through the romantic persona. Still, Jenkins focuses his message towards love as “an extension of the truth” very much relevant and needed considering today’s current tumults:
“And they be asking, ‘What do love got to do with the point?’/ It’s the sooth in your water, it’s the truth in your joint,” Jenkins advocates in the track, “Spread Love”.
Throughout the record, he often alludes love to the image of plain water, and I think that’s what The Healing Component metaphorically translates to: water, water that sustains, water that cleanses, water, pure and organic. It’s basic, but everyone needs it—kind of like today’s reality.
Mick Jenkins’ debut album isn’t just a showcase of his well-versed rhymes and cutting-edge wordplay, it’s a movement rallying masses to a substance we’ve neglected these past years: Love—it’s The Healing Component.
By Jods Arboleda for RAPStation.com
