Rapper, activist, dishwasher and all around man of the sheeple, In Divine Providence, AKA Walt D, serves up a double album to follow up his first release, Life with Mary Jane. A far cry from his earlier work, Darkside/Lightside is a mediation on what makes us heroes or villains, and why everyone is a little of both. Check out our take on Darkside now and stay tuned for part 2! Get in the loop!
I love the conversation you got started about “Step Up.” I appreciate everyone’s honesty in trying to explain their own experience of the song. Dylan was uncomfortable and didn’t put up any kind of front to hide that experience. I felt his discomfort as he talked about it and I think that’s wonderful.
Great art can make you feel uncomfortable in your own skin but that doesn’t mean that everything that makes you uncomfortable is great art.
In the admittedly limited experience I’ve had with this music (aka from the clips you’ve played), my initial reaction is that this is a kid who grew up watching South Park and listening to Eminem and whose adult worldview is informed by the pop culture he’s consumed. But the more I think about it, the more I consider how isolating being a weird kid could be.
If you’re young and your brain works in a way that’s different from everyone else, if it makes the mass populace feel uncomfortable, the tendency is to shun the behaviour and, by extension, the person. Imagine that. Being a weird kid who no one wants to talk to because they’re weird. So what do you do? You continue to focus on the things that do you make you happy. You distance yourself even more into the Eminem and the South Park and the what-have-you, making you even “weirder” and less accessible to everyone else. At that point it becomes a question of what you do with those feelings of isolation and anger. If you turn them into something creative, you get art. If you give into the rage, you get something entirely more tragic.
Man, life is fucking weird.