The Unspoken Truth
3 out of every 4 suicides are men.
For a problem so large, there is a shocking lack of discussion and resources around men's mental health. It's "soft," it's "weak," and boys going through it feel like there is nowhere to turn... With one exception.
Rap music.
How did this happen, and why is rap the only place for boys to go?
Where is it?
Where did I hide it?
I need it right now. I don’t want to feel like this anymore.
Think Adam, think - where did you leave it last... The garage.
I sprinted over the cluttered mess that I just made throughout my kitchen floor - mail, dinner roles, binders, my computer… really anything that was within an anger filled arm’s reach was now on the ground. As I yanked open the door I could vaguely hear my sister crying in the background.
That was because of me. I didn’t like that. I violently slammed the door so I couldn’t hear it anymore.
In my rush of emotion I couldn’t remember the 4-digit passcode to open the garage. I started banging on the door, as if that would magically make it open.
Then it hit me. It’s your own fucking birthday, moron. Are you even smart enough to know WHEN THAT IS? I’m not so sure anymore.
I got the garage open, and started digging through bins. After about 30 seconds of frantic searching, I found her. There she was, in all of her glory. My beat up, torn apart, little orange and black sphere of salvation.
I put one headphone in and began my journey to Choo Choo. A few moments later, just as I was about to make the turn around my house and be gone, my dad came out, still in that dreaded light blue shirt. I didn’t want to see that right now.
I looked away.
“Where are you going it is twenty two de-.”
Headphone two of two went in.
It was so cold, I could barely even move my fingers enough to find a song. It was a struggle, but I got it. My fingers already stung from three seconds of scrolling, and I began to doubt my ability to dribble or shoot a basketball in this state.
“I’m not cold,” I yelled back. I just want to be alone.
Soundtrack 2 My Life
I've got some issues that nobody can see, and all of these emotions are pouring out of me. I bring them to light for you, it’s only right, this is, the soundtrack to my life, the soundtrack to my life.
I think of myself as a sacrifice, just to show the kids they ain’t the only ones who up at night.
So it's more than right I try to shine a light on this man, not too many people on this planet understand, fam.
Rap music has featured topics of mental health for quite some time. The Geto Boys released “Mind Plays Tricks on Me” in 1991, which is widely believed to be the first notable song about mental health in the genre. Later on in the 90’s, Tupac touched on mental health throughout his album “Me Against the World” and Biggie released an album named “Suicidal Thoughts” with the theme evident in the title… That being said, it has become clear after my research that every conversation around mental health in rap needs to flow through one man.
Scott Mescudi, AKA Kid Cudi.
Losing his father to cancer at the age of 11, Mescudi went down a mental rabbit hole that he could never seem to dig his way back out of. He was depressed, suicidal, and began acting out. He got on drugs, and was expelled from high school after threatening to punch his principal. After a failed attempt to join the Navy, turned away due to his juvenile antics, he went to New York to pursue his career in music.
Unbeknownst to him at the time, this was a decision that can be credited with saving thousands of lives.
After coincidentally running into Kanye at a New York record shop in 2006, he ultimately signed with Kanye’s GOOD Music label before releasing his debut studio album, “Man on the Moon: The End of Day” in 2009. This album shot Cudi up into stratospheric popularity, and that is what makes him different than the rest of the hip-hop crowd rapping about mental health.
Mental health related content is what brought him to the top.
As I previously mentioned, the likes of Tupac and Biggie, two of the most prominent rappers in the genre’s history, had released projects relating back to topics such as suicide, depression, and the like. However, they had already built up a fanbase through their other, more “typical” songs and albums, and were already in the stage of their careers in which whatever they put out would be critically acclaimed, no matter what. That was their level of stardom.
The same could be said for some of the stars of today. The likes of Logic and Mac Miller have released world famous projects within the last five years, touching on serious mental health issues. Again, that’s incredibly beneficial, but it came after a traditional rise to fame.
The lines about the drugs and the money and the bitches, so on and so forth.
Cudi on the other hand, had mental health focused songs put him on the map. His Man on the Moon album was his claim to fame, and the entire album was an ode to kids who felt like he did growing up.
In an interview about the album from 2014 Cudi put it simply: “All I wanted to do was help kids not feel alone and stop kids from committing suicide.”
It worked.
There are numerous notable examples of huge names crediting Cudi with changing their outlook on the world, and even saving their life.
When asked about Cudi’s Man on the Moon, Pete Davidson was blunt. “Without it, I would’ve killed myself. Absolutely. 100 percent. I truly believe if Man on the Moon didn’t come out I wouldn’t be here.”
The “Scott” in “Travis Scott” is an ode to Cudi’s legal name, Scott Mescudi. He also said Cudi saved his life.
Kanye, who notoriously doesn’t care about anybody but himself, called Cudi his “favorite artist in the world.”
And outside of just these big names, I spent some time scrolling through the comment section of Cudi’s music videos on YouTube. There are quite literally hundreds if not thousands of comments from random people, mostly men, saying that Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon is why they are walking planet earth today.
This begs the question, how did we get here? These emotions clearly exist among men, why isn’t anybody doing anything about it? Why do so many guys credit this one man with saving their life? Is there nowhere else to go?
From what I’ve seen, not really...
It is very rare that we get a TV show or a movie based around a man and his struggles with their mental health. The interesting thing is, when we have, they have been unbelievably successful… Good Will Hunting might just be the single most universally adored movie among men to ever exist, and I don’t think that is hyperbole. I intentionally went out of my way to hang my Good Will Hunting poster behind my desk so during Zoom calls people will see it and we automatically have something in common, due to its extreme popularity. The movie is centered around a “tough guy” realizing the value of seeing a therapist, and completely improving his life because of it.
And everyone likes it. That must have struck a chord in some way…
Shifting over to television, we have The Sopranos. Again, one of the most popular, and universally adored and respected TV shows among men literally ever. This is a show based around a mob boss seeing a psychologist.
And again, everyone likes it… Maybe, just maybe, some people could relate.
So, with successful productions like these two, why didn’t it catch on? While there is no way to come to a foolproof conclusion, I have an idea.
Those two industries didn’t have a Kid Cudi. They didn’t have a north star.
What did Cudi do after releasing “Man on the Moon: The End of Day?” He released “Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager.” He then released “Man on the Moon III: The Chosen.” All three of these albums were completely and totally focused on mental health related content. He made a choice that this is what he would do. His career would be completely and totally dedicated to telling people with a mental illness that they were not alone.
This then had the side effect of creating a blueprint for fellow artists to follow in his footsteps. The Travis Scotts and Mac Millers and Logics of the world saw that there was an audience and desire for that kind of content consistently, so they were willing to give it a try themselves.
I bet, that if Matt Damon and Gus Van Sant, or James Gandolfini and David Chase made it their life’s work to create films or TV shows about mental health (especially how it relates to men), there may have been others who followed.
I began the frigid trek to Choo Choo Park, and I felt like I couldn’t breath. This had never happened to me before, I didn’t know what was going on. I tried to focus on my breath, deep breaths in and deep breaths out, but that was only making it worse. It was so cold, every breath in was like a sting to the back of my throat.
I needed to focus on something else, so I tried focusing on bouncing the ball to the beat of the song. Left, right, left, right, to the rhythm of the bass. This worked for a second, but it was so cold I could barely feel my hands. After about 30 seconds, my finger tips could barely register the ball touching my hand. That’s alright, my little game served its purpose. I was at the park, and could finally feel like I could breath again… For now.
I felt a little better once I got a couple of shots up, as I always had. Choo Choo Park, a name that four-year-old-me gave the park down the street due to the giant wooden train structure in the center, had been my mental safe haven for just about as long as I could remember. Something would happen, and no matter the time of day or year, I’d come here to get my mind away from the madness. Here I was, at 8:30 PM on a Tuesday in December.
I couldn’t even see the hoop.
I just didn’t know where else to turn. I didn’t think I had anywhere else to turn.
I spent 10 more minutes shooting around, headphones blasting away, and then I decided to play the game that I would always play when I came here alone. A little three point shootout of my own creation, shooting from various marks and cracks on the court that had been there since I moved here 10 years prior. It didn’t always make it the easiest court to play on, as one foul dribble on the wrong spot sends the ball flying in another direction, but it was what made the court mine. I even had a mark of my own - dried up blood from a tumble I took when I was 12 that never fully washed away.
It gives the court some character.
I went to the left corner, where I have always started the game, but this time it was a little different. That feeling hit me again, the one where I couldn’t breath.
I had always pretended that this three point shootout was at the staple event of my dream school - Midnight Madness at the University of North Carolina. It had been my dream for as long as I could remember to go to UNC. I had been wearing Carolina blue since the day I was born. My grandpa went there, and brought me up to care about UNC more than most other things. Additionally, my cousin had gone there the year before.
Now, I had originally hoped to play basketball there - my dream was to be their starting point guard. However, once I accepted the fact that I simply wasn't very good at basketball, my hoop dreams quickly came to an end. However, a boy could always dream. Whenever I would play this shooting game by myself, I’d pretend it was in their arena, the Dean Dome, dawning their Carolina Blue uniforms.
That was when it really hit me. I wouldn’t be playing basketball at UNC, but I had accepted that long ago. But now, I would officially never be a Tar Heel in any capacity. I couldn’t even be a regular student. Not now, not ever.
Rejected.
I had that feeling again, the one where I didn’t think I could breath.
I panicked.
Swimming Pools
I done grew up round some people living their life in bottles, granddaddy had the golden flask, backstroke everyday in Chicago.
Why you babysittin only two or three shots, Ima show you how to turn it up a notch, first you get a swimming pool full of liquor and you dive in it, pool full of liquor and you dive in it.
Some people like the way it feels, some people wanna kill their sorrows, some people wanna fit in with the popular that was my problem.
There is a perception by many that rappers are these thuggish gangsters and tough guys that rap about nothing besides sex, drugs, and violence. To be clear and get this out of the way - there definitely are a lot of rappers who are like that. While I cannot find an official statistic on this, I would wager a lot of money that there are more references to sex, drugs, and violence in rap than there are in all other genres of music, maybe combined. There are undeniably a good amount of “bad apples” as one could say, who you may not want your child modeling their life after.
That being said, there are still plenty who are different, and they should not be lumped in with the former. Rappers are wrongfully held to a double standard unfairly placed on them by their peers. Any bit of evidence that can be uncovered to paint the picture of rappers as these poor role models who are going to rot the brains of America’s youth is latched on to, and exaggerated to the highest degree, without attacking the same exact thing in other genres of music.
Logic references the fact that he smokes weed? How dare he. The Beatles write entire albums about Acid and LSD? That’s ok, because I thought Paul McCartney had a cute haircut when I was 23.
Kanye West interrupts Taylor Swift giving a speech? Lock him up! Michael Jackson molests children and dangles babies out of hotel windows? No, don’t you know he’s the King of Pop! We still adore him to this day.
I’m not saying all things rappers say and do are right, but artists and creatives of all forms (musicians, painters, writers…) have a history of having a screw loose, not always being the best people and role models, and making poor decisions. However, today it seems to only blow back on rappers, portraying them as these horrible role models, when many times this couldn’t be further from the case. They are often the only people boys can turn to to hear about the every day struggles they go through.
Looking at all of the Netflix type movies and CW type shows created in the last 15-20 years, I can’t think of essentially any that were created with an audience of men in mind, covering high school, relationships, and the like. A lot of these shows have a male character who reveals his “soft side”, but I would argue that this was simply done in order to attract more female viewership. After doing some research (and in the spirit of this paper, I will admit I have also watched my fair share of these myself…), essentially all of the guys in these popular TV shows and movies follow the same single trope - “jock who eventually opens up to girl about his feelings.”
The Sensitive Jock
One Tree Hill
A Cinderella Story
High School Musical
Friday Night Lights
Friday Night Lights, the number two show among women ages 18-49 during its time on air (and granted number 7 among men) follows football players as they battle through high school drama.
TATBILB
To All the Boys I've Loved Before, one of the most popular movies Netflix has released in recent years, covers the star lacrosse player as he realizes the girl for him was the school nerd all along.
One Tree Hill, the number one show among girls 13-24 during its release, follows Chad Michael Murray as a basketball star who open up as the show progresses.
A Cinderella Story follows also Chad Michael Murray (do you see a pattern) as the star quarterback this time, who goes against his dad’s best wishes and doesn’t take his scholarship to write poetry.
High School Musical, the most popular Disney movie of all time among girls 8-14, replaces Chad Michael Murray with Zac Efron who does the exact same thing, and goes against his father’s wish of a college basketball scholarship, but this time to sing.
The men in all of these shows and movies are not relatable characters for the vast majority of adolescent boys watching what is currently on TV. We, unfortunately, are not all Chad Michael Murray. A lot of these characters seem to be created for the purpose of entertaining a female crowd.
The one movie that immediately comes to mind that does a good job of this, showcasing a “sporty” man’s feelings in a movie that seems to be made with a male audience in mind, is Jerry Maguire. The hard headed super agent also shows his sensitive side, but it takes you through real emotions and a real up and down of a relationship. He isn’t just some idealized super jock 11th grader played by a 28 year old model (although he is Tom Cruise…). It accurately portrays the guy’s side of a relationship, and the feelings he may have, and the experiences he goes through. Shockingly, ask essentially any guy who has seen the movie, and it is one of their favorites. This isn’t a coincidence.
So, this is supposed to be about rap music… why am I saying all of this? The answer is, because rap is the exception to this rule, and maybe a direct result and product of these other industries’ failures.
It is easy to say, “the reason there are more shows and movies of this kind for girls is because there is more of an audience for that kind of thing among girls.” To an extent, that is probably true. However, I think a larger part of it is that there is an audience among men, they just don’t want to outwardly admit it, because they don’t think they can.
It is not socially acceptable for boys to throw a slumber party and watch Jerry Maguire.
So, they turn to the hidden confines of their headphones, and express these emotions in private. Trust me, there is a male audience for this, and I have the numbers to back it up.
Enter Drake.
I looked into Drake’s top performing songs of his career according to Billboard, and what I found was this: guys do care about the sappy stuff that everyone thinks they don’t care about, they are just too afraid to publicly admit it.
Now, there is no reputable demographic data out there about Drake’s combined listenership, but there is data about his social following. 65.1% of Drake’s Instagram followers are male, with 34.9% being female. So, while the numbers I am about to read are definitely bolstered by a decent female listenership, I think it is safe to assume that the majority of his fans are men.
Work
In this song, he discusses having a girl over after work and “spilling all of his emotions” to her.
No Guidance
In this song, he is singing to a girl, and says that he needs to “be with her” (interpret as you will) before he dies, and wants to “give her his last name.”
Hotline bling
In this song, he references a girl calling him “late night when she needed his love,” and says that a girl “has him down and stressed out.”
In my feelings
I feel that in this instance, the name says enough, but in case it does not, this song has him repeatedly asking a girl if she loves him, asks her to never leave him, and he says that he “needs her.”
Best i ever had
Here, he sings to a girl telling her that she is the “best he ever had.” He says she is “everything, all he ever wanted.” He then goes on to provide detailed imagery of when he thinks she is prettiest, which is when she is “in sweatpants, hair tied, chilling with no makeup on.”
Hold On We're going home
In the video, he has a fantasy of going to save a woman who was kidnapped like he is a covert agent, and says “You’re everything that I need, I want your hot love and emotion, endlessly.”
I will spare you the details and descriptions on the rest, but going up to song 30, please just note that songs 14, 15, 17, 22, and 28 also all feature this central theme of Drake singing to or about a girl.
Additionally, this isn’t just a Drake thing. He seemed to pave the way, but after him some of the largest artists in the game followed suit. J Cole’s second most popular song out of his five album discography is called “Wet Dreamz.” This takes us through his head sitting in math class, passing notes to a girl he plans to lose his virginity to, lying about his past sexual experiences to impress her, and we get to hear his inner voice freaking out in his head. Chance the Rapper has a song about the stresses of prom. Kendrick Lamar has numerous songs about peer pressure, such as Swimming Pools which I quoted above, or another song aptly named “The Art of Peer Pressure.”
These are the largest, most followed rappers on the planet, with as large of an audience and dedicated of a fanbase as one could possibly ask for. Their audience was built through songs like these, ones that are real, and hit home because these aren’t emotions that are properly expressed through other mediums. There is clearly a market for this stuff, other forms of media just need to make their characters more real. I’ve seen enough of Chad Michael Murray...
Not sure what to do, I decided to just lay down on the court. The concrete court.
The cold, concrete court.
I mustered up enough energy from my nearly frostbitten fingers to open up Spotify. Frantically scrolling, I felt as if my throat was closing more and more with every single breath, or lack thereof. I needed to find the song, and I needed to find it fast.
.
Finally, there it was. “Soundtrack 2 My Life.” I’ve never needed to hear it more than I did at that moment. I closed my eyes, and just tried to breathe. For three minutes and fifty five seconds, nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter that I was lying on a bloodstained asphalt basketball court in sub freezing temperatures. The words of Kid Cudi comforted me, and I felt as if I was in the comfort of my own bed. In the moment, nothing else mattered. I could just lay there, listen, relate, and breathe. That was the key.
When those three minutes and fifty five seconds were up, I once again felt like I could breathe.
I took a deep breath, open my now tear filled eyes, and got up to chase down my ball. I picked her up, my little orange and black sphere of salvation, and began the trek back home.
Thoughts From a Balcony
So could you pour me? I need a cup. No none of that liquor, mix in the purple stuff.
Double cup of lean, standing on my balcony.
Potion in my sprite, then the night slows.
In the past 4 years, there have been numerous high profile suicide cases among rappers, essentially all of them with a common theme - drugs. In December of 2019, Juice WRLD passed away of a drug induced seizure at only 21. In November of 2017, Lil Peep passed away due to an opioid overdose, also at 21. And most notably, in September of 2018, Mac Miller passed away at 26 due to an overdose as well.
The unfortunate reality of all three of these situations is that, while obviously incredibly tragic, none of these should have been all that surprising to fans of their music. They essentially told you that this was going to happen…
This is an immense problem.
Being influential in the space of men’s mental health (and really being influential in any way at all) is a two way street. It’s great when you get someone like a Kid Cudi, whose goal is to “serve as a sacrifice” for kids going through the type of stuff that he is, and lead them down the right path. However, if you take a different route, and glorify your drug use as a means of overcoming mental struggles, bad things will follow, and it's at least partially on you.
That’s exactly what Juice WRLD, Lil Peep, and Mac Miller did. They told us this was going to happen. Juice WRLD has a line in a song where he states “What’s the 27 club, we ain’t making it past 21.” The “27 Club” is a reference to the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin who each died at 27, along with many other notable figures. He knew that his drug use would shorten his life, said so to everybody, and then it happened.
He died at 21.
His most famous song, Lucid Dreams, is about his drug use, in order to get over a break up. This is a song with over a billion hits on Spotify, that is sung by 12 year olds everywhere. The likelihood that, in some point in their lives they will experience a breakup, is quite high. Will this now be the direction they turn, following in their idol's footsteps?
Lil Peep, in his song aptly named “drugz” says, verbatim: “Yeah, I do them drugs, I don't give a fuck what you think. I got blood, I got mud, I got bud, I got drank. Only do it for the pain, it be fuckin' up my brain. I don't really give a fuck, I don't give a fuck, mane.”
Again, while I was never personally a fan of his work, this was an artist that was incredibly popular amongst kids.
Kids are listening to someone who they look up to say that he does drugs to get rid of the pain in his brain. There are no two ways about it, that is not ok in any sense.
Additionally, in his song (also aptly named) “Suicide,” he has lines such as “Bitch you wanna die? Suicide. Bitch I wanna die? Suicide.” and “Baby Ima crash my whip, on my suicide shit with my suicide bitch.” He glorifies the fact that he wants to die, and discusses locking the girl who broke up with him (therefore making him want to die) in a car with him, crashing it, and killing them both.
It is quite literally challenging to think about anything worse he could have said.
That same song discusses him buying a “double cup” which refers to lean. In the line I covered in “drugz,” he references “drank.” That is another slang term for lean, “purple drank.”
Lean is a mixture of soda, candy, cough syrup containing promethazine or codeine (giving it the purple color) and sometimes other opioids. It has become increasingly popular in rap music throughout these past twenty or so years, and is unbelievably addictive. Lil Peep, Juice WRLD, and Mac Miller all mention it repeatedly in their music.
That is simply not a coincidence.
There was this phenomenon during the height of Breaking Bad’s popularity that directly linked an increase in both the production and use of methamphetamine to the show’s airing. It glorified it’s effects, often showing the main character Jesse going into euphoric highs, and glamorized the potential for financial success as it related to production and selling it, showing Walter’s quality of life completely and totally change with his newfound fortune.
When looking into it, the numbers are staggering. Britain saw a four hundred percent increase in meth smuggling in the year of 2014, just a year after the show’s release.
Four hundred percent.
I believe for there to be a similar trend as it relates to lean references in rap, and lean usage amongst rap fans and beyond. It is raved about so much in the music, both in terms of a party drug, and a drug used to “numb the pain” that people are running to use it in every stage of life.
The numbers of opioid related deaths have tripled within the years 1999 to 2017. This has been largely related back to (while definitely not 100% correlated however) lean, sort of serving as a gateway drug to other opioids. It is highly addictive, but it isn’t considered a “bad” drug that a junkie would use. It's (comparatively) cheap, tastes good, is casually seen at parties, and so on. Kids ease their way into the world of opioids through lean, get hooked, and then graduate to worse once the lean stops giving them that high.
This is what many suspect happened to Juice WRLD. It is reported that he started drinking lean in sixth grade.
12 years old.
12 year olds can’t think their only outlet is drug use.
They can’t think their only outlet is self harm.
While it is theoretically a step in the right direction that the likes of Juice WRLD, Lil Peep, and Mac Miller are so open about their battles with mental health, their execution is incredibly detrimental.
We need to be better, and need to be better fast.
Once again, Choo Choo Park had saved the day but, in hindsight, what if it hadn’t? What if, what I have come to realize now was a panic attack, didn’t stop? And I continued to feel like I couldn’t breath.
In hindsight, it’s scary that I didn’t feel like there was somewhere for me to turn. And that isn’t on my friends or my family - they have been supportive through and through. It’s more a knock on myself, but more specifically the position that society put me in. It isn’t normal for a 17 year old guy to talk about that kind of a thing, and people would really only take notice in the worst possible situation - if something serious were to actually have happened to me.
I’m fortunate to have found something that worked for me, but not everyone has that.
And that shouldn’t be a burden that is placed on the shoulders of Kid Cudi.