The Notepad Vol. I — Music, Nihilism

Since I want to write more non-sports content, I figured the place to do it would be my Medium Page. Every once in a while, I’ll just gather some thoughts I’ve been having and post them here — starting with this. I write about basketball pretty much every day, so this will be a bit of a break for me. I will probably post something in this series — The Notepad — about once a month.

i also will not be proofreading these before i publish them. you have been warned.

MUSIC

I’ve become really absorbed in the music I’ve been listening to recently. An observation I became aware of back last December was the ‘minutes listened’ on everyone’s Spotify Wrapped.

Looking back just now, I actually lost my ‘Wrapped’ page (and don’t really care enough to go fishing for it), but what I mostly noticed was how little I actually listened to music in comparison to others who posted their ‘Spotify Wrapped 2020’.

Again, I didn’t think about it much at the time — but I feel as though I’ve been listening to more music since that point.

It’s not that I made this decision consciously — it just sort of happened. I don’t know why, but I really started diving more into the music I was listening to, making observations about tone, production, instrument groups, and the implementation of those groups within certain genres.

There’s a few albums I want to highlight in particular — that I have fallen in love with for various reasons.

Swimming — Mac Miller

Back in high school, when Mac Miller died, I didn’t make much of it. I never thought about it because I didn’t care. It sounds heartless, but it’s true. I thought Miller was just another rapper.

I initially started listening to his music back in August 2020. I had a few of his tracks on my main Spotify playlist already — Weekend (GO:OD AM), Knock Knock (KIDS), but that’s it. I didn’t dive into Miller’s discography, nor did I really even think about doing so.

As I mentioned, I started listening to him in August of this past year. Because that’s when I discovered this video.

I remember exactly what I was doing prior to and after watching that video (doing my first load of laundry in a college environment). And I just remember thinking about how little thought I’d given Miller’s music in the past.

The first album review I wrote was for Swimming — the piece of Miller’s discography that has stuck with me the most. It’s a gorgeous work of art for many reasons, and I’ll leave it at that.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy — Kanye West

It’s not like I haven’t listened to Kanye prior to re-listening to this album. I love his discography, it’s sensational. I think the fact that everyone has a different order when they rank Ye albums is a testament to just how great of an artist he is.

So yeah. I went back and listened to this LP back in March. Funny enough, the girl I was seeing at the time had a distaste for Kanye for reasons that went unexplained — and the conversation I had with her sparked me to listen back to his music.

MBDTF is Kanye’s best album in my opinion. Better than TLOP, better than Ye, better than both College Dropout and Graduation, etc. It’s phenomenal. The production is second to none — each and every verse carries an incredible sense of power and spite.

There’s just so many hits here — and zero misses. It’s one of the few 10/10 albums of the 2010s. Kanye is such an enigma of a person and fascinates me a lot, but this album goes hard every single listen.

AT.LONG.LAST.A$AP — A$AP Rocky

I really am a fan of Rocky, I’m excited for his next release — and am going to see him at the Governor’s Ball in NYC later this year. ALLA is a great piece of work that is experimental in some senses — and really sets the tone for every other LP in his discography.

Rocky has one of the best voices in rap, his flow is great — although he doesn’t change it up as much as I’d like him to. Regardless, there are some phenomenal tracks on ALLA.

“Everyday” is a heavy-hitter with great vocals from everyone featured (Rod Stewart, Miguel, Mark Ronson). “Jukebox Joints” has some great singing from Rocky, with an awesome verse from Ye. It’s slower but you feel every syllable said over the course of the entire track. “LPFJ2” is fun for a lot of reasons — and “L$D” gives off an incredibly psychedelic feel that I assume is great live.

I have a lot more I’d like to share, but I’ll leave it there for now.

Nihilism

I want to preface this by saying I am not a nihilist. I do, however, find that thought process interesting. To be nihilist means the rejection of everything religious, and that morals need not apply.

It’s the philosophical interpretation of I don’t give a fuck.

And like, I sort of admire anyone that feels that way. For those that are new here, I live close to the beach, and have been surfing most days this summer. Last summer, I was a surfing / stand-up paddle-boarding instructor/tour guide.

There aren’t any statistics or academic articles to back this up, but a lot of surfers I’ve talked to are easy-going to the point which they are nihilist. It’s just fascinating to me.

Existentialism is a heavy topic I don’t care to write about, but nihilism in different in the sense that, all other things equal, any conversation about that topic (or any topic, rather) doesn’t matter — because life is meaningless, pointless, etc — that there is no reason to find a sense of purpose.

Recently, I saw the movie “Fight Club”.

I hated the movie. But I also think that the philosophy behind the thinking of most characters in the movie stem from the theory of nihilism.

If you’ve seen Rick and Morty, Rick is purely nihilist (if you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out). And I believe Justin Roiland + Dan Harmon’s interpretation of that character is interesting in the sense that Rick is, by all accounts, an anarchist.

Okay. That’s all for now. Thanks for reading.