Hedonism in Hip-Hop

When Juicy J’s bands fails to make her dance, and when there’s truly nothing left for Gucci Mane to do, who will save us?

The term hedonism originated in ancient Greece (though the practice itself definitely precedes the terminology), in which Aristippus of Cyrene, a pupil of Socrates, taught that the pursuit of pleasure was of utmost importance in living a fulfilling human life. This belief took multiple forms under his contemporaries, such as Democritus, who claimed that "cheerfulness" was the supreme goal of life, and Epicureans, who sought what they called "freedom from worry."

In 146 BC, the Romans overthrew Greece, and obsession with pleasure plagued the empire. The Romans ruled for six centuries, and excess itself would come to take the blame for their eventual fall.

The pursuit of wealth and pleasure has been a central theme for many hip hop artists for a very long time, as has the flaunting of that wealth (and pleasure) once it's acquired. However, as rap song after rap song dominates today's music industry in ways fans in the 80's and early 90's couldn't have imagined, the most successful hip hop artists have been able to achieve (and flaunt) levels of fame and riches that are completely unprecedented within their genre. The varying views successful artists have on this phenomenon are as diverse as those wielded by society at large. You have hip-hop artists who suffered during their struggle, or who had to do exceptionally regrettable things to get where they are, but who believe that it all paid off. You have artists who are in the same situation, but are constantly dissatisifed with the spoils of their actions, and of their wild success. You have those who express that they don't feel they deserve the opportunities that have been given to them, as well as those who seem to believe whole-heartedly that they deserve all of it and so much more: that this must be their destiny.

If that sounds complicated, or stressful, that's because it is. But it's something that any rational person in the position of these iced-out titans has to consider.

So why be rational?

In 2016 and 2017, through the explosion of talent on decentralized platforms like Soundcloud and Bandcamp, a new kind of hip-hop artist has emerged, and he chooses not to worry about any of this. Instead, he revels in every moment of the struggle, every minute of the success, and every single second of the hustle.

Meet Lil Pump.

Born Gazzy Garcia in August of 2000, Lil Pump began rapping at the age of sixteen, in response to encouragement by a high school friend. Smokepurpp, a local producer who would seem become Lil Pump's "Dr. Dre," crafted an instrumental and asked Garcia to freestyle over it with a headphone mic, according to Wikipedia. This track was released independently on Soundcloud later on, titled Lil Pump, and was followed by an array of similarly improvisational songs, including Elementary, one of my personal favorites. Every single one of these tracks was played over three million times on Soundcloud alone. As a result, Garcia, now Lil Pump, gained recognition within the South Florida underground rap scene and was invited to perform as part of the 2016 No Jumper tour.

Once 2017 kicked off, Lil Pump released two more singles, titled D Rose and Boss. Together these singles earned over seventy million streams. Again that's Soundcloud alone. Each song now has a respective music video on YouTube, and those have both garnered tens of millions of views as well. In July, Lil Pump signed with Tha Lights Global and Warner Bros. Records. The following month, he released Gucci Gang, which would peak at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 three months later, on November 8th. In the meantime, on October 6th, Lil Pump released his first commercial project, titled Lil Pump.

Lil Pump has been called The King of Repetition, and has become known for simplistic rhyme schemes, off-putting (often Cards-Against-Humanity-on-downers-esque) one-liners and ad-libs, and his ability to Flex like Ouu, 24/7. It was previously hard to imagine Lil Pump without a hard-hitting Smokepurpp-produced instrumental to back him up, but Pump has chosen to occaisonally distance himself from that style with mellow, trap-influence tracks like Gucci Gang. Lil Pump, at now seventeen years of age, claims to be the Youngest Flexer, and though not much is known about his personal life growing up, he claims to have sold both methamphetamine and crack cocaine. Here's the instances in which he brings these activities up, for context about his attitude toward these kinds of things.

Lil Pump still sell that meth (yuh)
Hunnid on my wrist, sippin' on Tech (brr)

From https://genius.com/Lil-pump-gucci-gang-lyrics

Never went to school cause I was always flippin' bricks, aye
Yeah, I came up with the sauce, damn
Yeah, I sold crack in the halls, damn

From https://genius.com/Lil-pump-boss-lyrics

Now, I understand that Pump may be exaggerating quite a bit here, but it's the attitude that matters. In reference to drug trafficking, he has referred to himself as Trapper of the Century. The sale of illegal drugs is nothing new in the hip hop world, but oftentimes it is seen as something done out of necessity, out of absolute desperation. It is often seen as a regrettable act that's just part of the hustle of making it as a hip hop artist. Of course, Lil Pump is far from the only artist to undermine this, especially in recent memory, but again, it's about the attitude, even at a more specific level.

When 21 Savage spits demented bars about murder and his struggle to make it out of the hood, his tone is implied by his name. Though sometimes deciding to take a more reflective, somber approach, Savage almost always presents himself as a cold-blooded killer, as one might expect from a member of the Slaughter Gang.

The Migos, who we will talk about much more in the future, are notorious trappers, born straight from the grit of north Atlanta. Although they often boast about their drug-trafficking capabilities and tendencies, in songs like Big on Big and T-Shirt, they haven't necessarily been afraid to open up about the dangers of this lifestyle of excess, drug abuse, and manipulation.

In the third verse of the hit song Pick up the Phone by Travis Scott, Quavo begs percocet and codeine not to take his life away from him. Codeine is the very thing Pump is referencing in Gucci Gang, when he says "…sippin' on Tech," as "Tech" is short for Hi-Tech, a pharmaceutical company known for producing promethazine and codeine, which are often combined in Lean (or sizzurp).

Lil Pump can be cold at times, sure, but he's happy about it. He rolls around in his moral filth like a pig and smiles at the world through a flurry of pink dreadlocks.

He presents himself as care-free as long as he is wealthy, and now he has become wealthy because he is care-free. People love Lil Pump. So do I, and why is that?

Anthony Fantano of theneedledrop described Lil Pump's music as something he can just go "absolutely Neanderthal" to.

He brings something new to the table, something that popular music has perhaps been lacking throughout much of the 21st century thus far: comedy.

Mike Powell addresses this problem wonderfully in a piece from his Second Hands column at Pitchfork, titled Class Clowns. Mockingbird.com took the time to pull this story from the piece, which I have to use here because it illustrates his point in a powerful and even relatable way.

Powell tells us
“The other afternoon I stopped into a bar and had a beer alone. When I asked about the soundtrack, the bartender told me they were going for “a strip-club vibe.” (The bar does not host strippers.) Juicy J’s “Bandz a Make Her Dance” came on. It is a heavy, miserable song, with a hole in the middle where someone seems to have scooped out its heart. Bored and joyless, Juicy throws his dollars at strippers with the wearied hand of a factory machinist…
…As the song’s emptiness filled the room, I realized that never before have we as a culture been subjected to so much unhappiness perpetrated in the name of luxury and status. The rich not only get richer but manage to make being rich seem less enviable all the time. (That, of course, is its own type of gag. Drake could become a goat farmer in Hawaii tomorrow and live in splendor for the rest of his life.)
I like “Bandz”, but only because I think it says something important about our time. It is the sound of the palace at night, abandoned. “It does seem like a song I should be hearing while day drinking alone,” I told the bartender. He nodded.”
From http://www.mbird.com/2014/06/mike-powell-and-raps-bored-hedonism/

Mockingbird goes on to use Juicy J specifically as a representation of the shift in Hip-Hop discussed earlier in this episode, comparing the gritty roots of Three Six Mafia to the dry joylessness of the middle-aged millionaire himself.

"Juicy J’s “Bandz A Make Her Dance” was released in 2012 when he was 37 years old. A cold, misogynistic rap song, “Bandz” became a major rap hit and was an unlikely comeback many years after his seminal work in Memphis rap group Three 6 Mafia (it also landed him surprising features on Ke$ha and Katy Perry songs). In Three 6 Mafia, Juicy J pioneered a militaristic flow detailing dark nihilistic street tales over menacing beats that sampled horror soundtracks. In the 90’s, groups like Wu-Tang Clan, The Geto Boys, and Three 6 Mafia all channeled this dark underbelly of street life—the paranoia, anxiety, depravity, etc.—with striking profundity. On “Bandz”, Juicy J simply sounds fatigued."
From http://www.mbird.com/2014/06/mike-powell-and-raps-bored-hedonism/

The Mockingbird article goes on to discuss artists such as Future and Drake facing similar problems, and claims Gucci Mane's Ain't Nothing Else to Do set the precedent for this desperate boredom with material goods, after dedicating one's life to acquiring said goods.

The public's infatuation with this attitude is not sustainable, and artists like Lil Pump seem to preset themselves as solutions to this. Despite the spotlight I've put on him for the majority of this episode, Pump is not alone in what he is doing. But he is still special.

I mentioned earlier a lack of humor in modern music, and in rap specifically. This ties into the "bored hedonism" discussed in the Mockingbird article, but ultimately these can be seen as two separate issues.

Tyler, The Creator is a prime example of an artist challenging the comedy problem in a very literal way, making his Eric Andre-esque obscure humor such a prominent part of his persona that the rap group he founded, Odd Future, had its own television show on Adult Swim, Loiter Squad, just a couple years ago. He literally puts humor into his work, often making himself the butt of the joke, while still finding fresh ways to remind his audience how highly he thinks of himself and of the empire he's built around his name. I could do a whole episode on the legacy of Tyler, with a focus on the imaginative world-building strategies he uses in his music, visual art, and branding techniques, and I might, but that wouldn't belong here. Wikipedia is awesome, despite what your high school teachers may have told you, and you should definitely read up on Tyler's transformation if you get the chance.

But Lil Pump engages in similar antics at times, in a much more bare-bones slapstick kind of way. And even Tyler gets lonely, and even The Creator gets bored. On his most recent album, Scum Fuck Flower Boy, later retitled Flower Boy, for obvious reasons, he reflects on his lifestyle and the emotional solitude he's trapped himself in. He goes toe-to-toe with this contemplation a number of times throughout the fourteen-track record, most bluntly perhaps in a song titled 911/Mr. Lonely, released as a single before the album alongside the hard-hitting Who Dat Boy.

"Five car garage
Full tank of the gas
But that don't mean nothin', nothin'
Nothin', nothin', without you shotgun in the passenger
I'm the loneliest man alive
But I keep on dancin' to throw 'em off
I'm gon' run out of moves 'cause I can't groove to the blues
If you know any DJs, tell 'em to call me at nine-one-one"

He then turns around and hits us with another round of self-deprecating comedy. He continues to express his loneliness, but refers to himself as a "weird ass nigga" and says he might "need to go somewhere and get some bitches or something."

Tyler, on the same track, even addresses the issues of bored materialism that we've been looking at thus far, with bars like

"Purchase some things until I'm annoyed
These items is fillin' the void
Been fillin' it for so long
I don't even know if it's shit I enjoy (oh)"

He even attributes his widely-known outspokenness directly to his loneliness and boredom.

But do you see the problem here, and what puts this attitude at odds with the likes of Lil Pump?

Tyler acknowledges the problem in ways that many other hip-hop artists refuse to, but he still treats it as a problem. He's just being pretty meta about it, and, as Bobby Burns pointed out recently in an insightful and remarkably well-thought out (I love you Bobby) YouTube video, everything is meta now, so that's not really a huge deal. In contrast, Pump, as we discussed earlier, simply revels.

Tyler brings comedy back to music, but when he opens up about his personal views on his own materialistic lifestyle, it gets dark. Pump just doesn’t care. He has no void to fill.

In fact, if the latest works of Juicy J, Future, Drake, and Gucci Mane represent an empty palace, Pump represents that same palace, but filled to the brim with the highest excess of pleasure he can imagine. Tyler sits silently in the midst of this celebration, wishing he was elsewhere but knowing deep down that there is no escape. Across the room, Pump pours another 40, as happy as ever.