Holy S**t

As someone who pretty avidly listens to music, I find that I am generally able to express my opinion very quickly. As a general rule of thumb, after several listens to a song, I am able to not only decide whether I like  what I'm listening to, but I am able to express why in what I would like to think is a relatively articulate and eloquent manner. Not so this time.
The Wake by Billy Woods is the track that has completely stopped me in my tracks mentally. I listened to it last night (2/14) for the first time, and ended up looping it for almost 45 minutes straight. It reminded me of one of my favorite English quotes of all time: "Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood", said by T.S. Eliot. When I first heard this song, the absolute melancholy nature of it hit me right over the head, but I won't say that I completely understood what he meant. And for a lot of the song, I still don't. While great lines like "Ten years ago she was just some ho / Five years after that, I'm in love / And if you ask me today, I couldn't give a f*ck / Go figure" have relatively obvious meaning, other parts like "Put stove to fire like you're preaching to the choir / spitting through the wire / Like don't even wet that / It ain't about no get-back / We doing digits on Route 90 / Late to your wedding / Sitting in that morning sun with that good Otis Redding" are less obvious. What this does for me is increase the replay-ability of the track. Usually, the arc when I listen to a song goes like this: At first, the communication hits me (for good or bad), but after several listens, I am usually able to grasp the understanding part for at least most of the song. From there on out, my enjoyment of the song generally declines as I begin to become overly familiar with the song. What this song has done, and very few artistic experiences have ever reached this, is create an experience that simply gets better every time I listen to it. Every time, I understand a little bit more of Billy Wood's meaning, state of mind and the message he was trying to get across. Each time, I enjoy it a little bit more.
The best part is, the rest of the album also has that trait. Every track necessitates multiple listens to really get the full impact and enjoyment. It's hit a place that very little music manages to reach. Indeed, with the exception of Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", this might be the only album I've listened to that gets to this pantheon. If you consider yourself a fan of rap, you absolutely must check it out.