Sound Words: Pusha T Redefines the World
“every day our skin becomes more resistant to despair.”
All of our fear about the future is based on the whole not knowing if we'll be there. But of course we won't be. The future belongs to a constant push forward, to the evolution of everything, to change—the future belongs to the mutants.
Sure the path to the future always starts in the here and now, the mutants need grounds in which to evolve after all, so we build embryonic experimentation cities and allow the dirt crust of the earth to burst into molten chunks of concrete grid, toxic rubble construction sites. We let oil pylons burn heavy fumes into a perma-grime skyline, day and night become an endless smudge of light pollution and blue-brown smog. We watch as each layer of the city breaks down and crumbles in urban jungle rot, and then build up brand new ziggurats of high pressed glass and iron over the ruins, like band-aids over fifth degree burns.
No wonder we have a hard time facing ourselves in the mirror; every time we do we have to face what looks like a steady devolution, as we spend more and more time in our caustic machine cities, plugged in to the grids and disconnected from everything. Driving through the wreckage encased in sleek future H2 tanks and mini Scion Jeeps, windows tinted on the inside. Fires raging up and down the garbage piles lining every block. The ash covering the windshield like grey snow.
But every day our skin becomes more resistant to despair. Our hearts are leeched of their color, only the steady 808 pulse to keep us moving. Life is a trap from which we must evolve or die. Change is constant, and the only way to the next day is a willingness to adapt, to shed everything that doesn't work, and only hold on to grittiest, most honed-for-survival aspects of ourselves until we are some new thing entirely.
Until we are the mutants. And suddenly the future is now, and not only have we survived to see it, but we have straight up conquered it, broken it down and stripped it to its barest bones and rawest elements, the deeply bruised meat, the grey tendon, the gristle, the hustle—the grustle if you will.
We will survive, and conquer, and albums like Pusha T's My Name is My Name will soundtrack that victory. The victory of living, no, thriving, in a hostile world. One that was built all around us. A world constantly trying to drag us into the mud. A world that only respects us once we kick its ass. A world that pushes us to become something new everyday and only recognizes us when we push it back.
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