Secondly, theMIND says, R&B on a national scale isn’t as digestible as hip-hop by the mainstream masses, which tend to be white audiences and white music journalists, due to its context.
Since the days of slavery, Black Americans created melodies, harmonies, and rhymes laced with metaphors and language to deliver messages of encouragement, warning, freedom and pain to their peers. This tradition has been a part of Black music from the folk song “Follow The Drinking Gourd” to the late King Von’s “Crazy Story” in 2019.
“And with R&B and hip-hop, we have lingo that only we get. It’s supposed to be like that. It’s not for you,” theMIND says. “If someone is from the outside looking in, and they’re trying to fully understand it, [they] can’t unless [they] understand the history of why I’m doing what I’m doing.”
theMIND’s been working hard to show the full extent of his versatility as an artist since appearing on former Cinematic Music Group labelmate G Herbo’s Ballin Like I’m Kobe mixtape back in 2015 and dropping his first full-length album, Summer Camp, in 2016. Now, after struggling through a bad label deal, and nearly having his passion for music extinguished by a treacherous industry, he’s ready to tell an all too relatable story with his long awaited album, Don’t Let It Go To Your Head, slated for release on Nov. 13.
Don’t Let It Go To Your Head is a loose narrative about love’s complex relationship to wealth and poverty, and whether love can survive the two. The album also tackles the psychological weight of being broke; a struggle that’s all too timely with the crippling effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on all creatives.