KA's Unto the Dust / Forgive Me / Beautiful

I've given myself the task of writing about one, err, three songs a week for 2024 because, well, I think it'd be fun.

KA's Unto the Dust / Forgive Me / Beautiful

Dude, KA being dead fucking sucks. He was one of those few living artists where all of his releases were good - and he was getting better. At the very least, he was always interesting. In his music he approached his life, his struggles, his blackness with an intense philosophical perspective that transcended skin color, religion, anything mortal that holds us back. He was an artist who didn't see what was right before him, he saw beyond it. If any rapper can be called great, then KA was great.

I was going to write about Freddie Mercury - that's right, it would have been a song on my favorite album of his, "Mr. Bad Guy" - but let's write about KA. We will not let him die a second time. Let's look at three of my favorite songs from the last - wow - four years, beginning with "Unto the Dust" from "Descendants of Cain" (2020), "Forgive Me" from "Languish Arts" (2022) and "Beautiful" from his last, "The Thief Next to Jesus" (2024).

As you'll notice, KA frequently invokes Christianity in his music. For him, surviving was a titanic struggle; it was a fight for beauty, for abundance, for destiny. He empathized greatly with the sufferers of the Bible, who lived only uncertain futures, and had only tormenting presents to live through. He does not invoke this imagery vainly.

"Unto the Dust" begins with that beautiful bass-drum sample, the two instruments snaking through the valley of darkness. KA starts with a great verse:

Had to man up - another man down - at the least we stand fast, never stand down, my tool's fire, move quiet, but the plan sound, born headfirst in that damned land, I want that damn crown.

This is New York rap. It's not anything else. The rappers of the city created myths and legends of their adventures because their exploits were indeed death-defying, and because they did not want to be another nameless headstone in the dirt. The rappers have something to fight for, damn it, and that's legacy. This is recounted by KA's spoken-word monologue starting the song: "I wonder why none of my people just dyin' of natural causes, y'know? Just passing away, you know what I'm sayin'? You know what I'm sayin', none of my people, ever, like, passed away." That's why KA, rapping outside of his usual calm demeanor, gets a little animated as he says "born headfirst in that damned land, I want that damn crown".

But KA isn't infatuated with the violence in him, though he recognizes its strength and the power it has given him. The next lines reveal what is important:

Ya'll played the Dozens, my favorite cousins spent they youth in prison; they names known, came home; now, the house got two religions, peace be with you, wa alaikum salaam.

"Wa alaikum salaam" meaning "and upon you be peace". This is what's important: the peace and happiness that comes with sticking with the people you love. There's an importance to fighting together as well as breathing together with family, as much as the sons of Jacob, even after much petty infighting, united at the end, their generations one day becoming the tribes of Israel.

The chorus:

Street live, we die, we don't pass away, take any task if you got cash to pay. On this earth, [the] brave [are] known to earn, birth to gravestone to urn.

What beautiful lines. KA depicts our lives on this earth as more than just a struggle against poverty, but as a fight with death itself.

I added what I think are the omitted words to the third line, if it helps a reader to understand. Of all forms of lyricism, rap is fascinating that way; like the best of poetry rappers do a lot by omitting words to better enhance flow, as I think KA is doing here. I don't know. I don't know anything.

KA ends the song on these lines:

They blessed me with twenty FD, pray I don't have a toxic lung, I'm from the seventies, men in Lee's had us boxin' young, I don't leverage hate, I educate, you better ask around, I'm tasking babes passin' grades, what you passin' down?

For the first line, KA began his career as a firefighter in 1999 and was made a captain a decade later. That's what's interesting about rap: rappers in a weird way don't evolve, they don't pick up new hobbies, new habits, new ways of living, at least as far I observe. KA entering the game at such an age - he was 36 when his debut album, "Iron Works", was released - gave him a different approach as to how he writes and executes the scenes in his lyrics. From anyone else the words could come off as condescending, but from KA there is a long-earned stoniness, you feel his perseverance.

"Descendants of Cain" was pivotal for KA. From here on out, he began implementing much more religious imagery in his music; prior to this, he associated himself the steely resolve of samurai, then the tortured artistry of Orpheus. As you can see, all of these personas fit; he was the soldier who fought for kin and honor, and he was the artist who sought concepts and meaning unto eternity. Invoking the Bible allowed these two persona to reconcile and merge into that of the long traveler, the wearied nomad, the late KA.

KA was always on fire. He starts "Forgive Me" with more great lines:

If you don't mind hood grammar, I could bend on whatever issue, how it's looking, years crooked made it easier to level with you. Forgive me, forgive me.

That line, "years crooked made it easier to level with you", is so great. "Years crooked" means so much, you know there's so much background to why he chose "crooked" instead of any synonym to "troubled" or "difficult". Here, he's addressing the infamous problem of Babel, that language cannot truly communicate how men feel, and so humanity continues down its violent path.

Was wild dogs tryin' wreck the kennel, my whole land been programmed to enjoy the detrimental, to raise the best kids, must give the best parental, if your ex a dime, make the next you find exponential, because of where I rest, been assessed to have less potential, it was torrential, just wanted to rest, wish it was less eventful, on this cruel acre, to pull paper, had to press a pencil, or full caper, bring it to your chest and the rest essential.

Of the songs I've written about this year, hoo boy are these lines thick, thick like trees and pregnant with thought. KA expresses here the circumstances that made his and others' youths so troublesome, why they couldn't pursue higher education and in turn education's barriers to entry. Shall we call this "bars within bars"? Starting with "My land been programmed to enjoy the detrimental" you could cut the lines in halves, some in thirds, and analyze how these parts play with each other, morph into the other, express different themes. Particularly in that glide from "been assessed to have less potential", "it was torrential, just wanted to reset, wish it was less eventful", this is KA speaking directly to you, part narrative, part essay, part poem, trying less to earn your sympathy and to depict the struggles of the human soul on this earth. He paints the moral dilemma so vividly and painfully in those last lines: "on this cruel acre, to pull paper, had to press a pencil, / or full caper, bring it to your chest and the rest essential."

But you know KA doesn't intend to overwhelm you or overimpress you with the chorus:

If I ever pulled a four on you and said "Gimme", Forgive me.

Devastating couplet, simple in its execution. KA knows what he's doing. He's an orator, a poet, like Homer and Hesiod in his verses, painting to you the tragedies and follies of men, but when he returns to himself, when he comes down from his heights, he takes the veil of humility. He seems to stumble when he says "Forgive me", saying it with his gaze trained, knowing he can't take back the traumas caused by time. In these thirteen words he summons the violence of the streets and the greatness of penitence and mercy he has learned from wisdom. The chorus is not a summary, the verses are a preamble.

We turn finally to "Beautiful". In comparison to the prior two, this is a simple song: the verses are merely an iteration of the same idea, KA wishing, earnestly, that people live beautiful lives, to a great lo-fi sample:

May you live a nice long life, hope it's (beautiful), they sling mud, but you bring love, that's (beautiful), how the K be comin', tryin' give the baby somethin' (beautiful), abundant ugly in this world, I come and make it (beautiful).

Listening to the music throughout his career, this is the one trait that is striking in KA: he's honest. He merely, on the track, looks you straight in the eye and says what he is thinking and where his mind is going through. Other musicians boast. Oh man, do they. They want you to know they are good people or they have good thoughts before they try to persuade you. But KA believes persuasion comes from straight talk. He's the realest of the real.

It's this honest quality that makes some of the lyrics here kinda creepy. "Took a toll on my body, but the soul probably (beautiful)." "It's been an awful ride, but still I fought to side with the (beautiful)." I don't know much about the construction of this album, but perhaps he and his family knew his remaining time on earth was short.

Which returns to the idea of the song and the album: KA doesn't believe beauty comes from himself nor does he believe he is describing beauty, it comes from Christ. It's clear from the humility he demonstrates in his lyrics, deferring to someone else's judgment. This is the reason why he lets the sample, the congregation, sing "beautiful" rather than himself. And if you don't believe in Christ, or in the symbol of Christ, then take it to mean KA's concept of mercy, which is ever a rare thing on this earth.

So rest in peace, KA. Thy enemies are diminished and the land has become silent. Lay your helm and your sword down. Your work lies on this earth as seed. They will bear fruit.