Music for an emotionally cleansing trance — Listening to Will This Make Me Good by Nick Hakim, though my ears.
The best way to describe Wtmmg is a bad trip you didn’t know you needed. I was pulled into this psychedelic whirlpool of distorted but intentional sounds, which you will inevitably be resistant to within the first minute. However, when Nick’s vocals merge in, I am tranquilized by his sensuality, to a point where I have no problem being consumed by the whirlpool. However, one must always acknowledge the highly musical qualities of this album, because we get some extremely BEAUTIFUL instrumentals (knowing how much I love neo-soul) I think the best way to describe it is ecstasy, which I’m not quite sure I understand yet.
Wtmmg touches on some really important unanswered questions that the public has for the ‘powerful’, but are often dismissed as conspiracies.
The question ‘Will This Make Me Good’, is something that I’m sure a lot people with mental illness have had to ask before proceeding or rejecting hasty medication by the people in society we have been taught to trust in. I think it’s clear to see that I have many reservations towards the pharmaceutical industry, and I think rightfully so.
To slightly break away from the dystopian atmosphere, we are guided by bluesy and soulful instrumentals in songs like Qadir. At the same time, you can still feel a strong sense of melancholy.
Qadir seems all too fitting for the conditions we are living in right now in 2020.
We have fallen as a whole/
Some of us wear masks
Nick Hakim (Qadir, 2020)
The double meaning that may or may not have been intentional allude to the current mandatory mask wearing culture that came with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has ultimately made us “fall as a whole”.
After scrolling through Nick Hakim’s Instagram and watching the music video, I came to understand that the song was in fact about the loss of a loved one. I was able to feel the pain in the song prior to this knowledge, and after finding out why, I wondered why I kept associating it with many other circumstances that had been affecting us the world and even me as an individual. I came to see that everything that life has to offer is in fact tainted in some way right now. Life and freedom is currently restricted globally, however all the ills that existed before the pandemic still exist and are even enhanced by the new biological threat.
There was also a moment in this album where I had a disturbingly therapeutic tear jerking moment; Let It Out. That song is much more than just a repetition of a mantra that most people refuse to embrace.
All I can say is, this is a timeless piece of art because of its almost seamless application to most forms of tragedy going around nowadays.
SHOTGUN+ 