Sensitive Thugs: Come One, Come All
The idea for this little Tumblr started rather inauspiciously— in a Turntable.fm room, of all places— with a few writerly types bullshitting and playing music late at night. Anyone who says that thing isn’t a one-upmanship machine is a liar; the goal is to play your juiciest stuff, and receive due kudos. I had a gem on deck, Killer Mike’s “Dope Story” from his 2008 tape The Killer, a harrowing, funny and ultimately heartbreaking account of a botched drug deal spun over 112’s “Cupid”, rendered heart-tuggingly bleak. I admitted, in my purple-gummed, after-after-after dinner wining, that in the late-hour delirium of a particularly long car trip, that “A Dope Story” had choked me up. Actually more than a little. This posed an interesting question, and opened up a discussion that I’d never had before: Has a rap record ever made you cry? It’s a worthwhile question for a number of reasons, but maybe most of all because, for such a hyper-masculine music that applauds itself for holding softer-edged emotions at an arms length, the notion of a track actually physically eliciting tears from a listener seemed almost counterintuitive. Of course the themes of abandonment, loss and betrayal have long been staples and will forever be, but when was the last time any of it outwardly moved you, if ever? What about ideas of loneliness, heartbreak or depression? Fuck, what about love, and do we get enough of it? Teenagers have long holed themselves up in their bedrooms and sobbed to everything from Van Morrison to Bright Eyes to Taylor Swift to fucking Weezer (or so I’ve been told), so the sheer odds suggest that more than a few have you have spritzed along to Scarface or Pac.
Thus, ‘Tear of Joy’.
I should mention that we’re open to any and all submissions. Step right up and email zchklly[at]gmail.com and we’ll see if we can’t get your thing posted.
Oh, and no “Song Cry” entries.
Thanks,
Zach Kelly
