It should go without saying that 2020 has been one of the bleakest years in most of our lives. A global pandemic has shaken the world in the way none has had for a century, forcing us to be in our houses for months at a time. The evidence of global warming is only increasing and proves that we have to do something drastic now. This upcoming election has the possibility to change the world for generations to come. At times, it looks hopeless for the future, but Spillage Village shows how we can have hope and come out of these times stronger and better than ever.
Spilligion is the blueprint for how to heal in 2020. Themes of love, religion, peace, and much more permeate through every second of this project. They don’t use these topics to show us how to just survive the current world, but thrive. Even just sonically, this project can just as easily have the same effect without the lyrics. The acoustic guitars, group vocals, and overall spirituality helps bring the collective this hopefulness and positivity with this project, which wasn’t expected from the singles.
The lead single from this project is “End of Daze” with almost everyone from the collective on the song, and it starts out with pretty much what you would expect from them at this same point. Five different people all give some great verses about what they would be doing during the end of the world, but then the song transitions into something different that they’ve never done before. Olu, one half of the duo Earthgang, ends the song with a guitar and synth driven instrumental with some passionate singing, something he’s never done before on his own song, at least in the way he does here. When he would sing before, there wasn’t this much passion or this type of instrumental before. It would always just be over this hip hop instrumental like on “This Side” or “LOLSMH”, or just an acapella like on the beginning of “Blue Moon”. But this is something else and helped give an idea to what the entire album was going to be, an experiment of them going into this song-driven style.
One song that shows off everything this album does is on “PsalmSing”, which highlights R&B and soul singer Mereba. The production is driven by Mereba’s acoustic guitar, which is accentuated by the acoustic sounding percussion and Benji’s incredible bassline. Even though the song only features versus from Mereba, there are group performances all over the song, mainly during the chorus, and it brings the communal feeling to the song. The lyrics as well during the chorus demonstrate one prominent topic of what the album is about, spirituality, “I get up, I get up, I get up so high. This shit got me feeling like I’m closer to God.” It’s all about religion and using many things to heal, which in the case of this song and many others on the album is a combination of weed, community, and God.
Another song with a similar topic is “Ea’alah (Family)” with JID, Earthgang, and Hollywood JB present. The chorus again features these insane harmonies that make me tear up almost every time. There’s just something about the way everything is layered and JID’s lyrics about praying for peace and love that just hits home. Each of the three verses by the artists above all have great quotables and a great message that will keep people returning to the track. This heavy dose of emotion comes through on quite a few other songs from the album, including the incredible penultimate track, “Hapi”.
“Hapi” is the longest track on this album at six and a half minutes, but it more than warrants that runtime with the spirituality that pours out of that song. Mereba, Olu, and Benji produce and perform the entire song, along with a spoken word outro from Atlanta legend Big Rube. Every aspect of the song is special; the piano and bass driven instrumental, the once again group sung chorus about real life issues, Olu giving his best vocal performance ever, the way the acoustic guitar comes in mid way through Benji’s verse, every verse perfectly describing the healing needed in 2020, and so much more. This song alone deserves its own article and is worth the dissection for anyone that has enough time. It’s also more healing than anything else I’ve heard in 2020.
There are plenty of other individual highlights throughout the record besides the few that I’ve covered so far. “Baptize” is the traditional rap banger on the project, before the outro mutates into this insanely glitchy and layered outro with Ant Clemons. “Shiva” provides an instantly catchy chorus from WowGr8, the other half of Earthgang, and fantastic versus from everyone about harsher aspects of life. “Judas” brings on a plethora of outside features including Ari Lennox, Buddy, and Masego on the chorus of the song, and Chance the Rapper even spits his best verse in years on this track! “Mecca” even sounds a different mix away from being a rock song. And what better way to close out the project than with “Jupiter”, arguably the most surprising song on the entire project.
Instead of being a hip hop, R&B, or soul oriented track, this song is a campfire song. The entire thing is sung at once by everyone in the group (except for 6lack), and it’s the biggest reason for what makes this track special. As with most of these songs, the chorus wraps up the project beautifully, “So hold my hands and dance with me tonight. You know, they say we’re all about to die. And maybe it’s the love we all are tryna find. Who knows what lies, it’s only by design”. The instrumentation feels extremely authentic, as everything sounds like it’s being played live. But what really makes this special is the authenticity of the vocals, as you can almost pick out each individual person if you try really hard, but they still meld together into one voice. You can feel them having fun all throughout the track and literally hear it towards the end, as a couple of them just break into laughter for a few seconds while the rest continue the tear jerking outro.
It’s really rare to hear music nowadays with this much healing effect to it. Pop music right now in particular is full of distractions, rather than healing. Looking at older pop stars, people like Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin have catalogues full of songs that deal with big issues, but still manage to bring hope and healing to the listeners. Songs like “Love’s In Need of Love Today” and “Never Gonna Break My Faith” respectively are perfect examples of this, and this album embodies many of the same qualities and feelings that these songs give off.
Sometimes, we need to focus on the issues and ourselves with the entertainment we consume. Do we all need some distractions sometimes, absolutely. But what we need more is music that tackles the problems at hand and gives the listener hope to power through. Nina Simone once said that an artist's duty is to reflect the times, and that is much needed in 2020 because whether we like it or not, artists are looked to in all times of our lives. Just look at the effect that Dave Chappelle’s extremely potent 8:46 talk had when it came out earlier this year. Everyone stopped and listened to what a comedian had to say about these horrific events, and people weren’t going for laughs, they were going because he provides an honest perspective in a new and fascinating way. Spilligion is Spillage Village taking what the world has become and using music to help people find their way.
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