Curren$y - "Address (feat. Stalley)"

"Y'all muthafuckas graduated already??"

I recently discovered that around this time of year, when kids are graduating from high school and college and other education-type institutions, I get a little nostalgic. Most people aren't good at saying goodbye to things they love, and I fall easily into that category. When you see other people re-living something that you can't have back, you naturally get a little bitter.

Instead of examining a song that conveys empathy towards bittersweet endings or a song that's just plain bitter, let's take a look at "Address," off of Curren$y's debut (and I will argue tooth-and-nail, best) record. The beat is Ski Beatz at his best, laying spaced-out choral tones over a steady 808-break. Curren$y is at his best here, stringing together phrases with nearly non sequitur sequences that mesh into one bright but cloudy image. Meanwhile, Stalley plays a similar game, his laid-back everyman flow allowing him to make creative slant rhymes like "long beard / round here" to string his verse into one very cohesive piece of writing.

However, the greatness of this song, and why graduates (and anybody else who is transitioning somewhere in their life) should take a listen, isn't in it's lyrical components. It's in the refrain.

"It's all good ain't gotta be said, it's already understood /
ain't nothin', ain't nothin' change but the address /
Fool ain't nothin' change but the address"

He may be talking about his own staunch refusal to go mainstream, but we can all take a page out of Curren$y's book here. Every time some thing ends, it feels like everything is different. That's rarely true. Spitta reminds us that, no matter how many times the script gets revised, we're still in the same role. We're the same people we always were, and probably always will be. I don't mean to say we aren't going to grow, just look at the difference between Pilot Talk and The Stoned Immaculate. What I'm saying is, no matter where we go, who we are always holds us down, in the best way possible. Curren$y says it best in one of his sneaky-good, oh-so-Curren$y lines:

"Makin' hot wheels outta hoopties / holdin' it down like balloon strings"


Curren$y - "Address (feat. Stalley)"