RodThaGreat | “Birthdays”
RodThaGreat expresses the woes that come with turning a year older in his song “Birthdays.”
Over the somber lo-fi/boom-bap beat, the musician says that celebrating your special day is supposed to bring you joy. But instead, he sees it as an occasion where “we born to rot.” Granted, he’s never confided in anyone about this feeling, so he chooses to open up through the emotive lyrics.
Using a singsong cadence, he raps,
“So this day out of all holds emotional weight/This some shit that I wrote/Shit I never could say/In a full-fledged conversation with somebody else/I never been the type to talk about the shit I felt/I heard it many times before that shit will make it worse/Birthdays the worst days in my universe.”
As the song continues, RodThaGreat calls out the individuals that pick and choose to hit him up. He also admits to wanting solitude during his born day.
“People hit my line wanna go here and do that/I don’t wanna do nothing except Relax in my own space/Under my own stars/In my own room/In all my lonesome.”
Then, we get to the thick of things. RodThaGreat opens up about his darkest fear, worries, and what he wants in the future. Still, he’s all smiles and is hopeful for what’s to come.
Before the song closes, he tells a story about a woman who shares the same view about birthdays. He also reveals why she feels this way.
“My OG she feels the same so she living proof/The color blue it was my complexion/So she told me information and to her confession/Her daddy died on her birthday she was only like twelve/That was in the past but still that’s a hell of a present.”
He concludes that time is constant and ever-changing. There’s no pause button in life. All you can do is push forward.