Dani “Wicked Menace” Fischer and Justin “Insane Leader” Cupps present our music blog, “We’re Really Clef-er”. Each blog, one of us makes the playlist and the other one writes about it, so that we can remain impartial about our music taste. This week, Cupps made the playlist and Fischer wrote the blog.

If you are looking for your mind to be blown for a solid 37 minutes, sit down and listen to this “rhythm and poetry” playlist. I’ll admit I was a bit cynical at first, but from the initial notes of Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” I was hooked.

I’m not usually a rap person. Actually, let me correct that; I don’t listen to rap music, because it doesn’t interest me. Somebody singing (or rather speaking) about drugs and butts has never interested me. However, this playlist has songs that actually have a message to them, and try to get an important point across. After I listened to many of the songs, I had to look up their lyrics so that I could get a better grasp on what the artist was communicating, and boy, was it deep.

Although the songs all address different issues in our modern day and age, some of the ones that stood out the most were problems that have been in the media recently. On “Dark Comedy Late Show,” Mike Eagle raps about relations between the police and Black Lives Matter protesters, singing “They respond to demonstrations wearing kevlar briefs / When the main problem is no one respects our grief.” It’s intensely thoughtful and emotional lyrics like this that changed my mind about rap.

In addition to having incredibly meaningful lyrics, these songs had me dancing around my room pretending I had any semblance of rhythm (spoiler alert—I don’t). They’re the kind of songs that when they come on the radio, you can’t help but crank it so that your car is thumping with the bass. My personal favorite on the list was “New York Soul pt. II”, because it starts off slow initially but goes from zero to 60 real quick. Honestly it was a little bit of a jump scare the first time when it amped up, but by about my ninth time listening to the track, I loved the transition.

For what is essentially a rap playlist, I actually enjoyed Justin’s Rhythm and Poetry playlist much more than I thought I would. From meaningful lyrics to incredible beats, this playlist had me hooked from start to finish. Let us know in the comments below what you thought of this playlist, and what you want to hear next!