What have the past few years looked like? Isaiah Rashad answers with an album title: It’s Been Awful addresses where the rapper has been lately – at rock bottom, in the depths of his own emotional world, headless in an empty room, as the front cover already suggests. And otherwise? Oh, the same old shit. It is no coincidence that one of the record’s highlights is called »Same Sh!t«. There, Rashad lists substances, money and routines; the chorus reduces it to the formula »It’s the same shit«. On the album, this really does sound exactly as it reads: like the exhausted stocktake of a man for whom something urgently has to change. Do not misunderstand: It’s Been Awful sounds good. But Rashad is audibly searching for ways out of the dead ends in which he has got stuck.
From the beginning, he has been one of the most self-reflective and emotionally open artists on Top Dawg Entertainment’s roster. On It’s Been Awful, too, his lyrics circle around mental problems – and around the desire to escape them.
Rashad had already struggled with drug abuse and suicidal tendencies at a young age. Yet although he has to acknowledge these problems again on It’s Been Awful, he does not lose sight of life’s positive sides. In a skit, he is asked to name three things for which he is grateful. His answer: the freedom to do what he wants. Which is to say, a floating, spherical jazz-rap record with plenty of depth and character.
It's Been Awful
