Ceschi- Broken Bone Ballads

Malcolm Gladwell (hallowed be his name) mentioned in a podcast once that the music you listen to when you’re around eighteen to twenty five ends up being your favorite for the rest of your life. I’ve also heard that music you listen to during stressful times becomes embedded in your psyche forever. If those two things are true then Broken Bone Ballads has two times the psychic force as any other piece of music I’ve listened to.

I can remember shooting basketball in the gym in college waiting for my laundry to be done, listening to this album. There was a problem involving a girl, as there always is, to go along with my usual base level stress and anxiety. I found the repetitive action of shooting and missing soothing, but it was the album that alleviated most of the tension.

“I’m an imposter here, I know it in my bones.” I knew it too, in my bones. I wasn’t in the right place, if I could just get out. Not just of the physical space but the psychic space as well. This album provided a release from all of that. Someone was speaking for me, and I liked what I heard.

There was also hope, a fighting spirit that permeated the entire album. “They’re forcing us to live within our own s*** and I wasn’t born to be a pig.” This was a man who put up his middle finger to the establishment. Who didn’t care about a major label, but who worried about what that meant for his future. He calls music “a mission from a vicious dickhead god, who loves torturing for fun/ and I’ll die trying to please him.” This was a man who was struggling just like I was struggling, and he was able to produce this beautiful art from it. It gave me hope.

That was two or three years ago, and I still hold this album in high esteem. I don’t listen to it regularly, but it comes up every now and again. The amazing thing is that it meets me wherever I am. I still have the same issues, I’m still looking for the same things. So even though I’m transported back to that gym, I’m also right here right now whenever I listen.

4/5 This is very much worth checking out, but you have to like rap.