No matter how perfect I tried to be, I constantly felt like the world would reject me, so I would revert back to doing things that were just as messed up as what I was seeing around me. This song was written at a time when I working to rise above those tendencies.
—Black El
Boston rapper Black El’s latest single “Golden Child” feels like fitting fall music, the carefree days of summer giving way to reminders of the real world.
Melancholic without ever dipping into strict sad boy rap (thanks in great part to Durkin and Victor Radz’s production, simultaneously driving and atmospheric), “Golden Child” is a moment of reflection for a mind clouded by daily dramas, weighed down by, as Black El puts it, “how broken society is, even in the things that are thought to be pure and good.” If that sounds weighty in the abstract, it’s nimbler in practice, a song as suited for sitting back, smoking, and clearing your head as it is for solitary, silent introspection.
