Danny Brown – 30

“Sent ya bitch a dick pic and now she need glasses”

Thus Danny Brown kicks off an anxious goodbye to his 20′s with a wildly immature joke. I don’t know what maturity means in the year 2013, nor do I know what being 30 means. While I’m at it, I don’t really know what success means, or happiness. I can’t define these metrics, ergo I can’t define my progress against them. We’re living in the golden age of arrested development. Jay-Z said it–30′s the new 20.

Of course, that’s total bullshit. I’m on the cusp of 30, and of course I should have built something sustainable and self-actualized over the last 10 years. Something that I should be taking seriously and building upon, rather than setting the clock back. What that is, though, is anyone’s guess–my own included. Progress in the first two decades of societal life is defined in largely academic terms. 20 to 30 is a bit more up for grabs. Some people make short work of traditional milestones (house, marriage, etc.) while most (at least in my circles) have taken things more slowly while chipping away at some career, project, hobby, whatever, that can define them when they get further into adulthood.

Microphone Cassius, Magic with the sick shit
Supposed to been dead
But bitch I’m still up in this bitch

There’s this inescapable feeling however, as my 20s bow out, that a window is closing. Society has moved the “settle down” goalpost a bit to the right, but ambition is still a young man’s game.  At 30, there’s definitely a feeling of earned wisdom when compared to younger people on the front end of this roaring decade. That earned wisdom, though, is mixed with a real reluctance to acknowledge that somehow I’ve ended up past my prime.

This Danny Brown tune is pretty vivid with all of the things he had to deal with in becoming a successful rap artist by the age of 30, but he had a pretty clear vision for where he wanted to end up.  He had a decade with something to prove:

I always tell myself that it’s gonna get better
You know who you is you the greatest rapper ever
So now the pressure’s on to prove that voice right
Some people never know they goals, knew mine my whole life

Once I’d been foisted onto the world by academia, I didn’t really set goals for myself.I had things I wanted to do with my life and set them to arbitrary points in the pre-30 future. I think that there’s an acceptable level of 20s aimlessness. That acceptable level, however, won’t get anyone to “greatest rapper ever.” Ambition needs time; if you allow time to pass, the baby’s out with the bathwater. I think that the greatest foible of my last ten years, perhaps the lingering regret as another 9 turns back quite decisively to 0, is that I didn’t give myself the chance to try and do anything great.

I picked this song because it’s not taking 30 as a victory lap; it’s anxious as hell. A few examples–the insecurity of irrelevance that is revealed in having to repeat “Guess what bitch, I’m coming back.” The pressure to make it before 30: “When I turned 28, they like what you gone do now?” And the fear that the last ten years will have amounted to nothing, that he might live long enough to see himself become a failure:

The last ten years I been so fuckin stressed
Tears in my eyes let me get this off my chest
The thought of no success got me chasing death
Doing all these drugs in hopes of OD’ing next, triple x

A random day will pass and an arbitrarily important decade will begin. Ready or not. This song is not just a lyrical eulogy for a decade of hustle; even the production sounds dirge-like. Something’s died. I’m fresh out of acceptable aimlessness, yet in the continued absence of any real goals I’m just going to burn through my reserves, quietly hoping against hope that 30 really is the new 20.

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