Blu & Exile - Cold Hearted

"Life is cold, life is pain, pain is growth and every seed that grows sees rain."

Album: Below the Heavens [debut album]
Genre: Hip Hop, West Coast Hip Hop, Conscious Hip Hop
Album Release: July 17th 2007
Length: 3:15
Producer: Exile
Vocalist: Blu [age 25] & Miguel
Label: Sound in Color

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• On 'Cold Hearted' Blu details his experiences with violence as a young boy growing up. First, the violence started at home, when he would see his dad beat his mum and left him feeling "hot as the sun, cold hearted and young". So it was the searing pain of seeing his mum suffer that made Blu cold hearted to the suffering of others.
  
  Later he describes himself walking around with a gun that he got from his dad's top drawer, which could have happened but is probably a metaphor as his dad was out of the picture at this point and it's very unlikely he would leave something useful like a gun lying around. It's most likely a reference to patterns of behaviour that are passed down through the generations.
  
  Blu in no way glorifies his actions, his rapping is descriptive and recounts a tale shared by too many young boys who emulate their fathers when they shouldn't. The rapper describes his mum in tears as she tries to get through to him and he also raps about how a friend of his was killed by gun violence. In another life, Blu could be the one in the casket.
  
  Even though the song covers dark subject matter the soul samples are mixed with a hopeful chorus that wouldn't be out of place on a gospel record. The mix between pessimism and optimism gives 'Cold Hearted' its depth and in the end, Blu's young life was a learning experience that he grew from. At the end of the track, Miguel sings "life is pain, pain is growth and every seed that grows sees rain", and the choir joins in as if the clouds have lifted to reveal the sun, that was only temporarily obscured, when it could have been mistaken for absent.
  
  

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