Elzhi - D.E.M.O.N.S.

"Ever wonder why we'd rather die than let the beef go?"

Album: The Preface [debut solo album]
Genre: Hip Hop, Midwest Hip Hop
Album Release: August 12th 2008
Length: 4:12
Producer: Black Milk
Vocalist: Elzhi [age 30]
Label: Fat Beats

Audio

Charts, Streams & Sales

Spotify: Over 46 thousand
YouTube Music: Over 50 thousand

Credits

Sampled from No Quarter by Led Zeppelin

Details

• 'DEMONS' is about the way evil creeps inside people and gets them to do terrible things: "the same way we holding guns, nuns carry crosses, forms of protection against the evil forces." Murder and gangs are a common part of inner city life, so it's only rational people who live in such environments would make songs about them.
  
  People naturally obsess about the powerful. It's human nature to pay close attention to things than determine whether you live or die. For folk thousands of years ago, it was the seasons, because planting crops at the right time was vital for their survival. So cults, ceremonies, festivals, and religions emerged to cater for this shared social need. Christmas, Halloween, and Easter, otherwise known as winter, autumn, and spring, mark vital changes in the seasons.
  
  Today, for poor people in the inner city, what's vital to understand is how the streets work. Instructions on how to behave are passed down via recordings, such as '10 Crack Commandments' by Biggie Smalls, and the rappers themselves, through their martyrdom, become icons of the street.
  
  Why do people display posters of rappers holding guns, when those they care about are killed by gun violence? It's because they seek to understand the forces that govern their lives, in a belief that understanding leads to protection. It's comforting to think they can mitigate the determining factors in their lives.
  
  On 'D.E.M.O.N.S', Elzhi takes this framing one step further by claiming the obsession with street life is tantamount to paranoia. People argue, but when there's a gun involved the likelihood of fatal violence increases. If people left their guns at home, then the overall amount of violence in society would decrease, but people still carry guns. Why? Individualism.
  
  Even though, statistically, the number of deaths in a group would decline, the individual prioritises their own welfare above that of the group. Also, to stop carrying would be to act first. If everyone stopped carrying at the same time, the amount of gun violence would decrease, but if you don't have a gun and your enemy does, then you would likely be the one killed.
  
  People think of themselves as being a part of groups in order of relative importance. Most important is the self, or the family, then friends, gangs, community, nation, and then the rest of humanity. It would be beneficial to humanity for any individual person to give their money away, but detrimental to the priority group (self/family), so the money stays hoarded.
  
  Outside the USA, many people have a hard time understanding why Americans insist on being armed, but in a society where guns are prevalent, it's a risk not to be armed yourself. Nowhere is this more true than the ghetto.
  
  Elzhi also states that rampant inner city drug use is caused by the fear and trauma of living with street violence and the demons that drive it "stress, greed, lust, jealousy, my people cope by using cess, speed, dust and LSD." However, the cause and effect can easily become muddled. Perhaps cess, speed, dust and LSD caused the stress, greed, lust and jealousy.
  
  Elzhi's framing places the drug user as a spoke in an inevitable cycle, while ignoring that not everyone who grows up in the hood, presumably including the rapper himself, become addicted to drugs. Personally, I would prefer having the responsibility placed on my own shoulders, because otherwise the negative outcomes would be unavoidable. If the outcomes are therefore avoidable, isn't the drug addiction the fault of the individual?
  
  As a society, we can make the likelihood of such problems occurring as low as possible, but that would involve people taking the unlikely step of surrendering their arms, and so the cycle repeats. Welcome to the ghetto!
  
  An individual might know the answer, but that doesn't mean he can affect the required collective change to alter the big picture. Unless, possibly, he releases a song like 'DEMONS', which features the lyric "ever wonder why we'd rather die than let the beef go?" I wish more people would ask themselves the same question.
  
  
• Black Milk produces this track as well as the majority of the album

Lyrics