Rise & Grind

Corbin Hicks
3 min readJun 3, 2022

Hey,

I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday with my otolaryngologist, which is an ear nose and throat doctor. My fiancée suggested I look into whether I have sleep apnea or if there’s any way to minimize the snoring that I do while asleep. The doctor gave me a few suggestions of things I can do to curb the issue, but first he suggested I do an at-home sleep study. While driving home from the doctor’s appointment, I heard Kevin Gates “I Don’t Get Tired” on the radio. Right then and there it dawned on me that rappers give awful life advice.

Except for Jay-Z, Rick Ross, and Nipsey Hussle, every other rapper I’ve listened to over the years has told me blatant lies and offered horrible advice. The fact that I enjoy a song where someone openly brags about not getting enough sleep is madness to me. I don’t care to admit how many years I’ve lived my life trying to live up to these fables and myths that rappers spew at insane levels. I’ve simply made up my mind that from today forward I won’t be trying to incorporate rap lyrics into my daily ways of thinking, and I’d like to highlight a few of the ones that I find to be the most egregious.

  • Rise and Grind: Rise and Grind is one of my major pet peeves because everyone knows that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It’s been scientifically proven, despite what people that do intermittent fasting want you to think. Why is not acceptable to rap about breakfast? How did we live our lives trying to rise and grind on an empty stomach? And don’t even get me started on Grand Rising.
  • No New Friends: This Drake song also played on the radio, and it irked me. I was recently at a wedding and I met probably a hundred people I’ve never met before. It was such an amazing time. Why would anyone want to go through life actively trying to not make new friends? This seems so childish, in a Mean Girls “you can’t sit with us” kinda way. Grow up.
  • Money Over Women: I hate this phrase so much. Why do you have to choose between money or women? Why can’t you find a proper healthy support system that allows you to obtain success while also supporting healthy relationships? And why do rappers have such an obsession with being the boss while simultaneously working for pennies because of a 360 record deal with their labels? Something’s not adding up.
  • Drug kingpins: Any drug dealer rap that doesn’t also talk about the consequences of living the street life is terrible. You have to talk about the pros and cons. Also, when did everyone become drug kingpins? Also, any rappers who rap about any sort of alcohol or drug when they are sober are not to be trusted.
  • Any financial advice at all: You’re not Jim Cramer. You don’t have the fiduciary authority to tell me how to spend my money. And you, like everyone else on this planet, are not a crypto expert. Stop pretending that you are and stop giving out financial advice in your songs. Unless of course you’re Money Man.

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