Richardine Bartee
Over the weekend, I decided to make a playlist of how I believe love feels. It isn’t the same, all the time. Sometimes, you aren’t in love with another person. It is an object. It is yourself.
Starting with Wale’s ‘Bad’ featuring Tiara Thomas, love is not in the equation for the woman. She never ‘made love’, but she knows how to fuck. I can’t tell how much I can identify with the words of the hook. I won’t front either, the ‘Bad (Remix)’ with Rihanna is sexy as hell, but it is not like the original version.
Other times, love makes you feel like you’re floating in a Gap commercial or twirling in the drum patterns of Mark Ronson’s ‘Bang Bang Bang’ featuring MNDR & Q-Tip. Moreover, when in love, it is like a band follows me. Do you know what band plays? ‘Valerie’ by Amy Winehouse—the Mark Ronson flip, only.
At times, you feel like a prisoner of love. Suddenly, you find yourself begging for mercy. Or, a fever comes over you—leaving you to burn for soothing. Not all of us can relate to Pocahontas and John Smith, so we found love in the noisy hills of the Bronx. Certain songs encapsulate what makes love important. The passion is incredibly hard to ignore. It begs you to wonder if the musician loved someone deeply during the recording process.
And when the love dies, we change our minds. Oh, love has many layers. Love sees no boundaries. Therefore when Syd from The Internet sings (beautifully) about loathing lonesomeness, it is uncannily relatable. She loves herself, here, though. No one sings about status and their rarity in a party setting if they are not. No one can convince me otherwise.
Some love is foreign. Depending on the language barrier, you may not understand everything the individual communicates, but you’ll know when it is right. Love is a feeling—much like the feeling I get whenever I listen to ‘Pana’ by Tekno, ‘Love Inside’ by BJ the Chicago Kid or ‘L$D’ by A$AP Rocky. Like the Harlem-bred rapper, JAY Z’s ‘Song Cry’ isn’t one to make love songs, or cry for that matter. It could be a late twenties-early thirties New York City young Black male thing. Whatever it is, imperfections make the best music. Bobby Glenn’s vocals from ‘Sounds Like a Love Song’ are synonymous with the first-hand rub you get on a teenage date. It is not sexually intense, but it is the start of a fruitful friendship—best compared to the innocuous innocence of a Virgo.
Unfortunately, sometimes, love is dangerous and fatal. From the beginning of time, empaths and narcissistics attracted one another. It’s the myriad of the number of opposites that attract. As a young girl, I heard the lyrics for Eve’s ‘Love Is Blind’. At the time, I wasn’t sure it was fiction or non-fiction. Now, I know it is real. It is a nightmare, and that epidemic exists. According to Huffington Post, nearly double the amount of women were murdered by their partners than there were casualties of war. Love is dark.
Love is light. It can take control of you—causing you to be mindless. Or it knocks you down: A Love TKO.
If you’re in love with the hustle, the local currency is what makes you wake up in the morning. I’ve dated a few hustlers. At most, money is more important to them than you are. For them, I’ve added the classic Wu-Tang Clan ‘CREAM’. I think it is a rad explanation of what happens when cash rules everything around you.
If you’re a hustler in the Southern parts of the United States, Lloyd’s ‘Street Love’ might be relatable—if you’re into good girls.
Or love is how you feel when you hear the drums of Skyzoo’s ‘Love Is Love’.
Love is love, so lead with it.
