25. Chance The Rapper - “Same Drugs”

The unraveling nature of time seems to be a constant theme throughout a lot of the songs on this list. Maybe its because I feel like I’m reaching a certain age myself, as if I’m currently on the cusp between young adulthood and actual adulthood. I’ve stopped most my vices and fallen in lock step with responsibility. I can see my past receding at an ever-increasing pace, and its a frightening thing to witness. It fills me with the deep pang of nostalgia, and yet at the same time I realize that I’m beyond that past. That evolution and change are part of life, and that even if I had the opportunity to pursue that same past it wouldn’t be as fulfilling. It will never be the same. I’ve changed, and so has my perspective. That past is best left where it is, forever memorialized in nostalgia.

I feel that Chance is having this same realization. He’s standing on the cusp and watching as the gap between what once was and what now is widening. He can’t stop it. It’s as natural as the passing of time, and the people and the places that were once so important to him are now stuck upon the other side, separated from him and forever receding. They’ve changed – or rather he has. Their lives have evolved in opposite directions, and things will never again be as they once were. For one reason or another – for better or worse, reality and his accompanying perspective and habits have changed.

This is the ‘growing up’ that we’ve always heard of, and like it or not the gravity of increasing age is constantly pulling us towards it.