Jamie Vardy: From Carbon Fiber Technician to Golden Boot Contender

Written in Spring 2016 for "Introduction to Creative Nonfiction," taught by Prof. Jon Readey at Brown University 

The Leicester City squad sat in the home side locker room at the King Power Stadium on a bright morning in September 2015. The players were in good spirits, still buoyant after securing the club’s first win since returning to the Premier League with a victory over Stoke the previous weekend. Still, a sense of caution lingered in the air: Manchester United were not a team you took lightly, after all. Team manager Nigel Pearson, an imposing man who rarely smiled, stands 6’1”, and boasts a widow’s peak unparalleled within British sports, walked in and posted the starting lineup for that day’s match. The players quickly huddled around, eager to see if they’d be taking part. Pearson had opted for an aggressive approach, including three forwards in his starting 11, including the last name on the team sheet: number 9, Jamie Vardy. Laser-focused as always, Vardy simply nodded upon seeing that he’d been given his first-ever start in the Premier League at age 27, never showing so much as a grin. A goal, two assists, and two drawn penalties later, he would lead his team to one of the most exciting and surprising come-from-behind upsets in Premier League history. 

The path Vardy followed on his way to that incredible day is one of the most unlikely and inspiring rags-to-riches stories in the history of sport. Born in Sheffield, England in early 1987, Vardy never knew his biological father, who left home shortly after impregnating Vardy’s mother; as a result, he took his stepfather’s last name. His looks and personality reflected his working-class background: a sinewy figure with buggy eyes and short, spiky brown hair, Vardy has always been known for his resounding toughness on and off the field (for better or worse). As a teenager, he joined the youth academy system of Sheffield Wednesday, the club he’d grown up supporting, but was released by the club at just age 15. Vardy was so discouraged by his failure that he nearly quit playing soccer for good: “That was the lowest moment for me,” he told The Guardian last year. Eventually, however, Vardy refused to give up on his dream, and he began playing for the youth side of semi-professional club Stocksbridge Park Steels. He spent four years in the development academy before finally making the first team squad in 2007. At this time, Vardy made a measly £30 a week, and he split his time between soccer and working in a factory making medical splints. He also had a brush-up with the law while at Stocksbridge: after being arrested for assault (which he insists was simply him defending a friend), he played for months while wearing an ankle bracelet, and he often had to leave matches early in order to be home in time for his court-mandated curfew. 

Vardy impressed many with his prolific goal scoring for Stocksbridge, and in 2010 Halifax Town spent a miniscule £800 to bring the then-23-year-old to the club. At this point, he decided to focus full-time on his soccer career, risking a steady income in order to pursue his dream. In his one season with the club, Vardy knocked in 27 goals and earned another move up the ladder of English soccer, this time landing at Fleetwood Town for a reported £150,000 – almost 200 times as much as his transfer to Halifax had cost. His new team played in the fifth division, one step below the professional tier. With Fleetwood, he scored 31 goals in 34 league matches, an exceptional rate for a player at any level. 

In addition to his beyond impressive goal tallies, Vardy received praise for his particular playing style. Possessing excellent natural speed and acceleration, at any moment he could burst beyond opposing center-backs and latch onto a ball played through a gap in the defense. He could also receive the ball short and dribble through defenders if necessary. Once he worked his way into an opening behind the defense, Vardy’s precise shooting practically guaranteed a goal. His time in the lower leagues gave Vardy a toughness and physicality to his game that many top-level players lacked, especially fellow strikers. Despite standing at an unremarkable 5’10”, he jumped quite well and fought hard to win headers in the air. Mentally, Vardy displayed the kind of determination and work ethic that managers cherish. Moreover, his immense stamina enabled him to hustle for the full 90 minutes of a match without wearing out. All in all, it made for a formidable striker, and Vardy was proving to be one with his goal scoring. He’d been overlooked by clubs so long due to a combination of his size and pure bad luck, a mistake that dozens of scouts will now be cursing themselves over. 

At this point, Vardy was grabbing the attention of the coaches and scouts throughout much of England that had ignored him for so long previously. He had carried Fleetwood Town into the fourth division of English soccer – the bottom tier of the professional Football League - for the first time in the club’s history. Vardy was now a professional for the first time in his career, and it was about to get even more exciting for him. Fleetwood received several offers for Vardy’s services, and it eventually accepted an astounding offer of £1 million pounds from Leicester City in 2012, at that point the most ever paid for a non-League player. Now 25 – not old by any means, but still notable considering most players sign professional contracts upon turning 18 if not earlier - Vardy prepared for his first season in professional-level soccer. 

The move signaled a massive leap for Vardy: at the time, Leicester competed in the Football League Championship, the second division in England and just one gradation underneath the Premier League – the height of English soccer and arguably the most prestigious and lucrative league in the world. The top two clubs at the end of each Championship season automatically gained promotion to the Premier League, while the teams finishing in places third through sixth competed in a playoff for the coveted third promotion slot. Leicester City were a fairly significant and successful club in English soccer as well, only spending one season outside the nation’s top two divisions, though they’d never won a top-flight title. In the season prior to signing Vardy, the club had finished in a respectable ninth place in the Championship, missing out on a promotion-playoff berth by just a few wins. Not only had Vardy earned a move to a more stable and esteemed club, but he was also reasonably close to achieving every English soccer player’s dream: playing in the Premier League. 

However, Vardy struggled to adapt to the new level of competition the Championship posed right away, and he failed to make a huge impression in his first season with Leicester. During the campaign, he managed just four goals in 26 appearances – a drastic decline from his nearly even goal-game ratio from seasons past – and even received taunts from Leicester fans over social media. He was so discouraged that, for the first time since being cut by his boyhood club Sheffield Wednesday at age 15, Vardy considered quitting the game altogether. Fortunately for both the Foxes and Vardy, however, manager Nigel Pearson’s reassurances convinced him to stick around. “I had a few chats with the gaffer and they constantly told me I was good enough and they believed in me and stuck by me,” Vardy said. “I am glad to be showing the faith they showed in me on the pitch.” 

Despite Vardy’s shortcomings during his Leicester debut campaign, his teammates hoisted the club all the way to sixth place and a spot in the playoff to gain promotion to the Premier League. It had required a goal in added time in the last match of the regular season to secure a victory and thus a spot in the playoff. Once there, they faced third-place finishers Watford in a two-match playoff, with whichever team that scores more across the pair of games advancing to the playoff final at Wembley Stadium. Leicester snatched a 1-0 victory in the home leg, in which Vardy was an unused substitute, meaning they needed a draw or a win to reach the winner-take-all final. 

Vardy was once again on the bench for the away trip to Watford, where he witnessed one of the most dramatic conclusions to a promotion playoff in English soccer history. After 20 minutes the teams had exchanged goals, leaving Leicester on pace for a 2-1 aggregate victory. Shortly after halftime, however, Watford’s Matej Vydra scored his second goal of the match. Now 2-2 on aggregate, the game seemed headed to extra time until Leicester winger Anthony Knockaert drew a penalty in the sixth minute of stoppage time; a goal would send Leicester through to Wembley. Knockaert took the penalty himself, but both his spot-kick and the rebound were saved by Watford goalkeeper Almunia. Watford then stormed down the field in a counter attack, crossed the ball into the box, and scored the playoff-winning goal as Troy Deeney lashed the ball into the net. Leicester had narrowly missed out on a golden opportunity to reach the Premier League. 

This devastating loss seemed to only motivate the Leicester City squad to push on for promotion next season, Jamie Vardy included. He earned a starting birth in 34 league matches, scoring 14 goals and nabbing another four assists. Leicester finished first in the division by a comfortable nine-point margin, with a 17-point gap between them and the playoff places. After 10 years, Leicester had finally returned to the Premier League. Like any promoted club, they approached their new top-flight status with both excitement and trepidation; though the promotion opened up plenty of opportunities for the club, retaining one’s position in the league as a former Championship side – which requires avoiding finishing in the bottom three - proves difficult each and every year. In the summer that preceded the 2014/2015 season, the club purchased a handful of new players to aid their survival battle. Included among them was £8 million striker Leonardo Ulloa, who looked poised to cut into Vardy’s playtime. As Leicester embarked on their first season back in the Premier League, Vardy indeed seemed to be losing out on playtime: he had to wait until the club’s third match for his first career Premier League appearance, coming on as a sub for the final 20 minutes against Arsenal but unable to tilt the 1-1 match in his side’s favor. Still, in just over two seasons, he’d gone from a non-league player to leading the frontline against Arsenal in the Premier League. 

After sending him in as a substitute once more against Stoke, Pearson handed Vardy his first Premier League start against Manchester United. The game started disastrously for Leicester; within 16 minutes, United lead 2-0 and seemed poised to only pile on the misery for Leicester. But then, Vardy got going on what turned out as a match-winning and career-altering performance. Immediately after the second United goal, Vardy pounced on a long pass from kickoff, dribbled into the attacking corner, and whipped in a powerful cross for Leonardo Ulloa to head home. United scored again to take a 3-1 lead just before the hour mark, but Vardy again helped bring Leicester back within one goal: after tenaciously knocking United defender Rafael off the ball, he drew a foul in the box to win a penalty. Teammate David Nugent scored from the spot to make it 3-2. Just two minutes later, Vardy created his third goal of the match, knocking down a driven pass into the path of midfielder Esteban Cambiasso, who smashed the ball into the net to equalize. 

With momentum now on their side, the Leicester players pushed optimistically for a winning goal, and Vardy came up with one in the 79th minute. Displaying his trademark speed and clinical finishing, Vardy took a pass from Richie De Laet into the open field, broke away from the defense, and placed the ball past United goalie David De Gea to put Leicester up 4-3. Vardy stormed towards the corner flag and celebrated with his teammates and the club’s supporters; he had his first Premier League goal, and it had given Leicester a lead against the mighty Manchester United. Incredibly, Vardy still had more to contribute to the match, winning yet another penalty after breaking away once again, with Ulloa scoring the kick to make the score 5-3 in Leicester’s favor. After that match, everybody knew who Jamie Vardy was: the man who’d gone from a non-league semi-professional to almost single-handedly dismantling Manchester United. 

Though now a cult hero among Leicester fans and Cinderella-story lovers everywhere, Vardy’s appearances throughout the rest of his club’s season were a bit scattered. His next goal didn’t come until March, and the team as a whole struggled; after 29 out of 38 matches, they sat at the bottom of the league with just 19 points. Just when it looked like the Championship was beckoning, Leicester went on an astonishing run of form. Match-winning goals from Vardy against West Bromwich Albion and Burnley (the former coming very late in the game) helped bring the Foxes up to 14th place and secure a spot in the Premier League for the next season. Vardy’s performances impressed English national team manager Roy Hodgson so much that he granted Vardy his first match appearances for the national side, adding yet another landmark to the striker’s inspirational career trajectory. 

As they primed for their 2015-2016 sophomore season in the top flight since returning, doubt once again overshadowed Vardy and his teammates. Pearson lost his job despite the previous season’s late heroics due to a broken relationship with the club’s owners. The firing came shortly after a sex-tape featuring three young Leicester players – one of which was Pearson’s son – leaked online. Pearson took much of the blame for failing to control the behavior of his players, who were heard in the tape making racist remarks to Thai prostitutes, which naturally offended the club’s Thai owners. The board replaced Pearson with former Chelsea and Juventus boss Claudio Ranieri, whose most recent job had been coaching Greece’s national side, only to be fired after losing to the lowly Faroe Islands. On top of everything, key midfielder Esteban Cambiasso left the club, moving to Greek club Olympiakos after declining a contract offer from Leicester. Many experts tipped Leicester as major relegation candidates, and nobody gave them a shot of challenging the league’s top teams. Of course, Jamie Vardy has always been one to defy expectations. 

New manager Ranieri set up a Leicester side suited perfectly for Vardy’s play-style: their tactics centered around fighting for the ball, hassling opponents, constantly sprinting throughout the pitch, and breaking on the counter-attack. Paired with new arrival Shinji Okazaki at striker, Vardy flourished under his new manager and started knocking in goals left and right. He scored Leicester’s first goal in a 4-2 win over Sunderland to open the season. A few weeks later, he scored against Bournemouth; goals versus Aston Villa and Stoke City soon followed. A pair of goals over Arsenal and another against Norwich extended his scoring streak to five straight Premier League matches. 

Leicester now occupied fourth position in the league, enough to qualify for the European-wide Champions League, though this early in the season, unexpected teams often start impressively before fizzling out. Shockingly, however, Leicester and Vardy kept improving: after returning from two matches with the England team (coming on as a sub in one and starting the other), Vardy scored twice to help his side tie Southampton. Winning goals against Crystal Palace, West Brom, and Watford – the team that had denied the Foxes promotion two years prior – took his tally to 12 for the season, and he was just one more match away from tying the record for most consecutive games with a goal in Premier League history. Leicester were now equal on points with league leaders Manchester City and Arsenal, and pundits finally began taking them seriously. Fans finally recognized Vardy as one of the league’s hottest players, and his reputation skyrocketed among the media. Vardy scored in his next match, a 3-0 victory over Newcastle, to tie Ruud Van Nistelrooy’s goal-scoring streak record and give Leicester sole possession of first place. 

For the city of Leicester, their home club’s magnificent run in the premier league has been an inspiring and unifying event like no other. The city’s economy is heavily based in production, much like Vardy’s hometown of Sheffield. Less than have of its residents identify as “white British,” and is one of England’s major landing destinations for immigrants. “We’re like a salad bowl. We live side by side. We don’t live together,” said club supporter Riaz Khan, before offering a little more hope for a more unified community: “When Leicester wins [the league], it will unify the entire the city.” Supporters’ chants such as “Vardy’s having a party!” show just how much Vardy has been a part in reigniting passion for the club and togetherness among Leicester citizens. 

Leicester’s next opponent was one with special significance already to Vardy: Manchester United. Van Nistelrooy had set his record with United, and now Vardy aimed to break it against them. He didn’t have to wait long; with less than 25 minutes gone, Vardy jumped on a pass from Christian Fuchs to give Leicester a 1-0 lead, and to give himself a place in the Premier League record books. Being the team player that he is, however, Vardy’s post-game comments focused more on how he wished the team had held on for the win (the match ended 1-1) than on his own personal glory. “[I’m] obviously delighted that I’ve got a goal to take me past Van Nistelrooy, but the boys, I think, are a bit disappointed in the way that we conceded the goal. Who knows?” he said. “On another day, it could’ve been three points.” 

Vardy didn’t score in the next match, ending his streak at 11 consecutive games with a goal, but Leicester still won thanks to a Riyad Mahrez hat-trick. Through the Christmastime period which many analysts thought would knock them, Leicester held firm, losing only one of their five December matches and beating the likes of Everton and defending champions Chelsea. As the calendar turned to 2016, it was the other top clubs that began to fall away, and to everyone’s surprise Leicester emerged from the pack as the most consistent title challenger; after comprehensively beating Manchester City 3-1 on the road on February 6th, odds makers now listed Leicester as the favorites to win the league. In the meantime, Vardy scored goals for England against both Germany and Holland, the former a result of a tricky and incredibly bold back-heel flick that beat Manuel Neuer, universally regarded as the best goalkeeper in the sport. 

As weeks went by, Leicester kept winning, and it eventually became clear that the only team with a chance of stopping them now was another unlikely (albeit not nearly as shocking) table-topper, Tottenham Hotspur. But Leicester’s consistent victories meant there were few opportunities for Tottenham to make up any ground. However, a red card for diving in a 2-2 and his subsequent verbal abuse of the referee draw versus West Ham (in which Leicester claimed a draw with a last-minute penalty kick by Leonardo Ulloa) resulted in Vardy being suspended for two crucial matches in April, with only four games left in the season. If Leicester won both, they would be guaranteed the title, meaning that the man responsible for so much of their success might not even be allowed on the field to celebrate its culmination. Now, it was up to the rest of Leicester’s squad to carry the club to the title. 

Of course, Vardy was not the only one contributing to Leicester’s success, and plenty of talented players were still available in Vardy’s mandatory absence. Due to remarkable consistency and a fortunate lack of injuries, the same group of players made up the match-day squad for the entire season with little variation. There was former French 2nd division player Riyad Mahrez, the fleet-footed Algerian winger who was renowned for his ability to trip up defenders with his tricky dribbles and astounding shooting skills. Central midfielder N’Golo Kante, also coming to Leicester from the French leagues, seemed to cover every blade of grass as he raced around the pitch game after game, making tackles and interceptions as he constantly hassled opponents. Right back Danny Simpson and midfielder Danny Drinkwater were both former Manchester United youth prospects who had been cast off after being deemed not good enough for the club. The defense was anchored by Germany’s Robert Huth and Jamaica’s Wes Morgan, both tactically adept and physically powerful center backs. Morgan was also the club captain. Sitting behind the defense was goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, a talented keeper whose father Peter stood in net for Manchester United for almost a decade and is widely regarded as one of the best goalies to ever play the game. 

After a Vardy-less 4-0 win over Swansea, Leicester could clinch the championship with a win against Manchester United at their home fortress, Old Trafford. Vardy watched on as his teammates battled in a hard-fought match, but an early United goal from Anthony Martial limited them to a 1-1 draw, the Leicester goal coming from captain Morgan’s header. Though they hadn’t clinched the title, the point gained from the tie meant that Tottenham needed to beat Chelsea the next day in order to prevent Leicester from winning the league with two games to spare. Vardy hosted a viewing party at his home for his fellow teammates to watch the match, though the mood was far from cheery as Tottenham took a 2-1 lead late into the game. But in the 83rd minute, Chelsea winger Eden Hazard completed a mazy run with a curled finish into the top-right corner of the net, leaving Spurs goalie Hugo Lloris helpless to keep his team in the title hunt. Tottenham failed to reclaim the lead, and Leicester were officially crowned champions of the Premier League. 

Television networks broadcasted scenes of Leicester fans that had congregated in pubs across the city erupting with joy. Vardy and his teammates joined in, as defender Christian Fuchs uploaded a video of the team celebrating wildly at Vardy’s home to Twitter. Fans poured into the city center, a party-like atmosphere consuming the entire city throughout the whole night. The celebration continued at the club’s home match the following weekend, as Andrea Bocelli sang to a packed King Power Stadium before Leicester beat Everton 3-1, courtesy of a pair of goals from Jamie Vardy, and lifted the trophy in the post-game festivities. After the match, a reporter asked Vardy how Leicester had been able to pull it off. Standing with a Premier League champion’s medal around his neck, Vardy credited towards his teammates and manager: “It’s that togetherness we’ve got. We’re all like brothers.” Reportedly over 100,000 fans showed up to the title parade through the streets of Leicester a week later. 

Vardy’s personal accomplishments went heralded as well. He finished joint-second in the league’s top scorer’s charts with 24 goals, one behind Tottenham rival and England teammate Harry Kane and level with £38 million Argentine striker Sergio Aguero. Vardy was named the Footballer of the Year by the Football Writer’s Association, as well as the Premier League Player of the Season. Even more, he’s not only on the England squad for the Euros this summer, but is widely expected to be a regular in the starting lineup throughout the tournament. All of these accolades show just how Vardy has become emblematic of the unpredictability and upward mobility of soccer not just in England but throughout much of the world. Nobody could ever have expected a 25-year-old semi-professional player to lead the Premier League in goals and to take Leicester, despite the odds, to the top of English football.

In the midst of all the excitement and hubbub surrounding him and his team this season, Vardy opened up a training academy for non-league players, where they can receive high-quality coaching and get scouted by top-level clubs. “I know there are players out there in a similar position to where I was, that just need an opportunity,” he explained. “I’ve thought for some time that something could be done about it… we decided to set up V9 [the camp] to unearth talent and give those players a shot – hopefully at earning professional contracts but also to learn and understand what it takes to be a professional at the highest level.” If all goes according to plan, he may just end up discovering the next Jamie Vardy. 

Squashed

Written in spring 2017 for "Sportswriting," taught by Prof. Jon Readey at Brown University People often write about how their sports triumphs taught them an important life lesson – how, through all the hard practices, physical pain, teamwork, and ultimate victories showed them something eye-opening about the world and how they fit into it. These pieces are often heartfelt and inspirational, and claim to demonstrate the true value of athletics in our society. This essay isn’t one of those. Instead, I’ll be taking you on a tour of the corruption, struggles, and general athletic ineptitude that plagued my short-lived basketball career, and how, even through enduring an experience that was pretty all-around horrible, I ended up in a place that, in some small way, helped me survive the perils of high school. * * * * * Recreational basketball in Melrose, Massachusetts during my childhood was a heavily flawed institution. Leagues existed for everyone from first graders to high school freshmen, and everybody played on Saturday, resulting in cramped court space and semi-frequent 8:00 AM a.m. tip-off times. The quality of refereeing was questionable at best, as were the mangy uniforms that got passed down year after year. But by far the most egregious facet was the method in by which the league held team selection drafts. In a typical structure, each coach picks one player per round, sometimes with the drafting order reversed each round to ensure an even more balanced distribution of talent. But that made far too much sense for Melrose Recreational Basketball, no no no. In Melrose, the team that came in first the season previous picked their entire team before anybody else took a single player. The reigning runner-ups would then pick their 12 players, then third place, and so on and so forth. This meant that after the first season, whoever finished first would be able to easily maintain their top spot by retaining their best players and plucking the top talent from other squads as well. It’s like how big tech companies simply buy out any rising competitors, or how the Yankees simply buy out any expensive free agents; the rich get richer, and the upstarts hit a wall. All of this made the very first season of rec basketball – first grade level – the most important, as the final standings that year would premore-determine the pecking order for each subsequent season. As it just so happens, in first grade I wound up on the last-placed team. Which, of course, meant that I wound up on the last-placed team every year. One year we were so bad that I, at the time a five-foot-nothing, sub-100-pound awkward mess who shot 20% from the field on a good day, was named team captain. In my six years of rec basketball, my team won a total of four games. And I remember every single one of them clear as day. Two came in the somewhat-balanced first grade year, before the higher finishers ripped away our two decently good players in the draft. One happened in third grade, when the perpetually-flopping Nate Horne got “injured” with thirty 30 seconds left and us up by one point as the clock operator forgot to stop the timer. Fifth grade brought one more after only three members of the opposing team showed up for the game, and had to play the match with our two worst players on loan filling out their lineup. (Even then, they still outscored us; we only won by a technical forfeit.) Needless to say, by the time my final year of rec basketball – sixth grade – rolled around, I had lost pretty much any hope of playing on a competitive team. And I was right to, too; even with the top-level players leaving rec behind to play middle school ball, my team paled in comparison to every opponent. Game after game went by with us considering a loss by a single-digit margin a success, and a loss by less than 20 points “not that bad.” For some reason, our coach thought having us run sprints all practice would somehow make us score more than 13 points a game, or give up fewer than 35. The consistently soul-crushing nature of my rec basketball career reached its pinnacle with my final game. It served as a microcosm for the entire experience, a fitting conclusion to a hapless era. Knowing this would likely be my final game – finally fed up, I didn’t plan on signing up for another year of this – and I managed to get myself hyped up. I’m gonna give them a performance, I told myself. (Of course, by “performance,” I meant “score more than one basket.”) As I strolled into the gym at 2:52 for our 3:00 start time, the sounds of squeaky shoes echoing throughout and the walls streaked with an aggressively bright red paint, my heart dropped: on the far right side of the gym, I spotted the unmistakable dandelion Tt-shirts my team wore during games; they were already running up and down the court. Unbeknownst to me or my parents, the game had been pushed up to 2:00, but my coach had failed to send out an email. I rushed over to our bench to see that, in a role reversal from our “win” the year previousbefore, this time we were the ones borrowing players from the other team. And the best part? We were only down by one with about twenty 20 seconds left – enough time to snatch a highly-coveted win. Even though it would technically go down in the books as a forfeit for us, the chance to actually outscore another team – even with their own players – seemed magical. But I was missing it. As I got to the bench, my coach looked at me with surpriseI lied to my coach and said I had already warmed up and was ready to go in. “I’m ready, I can go in,” I lied, voice trembling. Coach Morris raised a single eyebrow. “I… I warmed up out in the hall!” (Another lie.) I shouldn’t have been allowed into the game according to the rules, since I hadn’t been there to check in at the start of the quarter, but the opposing coach didn’t care enough to protest. We got the ball back, still down one, with eight seconds left, and coach subbed me in for one of our loanees. Truth be told, my eyes were welling with tears from the knowledge that I had missed pretty much all of what was supposed to be the big finale of my basketball career. But I had one final play to make my mark, and I wanted to take it. The only thing I remember more clearly about my basketball career than my four wins is how the final play of it went. We were inbounding the ball from the sideline in front of our bench, just ahead of the halfcourt line. I stood near the center circle; another player stood at the three-point line, with two underneath the hoop and one inbounding. The other team had elected to leave me free and to cover the areas within actual shooting distance of the hoop via a zone defense. The inbound pass came to me; before I could dribble, the inbounder – a third-grader who had forgotten to sign up for the league in time and was added to our squad because his brother was on the team – ran out uncovered, and I dumped the ball back to him. Almost immediately, he threw up a three-point from the top of the arc. The buzzer rang as the ball was in mid-flight. I clenched my teeth as it approached the basket… and then nothing. He had airballed. Time was up, we had lost in both the technical and literal sense, and my career was over. The sport that had beaten me down more than any other had managed to fit in one more twist of the knife. At this point, all of the childish frustration I had pent up – six years’ worth of anger over a game where you put an orange ball in a basket – over six years of a game where you put an orange ball in a basket released. I collapsed to the floor and wailed in a manner unfitting for a young child, much less the 12-year-old that I was. I sobbed through the post-game handshake and the entire ride home. Despondent in the back seat of my mom’s Ford Freestar, I told myself I was done with basketball forever. As it would turn out, my self-imposed retirement was a bit premature; my ventures into the world of basketball, and the lessons I learned them, weren’t quite finished yet. Or so I thought. * * * * * One month after my final basketball game, I received an acceptance letter to Belmont Hill School. Five months after that, I was walking through the doors for my first day. The all-boys prep school just outside Cambridge, Massachusetts was a new world to me; all of a sudden I was surrounded by wealth, tradition, Vineyard Vines, boat shoes, and a level of academic rigor I had not been exposed to before. Belmont Hill was a school of some notoriety, with a history of consistently sending students to top-level universities and a reputation for strong athletic programs. The grassy campus devoted about half of its acreage to its fields and gymnasium, and the other half to its brick-based academic buildings. Part of the way Belmont Hill maintained its athletic fortitude was by requiring every boy at the school to play sports all year long, one for each season other than summer. For me, choosing a fall sport was easy enough; I was a decent soccer player, and was definitively not cut out for football or cross country, the only other two fall options. When winter rolled around, however, the decision wasn’t as clear-cut. I couldn’t ski, so that was out. Hockey was a non-starter as well. I had been told by the middle school wrestling coach that I could be an asset due to my slender figure, but I had neither the muscles nor the willpower to roll around on the floor in hopes of pinning another boy to the ground. That left two sports: squash, new to me but with an intramural team where I could dip my toes, or basketball. Despite knowing that I likely wouldn’t make the basketball team (one of the few 7th-grade teams to have cuts), I decided to give the sport one last shot, for old times’ sake. The first day of tryouts came just before Christmas break. I stepped into the gym, this one painted navy blue and maroon but with a ceiling and acoustics on par with that of Melrose’s, with my basketball under one arm and water squirt bottle in the other. I wore oversized soccer shorts (I didn’t want to invest in new basketball shorts if I didn’t need to) and clunky white New Balance sneakers. Some of my classmates also trying out definitely looked more prepared: ankle tape, sport-appropriate shorts, Nike swoosh tees, and shiny new sneakers. Belmont Hill wasn’t known as a big basketball school, but it seemed they were trying to change that as there were some strong players in my year. There were 17 of us at tryouts; the max roster size was 12. I looked around and counted who I might have a shot at beating; I was the second-shortest, and from what I knew about the others, probably the least athletically-inclined as well. In short, I was intimidated; before the first drill even began, my already faltering confidence was shrinking even more. After a few minutes of us shooting around to warmup, Coach Brodie arrived. Coach Brodie was an older man who also worked at the school as an English teacher. He was exactly the kind of teacher and coach you imagine a near-retirement prep school faculty member to be: stern, blunt, and old-fashioned, with a firm belief in meritocracy. Outside of school, Coach Brodie was rumored to breed race horses, and students often gossiped about the small fortune he had amassed over the years. On this day, like almost every other one regardless of season, he sported a baseball cap atop his head, his Einstein-like gray tufts of hair pointing out from the sides. He also donned a gray tee, blue checkered shorts, white knee socks, white sneakers, and a whistle around his neck. “As I’m sure you know, eventually we’ll have to cut this group down,” he told us. “But don’t worry about that for now. We’re going to start with some simple drills to get our footing.” OkayOK, I thought, that gives us some time. Our first drill was, as Coach Brodie promised, pretty straightforward: dribbling up and down the court, switching hands each lap. Easy enough. I managed to navigate the drill fairly well, even getting through a handful of left-handed dribbles (my weaker side) without incident. My friend Liam, however, visibly struggled. Vertically-challenged and lacking some coordination, Liam wasn’t exactly the prototype of a pro-caliber basketball player, but he at least had a good spirit about him. As it turns out, spirit alone doesn’t get you very far with Coach Brodie; mMidway through one lap, Coach Brodie pulled Liam aside and whispered in his ears for a few seconds. Liam nodded, turned, and walked out of the gym. Later that afternoon, Liam verified to us what we feared: he had been cut from the team, right there on the spot, minutes into the first drill of the first practice. Apparently, we did have to worry about that for now. The rest of the tryouts went manageably well – I shot better than I usually do, played my typical brand of tight defense, and showed off my one true asset as an athlete: my hustle. Still, I didn’t expect to make the team; I was too short, too slow, and simply not as talented as most of the competition. Two days before cuts were scheduled, Coach Brodie came up to me during lunch and confirmed-without-confirming what I expected. “You know what’s a great sport, Michael?” he asked. “Squash! What a game. You ever think about trying it out?” At that point I knew the writing was on the wall. Still, I held out until the official cuts came out two days later, the day before Christmas break. Not exactly the present I had hoped for. When break finally ended, I set out to find a way to fulfill my winter sports requirement. This scramble to find a new sport would eventually guide me towards one of the major cornerstones of my time at Belmont Hill. Again, the choice came down to squash or basketball, only this time the basketball was also an intramural program. Nervous and risk-aversive, I decided to go with intramural basketball at first; I only lasted a day. The program itself was underwhelming – basically, a half-hour of court time to play HORSE or knockout in between the middle school and Varsity/JV practices. The odd timing of the practice also meant I had to sit through a two-hour study hall before heading to practice, play basketball for a half hour, then rush back for another hour of study hall. I decided this was not how I wanted to spend the next two months, so I finally landed on going for intramural squash. Squash, despite its odd name and fairly obscure nature, is actually a fairly simple game. It’s basically an altered version of racquetball; you have a racquet, a small rubber ball, and an enclosed court, as and two players take turns hitting the ball off the wall until one fails to properly hit the ball before it bounces twice. Because of this simplicity, I was able to pick up and play somewhat competitively (within the intramural squad) almost immediately. More importantly, though, it was damn fun. Squash is quick and often unpredictable; the ball bounces oddly all of the time, and every now and again a return will land perfectly on the edge of a wall or even a corner, and at that point it’s anybody’s guess where the ball will go. Moreover, a lot of my fellow non-athletic regular people friends had also settled on intramural squash as their winter sport of choice. We played a dumbed-down version of squash called “King of the Court,” consisting basically of rapid-fire one-point matches. If you won the point, you stayed; if not, you got knocked out until everyone in your court rotated through. It was one of the most enjoyable sports experiences I had had in a long time, and within just two days I felt like I had managed to actually find a place where I could fit in and enjoy my winter season. But we couldn’t allow that to continue, could we? After two days of intramural squash, me and a few other friends and I were told we needed to speak with the assistant AD athletic director – Mr. Murphy. Mr. Murphy was basically a taller, younger version of Coach Brodie; – he coached varsity basketball, had a stern demeanor about him, worse the same kind of eyeglasses as Coach Brodie, and didn’t mince words. As we waited in the hallway outside his office, a sinking feeling enveloped my stomach. We had noticed that the courts were a little over-filled, and we’d heard murmurs that they would have to trim the team down for safety reasons. All of us waiting had been late to join intramural squash, having tried out for other sports first. After over a half hour, Mr. Murphy came out into the hall to speak with us. “I’m really sorry guys, but there’s too many people on intramural squash right now. You’ll have to find something else.” Cut from intramural squash, I thought, incredulous. I just got cut from INTRAMURAL SQUASH. Just like after my last basketball game two years earlier, I couldn’t handle the disappointment and embarrassment. I had finally settled into something, and it was being taken away. Plus, who gets cut from intramural squash?!? I felt awful, but thankfully it was short-lived. The next day, the intramural squash coach did an about-face and decided to let us hang around after all. From that day on, I relished every day of squash I had. I ended up playing it for all six of my years at Belmont Hill, never drawn in by another winter sport. Over time I improved my game, and the casual practices allowed me social time to solidify some of the most important friendships of my life. I never expected to end up with over a half-decade of squash experience, but I’m certainly glad that I did.

Men’s Basketball Falls to Princeton at Home, Stay Bottom of the Ivy League

Written in spring 2017 for "Sportswriting," taught by Prof. Jon Readey at Brown University Brown (11-15, 2-8 Ivy) struggled to keep pace with Princeton (22-7, 12-2 Ivy) at home on Saturday, February 18th. The 66-51 victory gave Princeton their thirteenth straight win, and meant that the Tigers swept the Bears in their season series. The result means Princeton continue their push for the Ivy League title, while Brown linger at the bottom of the conference standings and looking unlikely to make the four-team playoff at season’s end. Shooting and turnovers were the difference in this game, as Princeton outshot Brown 46.8%-39.1% from the field and committed five fewer turnovers than Brown’s sixteen. The discrepancy in shooting success rate stuck out in the first half, as Brown hit just 6 of 19 shots whereas Princeton drained 13 out of 24. Meanwhile, turnovers hurt Brown down the stretch as they attempted a late comeback. The game started fairly evenly, with each team struggling to find their shooting streak in the early minutes. Eight minutes in, Brown only trailed 14-8. But a few turnovers and some good offense play in Princeton’s favor quickly made it 25-10 to the Tigers. From then on Brown was playing a game of catch-up that never quite came to fruition. The Bears had an airball, travel, and shot clock violation all near the end of the half that allowed Princeton to preserve their lead, going into the locker room at halftime up 33-17. Princeton’s Myles Robinson ’19 finished the half with twelve points, while Brown co-captain Steven Spieth ‘17 lead the team’s first-half scoring with six points. The second half didn’t start much better for the Bears, with Princeton extending their lead to twenty within the first four minutes. A massive block under the hoop by Princeton helped assert the Tigers’ dominance, and also took down the referee. Brown’s shooting had yet to improve, still hovering around the 30% mark on field goal conversions. The half itself was fairly disjointed, as Brown started intentionally fouling to prevent transition play and layups early on and both teams called a high number of timeouts. Midway through the second half, Brown started to pick up some momentum and the team as a whole seem to regain their shooting streak. Guards Tavon Blackmon ’17 and JR Hobbie ’17 knocked down threes within a few minutes of each other to pull the Bears within 10 with 8:42 remaining. But that was as close as Brown would get to for the rest of the game. Princeton quickly put up six unanswered points, including a ferocious slam dunk by Stephens. Spieth made an impressive drive to hoop to stop the bleeding at 52-38, but Princeton kept putting points on the board. The teams traded baskets and Princeton continued to be efficient from the free throw line, hitting twelve of sixteen in the second half. The gap was too wide to close and Brown elected not to continually intentional foul for the final few minutes, and the game ended 66-51. Brown head coach Mike Martin ’04 acknowledged that Princeton’s reputation for tough defense influenced the game heavily. “They really make you work offensively,” he said. Martin also commented on Brown’s early frustration: “The game got away from us a bit in the first half.” Spieth echoed his coaches’ thoughts, saying, “We’re a really offensive team… we’ve got to give them credit for taking away what we do well, especially in the first half.” The loss was Brown’s fifth in a row and seventh of their last eight, all coming against Ivy League opponents. Road matches at Dartmouth and Harvard and a pair of home games against Columbia and Cornell round out the Bears’ season, as their chances of making the conference tournament now appear slim.

Some Albums Are Bigger Than Others: A Look at "The Queen Is Dead" Thirty Years Later

Rating: 9.8/10

Thirty years ago today, legendary Manchester band The Smiths released The Queen Is Dead, their greatest album and one of the most revered records in music history. The Smiths were already making waves in the British alternative scene of the 1980's with their strong first two LP's - The Smiths and Meat is Murder - and non-album singles like "How Soon Is Now?" and "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want." But on The Queen Is Dead, The Smiths hit another gear: Johnny Marr's riffs were more addictive than they'd ever been, Andy Rourke's bass lines became even more indispensable, and Morrissey delivered the best vocal performances of his career. Never before or since did the group put together a more complete album, and today it stands as one of greatest albums of the decade if not of all time.

The Queen Is Dead begins with its title track, one of the most ferocious pieces of music The Smiths ever recored. A sample from the 1962 movie The L-Shaped Room is cut off by a wail of feedback and a thunderous drum pattern before the band launches into a six-minute psychedelic escapade. Like the best songs by The Smiths, "The Queen Is Dead" features lyrics that veer from bitingly sarcastic to emotionally direct and devastating. Here, he starts with the former, alluding to the title of the album and further demonstrating his disdain for the British Monarchy: "Her very Lowness with her head in a sling / I'm truly sorry but that sounds like a wonderful thing." Here, we get our first glimpse of the macabre theme that permeates so much of The Smiths' music, but The Queen Is Dead in particular. Later, he offers a bit less dark humor and a bit more vulnerability, repeating "Life is very long when you're lonely."

Morrissey's lyrics have always been characterized by a sense of morbidity, and of all of The Smiths' albums, The Queen is Dead best showcases that side of him. On "Cemetry Gates" [sic], he recognizes his own mortality in relation to those already moved on: "All those people, all those lives / Where are they now? / With loves and hates / And passions just like mine / They were born / And then they lived / And then they died," he cries. The chorus to "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" has become one of the most iconic moments in the catalog of one of music's most iconic artists as Morrissey approaches impending doom with a sense of Poe-like romance: "And if a double decker bus crashes into us / To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die." On "Bigmouth Strikes Again," Morrissey further explores the realm of black comedy when he insists, "Sweetness, I was only joking when I said / By rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed."

The Queen Is Dead also features the strongest one-two punch of gloom The Smiths ever recorded, in the form of consecutive tracks "I Know It's Over" and "Never Had No One Ever." The former is one of the most relatable and moving break-up songs ever written. Though Morrissey recognizes via the title that his relationship is no more, he's still unable to detach himself from the other person emotionally: "And I know it's over / I still cling / I don't know where else to go." "Never Had No One Ever" (double negative be damned) explores an even sadder character, as Morrissey fills the shoes not of someone who can't get over an ex, but somebody who's never even had an ex.

Of course, The Smiths are just as good at being light as they are at being heavy. The bouncy "Frankly, Mr. Shankly" remains perhaps the funniest moment of the group's discography, with lines like "Frankly, Mr. Shankly, since you asked / You are a flatulent pain in the arse." (In true Morrissey fashion, the singer then proceeds to almost immediately request, "give us your money!") "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" is laughable, though not in the way Morrissey probably intended; while he probably wanted us to snicker at his lyric on its own merit, the humor comes from the contrast between the song's mesmerizing instrumentals and ridiculous, mediocre lyrics. Even "Vicar In a Tutu," the album's only real step down in quality, offers up chuckle-inducing imagery. Earlier this week, Simon Price wrote a piece for The Quietus in which he suggested that these moments of levity detract from The Queen Is Dead's emotional impact and overall quality. As a counterpoint, I would argue that they offer much-needed breaks from the melancholy, and make the album feel more genuine and more human.

What makes The Queen Is Dead stand apart from other Smiths records and in truth from pretty much all but a handful of other albums in general are the absolutely blissful, brilliantly-worked instrumentals. Rarely will you find a track so effortlessly buoyant as "The Boy With the Thorn In His Side," or guitar-bass interplay as captivating as that on "Bigmouth Strikes Again." The false fade at the beginning of "Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others" is a unique stroke of genius that will never be replicated to the same effect, and the guitar work that follow is one of Marr's greatest achievements.
"There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" wouldn't feel nearly as magical without those soaring strings.

Three decades later, much of the music from the 1980's sounds incredibly dated, but The Queen Is Dead remains forever timeless. Its themes are universal no matter what generation you belong to, and no period of time will can take away the majesty of Morrissey's melodies and Marr's brilliance. At the same time, however, The Queen Is Dead signifies the decade from which it came. It's the magnum opus a band synonymous with the early days of indie rock, and Morrissey could never really exist successfully in any time or place other than 1980's Britain - just look at his solo work for proof. It's an album that will never go away, and also an album that will never let you forget where it came from. It's one of the most important, beloved, and iconic pieces of alternative music history. But most of all, it's a collection of songs that will blow you away time and time again.

The Hierarchy of Identity: On Orlando, America, and the Way We Treat Other People

I would like to start this piece by offering condolences to the victims of this attack as well as their families and loved ones. In the political furor that inevitably surrounds these tragedies, far too often the victims are overlooked, and I would not want to be guilty of the same. You can donate to support them and their families here.

As everyone is well aware of by now, forty-nine innocent people lost their lives last Sunday night and dozens more suffered injuries when a shooter (whose name I will deliberately refrain from using throughout this piece) attacked an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando. This horrific event joined a long, ever-increasing list of mass acts of violence and murder in the United States, a list that has grown at a faster and faster rate over the past few years. The usual reaction patterns from media, public figures, and the general populace began once again, to the point of predictability. There have been so many mass shootings recently that even pointing out the clichés in people's reactions to them has itself become a cliché.

The biggest question people ask in the wake of these types of events is infallibly, "why?" What you'll likely find is a glut of nuance-free, cookie-cutter answers that seem to tie everything in a nice little bow. This is somewhat understandable: violence like this is so terrifying and illogical that it's easier and more comforting to blame the issue on guns, mental health, or religious fundamentalism and call it a day. But if we fail to both thoroughly examine the roots of these events and then do everything in our power to fix the problems, it is a disservice to the victims of past mass killings and as well as the victims of future ones that we will have done nothing to prevent.

In the response to Orlando, the two main motivations suggested by the media and public have been homophobia and jihadist terrorism. Something of a debate between those who align with one view or the other has erupted to the point where the discussion online and in the political realm - as it often does on both fronts - has shifted towards each camp attempting to prove themselves right and away from trying to actually stop this from happening ever again. In addition to prioritizing personal egos over the actual victims of this massacre, this debate sets up a false binary that leaves no room for middle ground (which is where the FBI officially falls) and effectively shuts down any discussion that goes more in-depth beyond how to label this attack. In other words, it does nothing to fix the problem, only to identify it.

What's been largely ignored in the post-Orlando discourse, as it has in so many other cases, is the base of the entire issue. Whether you think the shooter was motivated by religious beliefs or homophobia, the two both emerge from the same idea: that there are "right" and "wrong" ways to exist as a human being in terms of identity, and that you can be "better" than someone else, especially because of your identity. This shooter, for whatever reason, held a grudge against the people inside that nightclub, to the point where he felt justified in shooting over one hundred of them. Clearly, he specifically targeted a place where a large number of LGBTQ+ people would be - meaning he had determined they were in some way more deserving of death. He was full of hatred for LGBTQ+ people, and we as a society are at least somewhat complicit in allowing that hatred to flourish.

We know the shooter had visited the club about a dozen times before and was on gay dating apps, and so it is safe to assume he probably felt some sort of internal conflict about his own sexuality. What I wish to deconstruct here is the very idea that this would be a conflict at all - that is, that there would be any reason for him to feel negative about himself due to his sexual identity. Without homophobia and heteronormativity, when we finally step up and recognize all sexual orientations as equal, there will be no reason for people - including this shooter - to fear their own sexuality. But because we continue to reinforce the idea that being heterosexual is the "right" and "normal" way to be, we also continue insist that anything else is somehow deviant and negative, and place those feelings upon those who identify as non-heterosexual.

This line of thinking pervades our culture in far too many ways, whether it comes to gender or race or religion. In America we explicitly and inherently praise certain demographics while disparaging others for completely arbitrary reasons. It's this hierarchy of identity that lends itself to perversion into acts of violence and discrimination. It's the same disgusting sense of superiority that made Dylann Roof feel justified in killing nine black church-goers; it's the same concept that fueled Elliot Rodger's murderous misogyny; it's the same hatred that told Wade Michael Page he could kill six Sikh people at a temple in Wisconsin. (I feel regret about having to mention their names, but feel it is important to do so as to signify the examples I'm using to demonstrate my point.) We can pin these attacks and others like them on mental health issues, but mental health alone doesn't result in random acts of mass killing; it may heavily distort reality, but there has to be some sort of impetus in the first place, and that impetus is our country's pecking order of identity categories.

We, as a nation, need to change the rhetoric we used when we talk about people. Because that's just what they are: people. As of now, we continue to objectify individuals based on what they are, when we must begin to focus on who they are; otherwise, we rob them of their personhood and reduce the entire population into numbers and categories fixed on a totem pole of supremacy and oppression.

Of course, I am not suggesting this would put an end to all mass shootings, as not all attacks are rooted in these motivations and even those that are can never fully be escaped. But if we work hard at permanently adopting a new philosophy on how we think of people and how we treat and emphasis the various facets of identity, it may help reduce these types of attacks, and will undoubtedly make this nation a better place for everyone in the process.

We cannot allow this attack to slowly fade from memory, as we have allowed so many others to do. We cannot sit back and take no action and then act shocked when it all happens again. We may have a Congress that is unwilling to act, but social discourse is completely within our control. It's up to us to try and do something with it.

RIP

Stanley Almodovar III, 23
Amanda Alvear, 25
Oscar A. Aracena-Montero, 26
Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33
Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21
Martin Benitez Torres, 33
Antonio D. Brown, 29
Darryl R. Burt II, 29
Jonathan A. Camuy Vega, 24
Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28
Simon A. Carrillo Fernandez, 31
Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25
Luis D. Conde, 39
Cory J. Connell, 21
Tevin E. Crosby, 25
Franky J. Dejesus Velazquez, 50
Deonka D. Drayton, 32
Mercedez M. Flores, 26
Juan R. Guerrero, 22
Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22
Paul T. Henry, 41
Frank Hernandez, 27
Miguel A. Honorato, 30
Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40
Jason B. Josaphat, 19
Eddie J. Justice, 30
Anthony L. Laureano Disla, 25
Christopher A. Leinonen, 32
Brenda L. Marquez McCool, 49
Jean C. Mendez Perez, 35
Akyra Monet Murray, 18
Kimberly Morris, 37
Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, 27
Luis O. Ocasio-Capo, 20
Geraldo A. Ortiz-Jimenez, 25
Eric I. Ortiz-Rivera, 36
Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32
Enrique L. Rios Jr., 25
Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37
Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, 24
Christopher J. Sanfeliz, 24
Xavier E. Serrano Rosado, 35
Gilberto R. Silva Menendez, 25
Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34
Shane E. Tomlinson, 33
Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25
Luis S. Vielma, 22
Luis D. Wilson-Leon, 37
Jerald A. Wright, 31

Top 10 Brand New Songs

This week, Long Island rockers Brand New released "Mene," their first new song since before the turn of the decade, and a song that could very well one day end up on this list. Brand New have had one of the more interesting career trajectories in modern rock, starting as a drop in the ocean of pop-punk bands in the early '00's before blossoming into proficient post-hardcore leaders with 2006's The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me and, later, Daisy. The band has always claimed a large group of rabid followers, and recently have been shown a good deal of retrospective critical acclaim across the indie blogosphere. As someone who is a pretty big fan of the band (especially their later work), I'm very excited at the increasingly likely prospect of a new record, and figure now would be a good time to look back at the group's catalogue and attempt to pick out their ten best singles. While this list is dominated by tracks from the band's two latter albums, all of Brand New's music is worth checking out.

10. "Daisy" - Daisy (2009)

Kicking off our countdown is the self-titled track from the band's last full-length LP. Opening with an unsettling male voice leading some sort of choir shortly followed by an eerie soundbite of a small child speaking, "Daisy" is an atmospheric track about failure and inadequacy. Singer Jesse Lacey opens up the first verse by proclaiming, "I'm a mountain that has been moved/I'm a river that is all dried up," going on to compare himself to several other objects that have failed to serve their purpose. The child's dialogue splits the two verses, the second of which takes on a decidedly darker feel thanks to a low bass grumble and death-march drum pattern. "Daisy," like its eponymous album as a whole, is a slow-burner, but that doesn't make the flame any dimmer.

Album of the Week: Kendrick Lamar - "To Pimp a Butterfly"

Rating: 9.6/10

Thanks to a convenient Interscope snafu, Kendrick Lamar's hugely anticipated To Pimp a Butterfly has been released a week early. The hype surrounding this album has been massive, as Kendrick's 2012 debut good kid, m.A.A.d city was adored by everyone from casual hip-hop fans to hardcore indie purists, and all of those who fall somewhere in the middle. To Pimp a Butterfly is a colossal album, both literally and figuratively; it tackles issues of racial inequity bluntly and unapologetically over the course of the sixteen-track, seventy-nine-minute run time. If good kid showed that being a black youth in modern times is incredibly challenging, To Pimp a Butterfly proves that being a black adult, especially an ultra-famous one, isn't easy either.

Kendrick isn't holding back any of his thoughts, no matter how potentially revealing and/or controversial, on TPAB. He tackles everything from divisions within the black community ("Complexion") to classism ("Institutionalized") to his own insecurities about being a public figure ("Mortal Man") with energy and dexterity. The best moments on the record lyrically come on "u" and "The Blacker the Berry." On "u," which serves as a contrast to self-loving lead single "i," Kendrick runs through all of his self-doubts without a shred of guardedness or embarrassment, delivered through tears and the clinking of liquor bottles. "The Blacker the Berry" sees the L.A.-based rapper proudly proclaim himself as "the biggest hypocrite of 2015" for, among other things, "weep[ing] when Trayvon Martin was in the street" but not for the gang-related slayings that occur far too frequently.

In order to provide a background for him to elucidate the immense difficulties facing the black individual in today's society, Lamar fittingly looks to a period of music that provided black Americans one of tragically few opportunities to thrive in pre-civil rights America: jazz. Tracks like "For Free?" and "Institutionalized" use instrumentation that sounds ripped from a Miles Davis record, as opposed to your run-of-the-mill hip-hop digital sampling software. In order to pull off this unique approach, Kendrick employed a bevy of live musicals to perform on the album, achieving an organic and live feel not often found in hip-hop. Thundercat is the album's unsung hero, whose basslines dominate a number of tracks, opener "Wesley's Theory" not the least among them. A handful of guests step up to the microphone as well, most notably Snoop Dogg's verse on "Institutionalized" and Rapsody's spot on "Complexion (A Zulu Love)," and the influences of famed produced Flying Lotus is clear throughout the record.

After the September release of "i" as a single, I was frankly underwhelmed, and my expectations for Lamar's new project were tempered. But To Pimp a Butterfly delivers outstanding quality in just about every regard, from its lyrics to its music. Save one or two weak points ("Alright" is just barely that), Kendrick lived up to the unbelievable hype for this sophomore effort. In a year heavy with high-profile rap releases, including Drake's already-released If You're Reading This... and the (apparently) soon-to-come new Kanye West album, To Pimp a Butterfly will certainly be in the conversation for 2015's best albums.

Key tracks: "King Kunta," "u," "Complexion (A Zulu Love)," "The Blacker the Berry"