Here is the song (36:35 to 40:05)

They say the millennial generation is chronically self-obsessed, that we spend so much time in our heads that we never end up enjoying ourselves – even when surrounded by others.

But self-reflection is a good thing right? Well at what point does self-reflection stop being a good thing and morph into some form of neurosis? This is a difficult question that requires (ironically) self-reflection, some inner dialogue that gets to the bottom of what it is we really want, what it is that we’re searching for, or more often than not, what is the source of the pain that’s hurting us right now but that we are wilfully ignoring.

Waiting Outside is one rappers dramatisation of the feeling that the deeper part of us is desperately trying to converse with the exterior part of us, the part that is busy interacting with the world. Through this dramatisation a fundamental truth is communicated – that the nature of human existence is relational because look, we even have a relationship with ourselves.

Think of the musical layers of Waiting Outside as the metaphorical soundtrack playing in the psychologist’s room (just like a generation before might have had Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark playing as it’s soundtrack). The intro signifying the entry into the shrink’s mystical chair where the subconscious meets the conscious, where it feels kind of weird yet familiar. Then the chorus where Oddisee’s singing communicates an angst, some deep yearning. And then the drums in the final chorus are like the deep anger and confusion that surrounds the pain we harbour. Indeed, we all tend to do some form of mental or emotional thrashing about in preparation for real healing to begin.

But just as the patient gets over this hurdle, the next journey begins with the mind finding some other cunning and elaborate way to deceive itself, as if life was following some different rhythm entirely…