JAN's album: F65 (.idk.)
is it classy to post the first edition of a monthly essay series on the last day of the month?
Last year, I did something I'd never done before: I assigned every month a Mountain Goats album, and whenever I wasn’t sure what to listen to, I’d turn on that month’s Goats album.
Mostly, it was an effort to keep myself from helplessly associating the Goats with nothing but misery. It’s a bad habit I know I’m prone to — choosing to listen to one artist when I’m sad, and then finding it impossible to listen to that artist at any other time. By the end of 2023, I was horrified I’d maybe done it to my all-time favorite Goats album: Bitter Melon Farm. I hadn’t, in the end, but it was probably a near thing.
So, every month was a different Goats album, and as the year neared it’s end I’d heard John Darnielle’s whiny voice probably more than I’d head my own whiny voice. Not a bad thing! But, well, as 2025 ticked closer and the showtunes I was listening to reached their crescendo, I realized I didn’t know if I was capable of doing that again. It was a lot of Goats. Maybe too much. I don’t regret it, and I’m not Goats’d out (not in the slightest), but I wanted to switch it up. The answer came to me beautifully and clearly like an angel descending from the sky.
On the 30th of December, I’d fallen in love with the mixing and sound design on IDK’s album Is He Real?. I had not, on the other hand, fallen in love with IDK’s bars. I found him, at the time, middling at best, though couldn’t help myself from looping the album a few times just because the mixing was that good. But, as for the bars… Eh.
Now, Is He Real? is of course IDK’s first studio album. It’s beautiful work, it’s got insane features, there’s a bunch of parts I think are insanely good (Porno is just amazing), and it really deserves it’s flowers. So, I like it. And yet, I do not really love it.
But anyways, when the New Year finally came and passed, I ended up left to my own devices on January first. I didn’t know what to do with myself: I had forgotten to purchase a calendar, only one of my sports teams were playing, my parents were exhausted and hung over, my sister returned to her own apartment. The only thing I really did that day was to decide to give some of IDK’s more recent work a shot, to see if he’d improved lyrically.
I chose his 2023 album F65 simply because I am known to occasionally partake in watching F1, and I was immediately rewarded for it: evidently, the four years between Is He Real? and F65 made a complete world of difference in IDK’s writing. The sound design and mixing wasn’t as present, nor was it as breathtaking as the work on Is He Real? but it wasn’t a downgrade, plus it allowed for IDK’s lyrics to shine through more clearly.
And shine through they did.
F65 is— I don’t want to call it a masterpiece, because I’m biased, and also just one kid who likes music, but I think I’m allowed to speak with some subjectivity here and just move on. So, F65 is one of my all time favorite albums, forever, probably.
It’s not perfect: I think some parts of it are too short, I think some portions are weak lyrically, etc. etc. etc., but I do think, as a piece of art, it is complete, and that’s one of the most important things any piece of art, but especially an album, can be.
There are parts of the album I do, unironically, consider to be perfect though: the five song stint of Champs-Élysées to Pinot Noir is a magical experience I would not trade for anything. The whole album is about the Black experience, (with a focus on the transatlantic slave trade) that specifically utilizes Lewis Hamilton’s life as a racer, and F1 as a whole, as a metaphor for it—
Lewis Hamilton’s story is interesting, I feel it correlates with the story of people of color specifically, Black people in general. It’s very much this metaphoric connection that I see when I see how he is the first Black person to play this sport. And as much as we see him winning, killing it— and obviously he is the greatest racer in the sport of F1 history— and that one thing is going to help take him over the edge and solidify it, it has become much more difficult, sometimes for technical reasons, than it should be. And to me, that correlates with the story of Black people. When I look at his story and I look at my album, there’s no story that matches more perfect in the correlation of race, and racing than his.
— IDK in an interview with Snifferz (available here, archived link)
Champs-Élysées to Pinot Noir settles over many aspects of that, but beautifully it discusses the object of the car within Black culture and canon, police brutality, and sex. The first song in that list is a spoken word interlude, set over a peaceful jazz track with the sounds of accelerating cars in the background:
I've became infatuated with driving my AMG fast as (Fuck)
Coming from like a date and shit
Or like a badass bitch, you know?
(Speeding) To jazz music and shit
I like to say that's like a mindfuck, haha (Yeah, I like that)
Like, that shit is sexy to me, you know? (Hahahahaha)
I like sexy shit (Damn, you fine as fuck)
— A selection of lyrics from Champs-Élysées
At the end of the song, it terrifyingly cuts from IDK describing something important to him —music, driving, etc.— to the immediately recognizable, though quiet, audio of a cop ordering someone to “stand against the wall” before it abruptly ends.
As the album transitions to Salty, it doesn’t immediately pick up volume. For a moment, you, the listener —even if you’re listening to Salty on it’s own— are left to wonder what happened? Why’s it so quiet, suddenly?
You’re not left to your own devices for long: Salty recovers pretty quickly. IDK exhales a few times, and leaves the moment at the end of the last track behind. You’re supposed to agree with him and move on: enjoy IDK’s bars, enjoy NLE Choppa’s, too. Unlike the majority of the album, Salty is one of a few songs set over an exciting trap beat. By the end of it, IDK has made you completely forget whatever the fuck happened in the interlude. And then, it’s over, and we’ve ended up right back where we started: a second interlude, this time with spoken word by Boosie Badazz, and again, yes, over a peaceful jazz track.
Are we going to jail or not?
That's the question, I don't know, the money ready
This is pocket change
Fuckin' pocket change, if wе goin' to jail, the money is ready
That's what wе need to know
— A selection of lyrics from D.S.T.P
The thing that really has captivated me about IDK’s work is probably-maybe just that jazz rap is one of my all time favorite genres. My second favorite album (though it’s oft tied with Liquid Swords for this spot) is The Low End Theory. There’s obviously a difference between what IDK is doing with the genre of jazz rap than what A Tribe Called Quest was doing back in the nineties, but that’s just because music develops. There’s an obvious purpose behind evoking the genre of jazz rap in F65.
Mr. Police is the fourth song in this section of the album. It’s mostly not jazz rap: IDK is singing over the track, but because IDK is, at his core, a jazz rapper, you can hear the influences of the genre on this song, not to mention the short parts where he does, genuinely, rap. But, importantly, IDK has no desire to mince his words to fit in with what (White) culture has settled as what is meant to be sung, delicately, and what isn’t meant to be. He curses, and he sings about police brutality, and he’s dead serious about all of it.
Recall one of the lyrics in Champs-Élysées — “I like to say that's like a mindfuck” every choice he’s making, the order of these songs, the tracks, the choral singing that appears a few times throughout the album is purposeful. Obviously. I mean, that’s how art works. But when IDK chooses to sing softly over a jazz track about police brutality, and then have the music video be a no-punches-pulled recreation of body cam footage…
…well, “juxtaposition is an act or instance of placing two opposing elements close together or side by side. This is often done in order to compare/contrast the two, to show similarities or differences, etc.” (via Wikipedia, JAN 29 ‘25)
Jazz, nowadays, has been elevated to “serious art,” something that cannot be said for many genres created by and for Black people. Most continue to be relegated to the confines of low-brow and violent. IDK’s choices here illustrate that perfectly, he’s saying fine, I’ll play along, I’ll sound proper. But I am going to be violent. I’m going to show you what White violence does to Black people.
The whole of F65 is about juxtaposition, that relates IDK’s life and heritage to the transatlantic slave trade, and then relates that to the experience of both watching, and participating, in F1. It’s obvious that F1 is a racist, misogynistic, and deeply colonialist industry that is constantly greenwashing itself (I remind the reader here that I am an F1 fan), whereas F65 is an album about freedom and the Black struggle, the antithesis to what F1 really is, beneath it all.
Only a few songs off of F65 got music videos, and only two consecutive songs both received music videos. The last song in this section of the album, Pinot Noir, is the other half of that pair of music videos.
Shot in black in white, in direct contrast to the dark-though-colorful and harrowing experience of witnessing the body cam footage of Mr. Police, Pinot Noir is unapologetically about sexuality. It’s unapologetically loud, and exciting, and features so many layers of samples. And it’s still jazz rap. F65 refuses to give any concessions, it’s exactly what IDK wants it to be, it never will be anything but what he wants it to be, and that’s what makes it so complete.
There’s so much more I’d love to say about this album, but if I’m honest: I feel unprepared to talk about most of it. It’s only by virtue of looping these specific five songs so many time I feel like I can say anything: if I even tried to talk about the meaning of Superwoman, I’d probably fall over. So I’m going to leave it here, and leave you with the artist’s statement IDK released with the album. Thank you so much for reading.
Check back next month for another messy essay on another stellar album.
if you enjoyed this, i also blog on tumblr as offslime (music, comics, etc.) or compher (sports). my art is accessible on hlaoruin.