When I was in middle school I started hearing the name NF buzz around quite a bit. At the time he had probably only released Mansion and Therapy Session, and while a lot of my friends listened to him, it just didn’t stick for me. I remember one time in eighth grade my friend, Jared, inviting me to go to an NF concert with him in Pittsburgh, but I simply had no desire to go. His parents were going to take us, pay for my ticket, and everything. He bugged me about it for a couple weeks and even his mom pushed me to come along. Nonetheless, I refused to go.
Similar story: I’ve been incredibly blessed to attend Creation Festival in central PA for 20 of my 22 years of life (shoutout to my mom & dad) and one year there was this dude named NF who had the 4pm slot on the main stage. In case you’re not overly familiar with festivals, the 4 o’clock stage time is pretty bad. The sun is up with plenty of daylight remaining, campers are cooking their dinners, and, largely, people are walking around with an ounce of empathy for the band on stage, but they’re preoccupied with the excitement of the headliner that night. But anyway, that was me. I walked across the entire width of the stage, barely noting that NF was up there, noted with a smirk that there’s no way you’d find me in that small mosh pit, and carried on.
It wasn’t the case at the time, but now NF has 18.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify, which lands him at #296 in the world. Additionally, NF joined the Billions Club in 2021 with his song Let You Down.
High stats and popularity are not good incentives for me to be a fan of someone; so when Jared asked me why I didn’t want to go to the concert, it wasn’t because I hadn’t heard of him before or because he was a low-level artist, it was because NF was depressing. I mean, why would somebody who’s having a pretty good day, living an overall satisfied life ever want to play music that is full of darkness and pain? Really it’s a legitimate question.
Well one day I was cleaning out the family camper by myself and listening to Pandora on my iPod 4th generation (wow those were the days). If I had to guess I was playing the Lecrae radio and this song titled Paralyzed came on. As I was working, I slowly started to track with the lyrics and my work slowed until I was fully attentive to the song. I was struck. With a heavy sense of conviction, I realized that was me in the song. I realized that I was so desensitized to all the arrogant and hurtful things that I said and did to my brothers and certain friends.
There was a paradoxical element in it as well. At the time I was so bent on finding the good in every and any situation and wanted to help people by sharing the hope that they were missing. And yet at the same time, I was just plain mean to certain people in my life. That’s where the song hit me: “when did become so cold?”
From that day on I’ve been an NF fan and he’s for sure one of my favorite rappers, but it’s not just because that one song was cool. In that camper I realized that there is impact that can be made in the negative. Sure, the sun can be out and the birds are chirping, but that doesn’t mean everything is all good. It is so valuable to enter the negative and to embrace it for what it is instead of trying to quickly redirect to the positive. And that’s what NF does in many of his songs. Like in Paralyzed, the song concludes without resolve yet I’m still left impacted to the point where I want to change. Change doesn’t come unless you fully embrace the negative.
So even outside of music, I’ve learned to be okay with hard situations. Not everything has to be okay or even on its way towards okay. While there is always hope, genuinely, sometimes it is just appropriate to sit in the pain of a situation. Whether that’s for yourself or with someone else. And I firmly believe that by doing so, you’re taking the healthiest step toward healing.
To listen to Paralyzed and more songs like it, like and stream my playlist Bars of Gold on Spotify.