Joining the ranks of reborn Christian rappers including Chance the Rapper, Kanye West, and Kendrick Lamar, Mick Jenkins paints a bold picture of himself in his debut studio album, The Healing Component. In his album, Jenkins tries to use his impressive lyrical chops and musical versatility to teach his audience how to love again. He teams up with critically acclaimed female rapper Noname, inventive producer Kaytranada, infamous jazz quartet Badbadnotgood, and many others to craft his 62-minute work. This confluence of artists creates a diverse record with both hard driving, richly produced tracks, and ethereal, reflective numbers.
Jenkins opens the album with the title track, in which he lets the audience know exactly what he is aiming to do through the album. A recorded conversation with London, an unidentified woman who is not clearly his good friend, girlfriend, or interviewer, begins the song. As it progresses, Jenkins shows off his jazz inspirations, pulling on pianos, trumpets, and complex basslines to create an engaging background for his laid-back flow. Though the song’s refrain relies on “THC,” (an acronym for the album’s title). Jenkins follows it by saying “this ain’t what you smokin’ on the regular,” to indicate that the real Healing Component is not the temporary escape that drugs and alcohol provide, but rather love. The song seems to be Jenkins’ attempt to differentiate himself from “regular” rappers and portray himself as more enlightened than his peers, despite his relatively short career to date. The Water[s] (2014) and Wave[s] (2015) are his two mixtapes, and they give Jenkins little latitude to say he is any more inspired than his competition. Jenkins does however show exceptional creativity and great technical skill as a rapper.
“Spread Love” was released as a single to promote the album, and features the same rich production, loving message, and well-crafted flows of “The Healing Component.” Unfortunately, the chorus is less than compelling and offers little reason to return to the song as is the case with many of the songs on the album. “Daniels Bloom” takes a much darker tone, and, simultaneously, is a refreshing change of pace and feels to flow naturally from “Spread Love.” The production, headed by Sango on both songs, is well done, accenting the darker tones of “Daniels Bloom” with floating and raspy vocals and the scratching flint of igniting lighters as sonic punctuation.
“Drowning,” produced by and featuring Badbadnotgood, is a complex and intense song, driven by the jazz group’s steady chord progression, and Jenkin’s tortured pleas. His repeated refrain, “I can’t breathe,” is a poignant nod to the words of Eric Garner and the modern civil rights activists who have taken Garner’s words into their fight for justice. The song delves into Jenkins’ disillusionment with modern rap and returns to the water imagery that he built his previous two works on. The song is compelling, melancholy, haunting, and memorable – not for its chorus or catchy tune but rather its emotional intimacy and inspired composition.
The interview between Jenkins and London is interspersed through the album, and the two discuss different types of love, how to find it, and each other’s experience with it. Though these interludes propel the overall message that Jenkins is trying to convey, they break up the flow of the album and don’t especially fit with the album’s tone. There are also strange edits to the conversation, scrambling the character’s words, ending up as more of a distraction than an accent. The interviews do humanize Jenkins, however, and pull him down from his pedestal for remarkably genuine reflections on himself and his romantic past.
Jenkins also weaves his Christianity into the album, pondering the nature of God’s love as opposed to the love people can experience. He contrasts his desire for emotional and physical intimacy with the harsh realities of violence and drug abuse he saw in his hometown of Chicago. As the album progresses, Jenkins dabbles in diverse sounds and shows off his remarkable ability to excel throughout. Noname and Michael Anthony are standouts towards the end of the album in their respective songs, but they do not necessarily challenge themselves. Jenkins returns to his comfortable and distinct sound intermittently through the album; sparse instrumentals, quick and smooth flows, and heady messages propel these tracks, as they have propelled Jenkins’ past work. The Healing Component perpetuates Jenkins’ faults of being slightly preachy and patronizing, but warrants serious consideration for both its lyrical content and diversity.
