Duality. It’s the first word that comes to mind when you listen to Los Angeles based singer cøzybøy’s discography. Often writing lyrics from multiple perspectives, cøzybøy’s songs often feel more like complete movie soundtracks than singles uploaded onto SoundCloud. Today the artist comes to our pages with his most recent project machiavelli nøvella. Years of dangerous emotions are packed into less than four minutes as cøzybøy attempts to deconstruct the complex topic of suicide.
The first track “shaun” is less of a song, but rather a monologue of a close friend debating if he should take his own life. You hear what sounds like a recorded voicemail or phone call from who we can only assume to be Shaun as he tells cøzybøy “The problem is when I think that there’s a 9 milli in the closet and I just wanna do it. You know I just wanna pop one.” The phone hangs up as the project melts into the track “the wørst day øf my life was the day yøu tried tø kill yøurself.” The track, produced by bl4ckgu1ch, opens with up with a melodic, gently plucked guitar reminiscent of an early greaf beat.
In the chorus cøzybøy gently croons “To call from hands on above, to lean on/ Would it be good enough for me? No.” If you happen to be familiar with your early 2000s Scandinavian indie pop, you would recognize this chorus from the popular track “Heartbeats” by the Swedish electronic duo The Knife. In “Heartbeats” the chorus is described as breaking down religion’s view of love. Perhaps not so coincidentally, machiavelli nøvella’s description has the quote “without divine intervention, Jesus was one of history’s greatest losers.” The life of Jesus was miserable one full of suffering that otherwise would have been pointless, if it was not for the fact he was the son of god he would have been forgotten by history. Although he himself is not religious, it seems as if cøzybøy himself is looking above to see if their is any signs of hope for his friend’s deep suffering, yet nothing is there. Instead, cøzybøy sings from his friend’s perspective, explaining “I want to kill myself today / Beretta pointed at my face, my love.”
cøzybøy elaborated that “I think of all my songs in terms of narratives and characters. So when I write about love, it’s a certain person. When I write about depression and suicide, it’s someone else. I’m somewhere floating in the middle, kind of exchanging consciousnesses, writing from different perspectives as well as my own.” Explore this exchanging of consciousness down below in cøzybøy’s machiavelli nøvella, and make sure to check out the visuals as well.