While I have been working on my article of White Kids Aren’t Hyphy, I really wanted to do Atlas first because it’s honestly a great message from a dad to a son.
Two of my favorite recent albums actually include songs where the artists sing to their sons. On Get Rich or Die Ryan, Spose made the song Hey Big Guy where he sings to his son about being on tour and missing him. On Blockchain Planet, MC Lars raps on Atlas about his son Atlas and chronicles how he felt when he came into the world.
The song has a familiar punk rock song beat. It’s almost like Lars had the beginning drums from First Date by Blink-182 looped and added in an electro beat with “beeps” and “boops” behind the drums. The combination makes for an enjoyable listen and the perfect closing track on Blockchain Planet.
Lars starts the song with “I was stocking up on trail mix at the Walmart in Marina, When she called me with the news I was standing in between the, Pokémon posters and the check out lane”. It was a casual day for the Stanford grad as he was grabbing the essentials from Walmart when his wife sprung the news that she was pregnant.
It had to be a whirl wind of emotions, one that probably caused Lars to refrain from buying a new Pokemon poster.
“Four years together, life would never be the same, And I thought back to the day when the two of us met, On a warm spring night at South by Southwest”. Lars and his wife met in Austin, Texas at the music festival South by Southwest and from there the two began to build a relationship. “Rapper pen pals sending texts and poems”.
As the couple messaged each other and their texts turned into a relationship, they grew very close. “'Till we hugged on that day at SFO, Moved back to Brooklyn left Marin”. Lars moved from California to Brooklyn with his girlfriend and then popped the question in one of his favorite spots.
“I cashed in my miles and took your mom back, To New Zеaland, one of my favorite spots on the map, In thе Waitomo Caves I asked her to be, My partner and spend her life with me”.
Lars ends the first verse with “Now she's calling on the phone and she says the line is blue”. Four years later and the nerd core rapper and his wife are expecting a kid.
The chorus plays and Lars raps about how bringing a kid into this world during a pandemic is scary, but his son Atlas doesn’t have to “hold the world up” on his own.
“Atlas, you don't have to hold the world up by yourself, Now we're masked deep in quarantine straight tripping on your health, And when the venues reopen and daddy's back on the road, Put this song on repeat just to make sure you know that”.
Following the chorus, Lars picks up with having his son Atlas in wild time and dealing with the pandemic parenting. “You were born in the spring of 2020, When global events had us worried worried plenty, And this year they canceled that Austin show, And pretty much everything else going on, so”.
With the pandemic hitting, having a young kid must have been a tough thing to deal with, but something that people may not have thought of is that a lot of artists lost out on revenue as they couldn’t tour.
Lars and his family left New York where they were living as it was the epicenter of the Covid-19. “The city shut down we left Manhattan, Terrified, with no idea of what would happen, So we went to stay with Barbara and John, In Washington Crossing with the manicured lawns”.
The following few lines are Lars rapping again about his fear of brining a kid into the world during Covid-19. “And I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t afraid
A whole new birth plan, everything changed”.
The way in which he ends the second verse is beautiful. “The greatest gig we ever had was to be your mom and dad, Happy birthday little Titan thanks for making life so rad, Standing on the edge of Gaia, I watch you levitate the sky, And even when I'm gone I'm with you all the time”. No matter how crazy life gets, Lars biggest and most important performance is as a father to his little Titan, Atlas.
Just an absolutely touching song that makes for the perfect close to an awesome album.