Hope (Instrumental)
XXXTENTACION · ? (Deluxe)
Raw pain reaching toward light, but barely making it there
What do these signals mean?
- Edifying: Points the heart toward God, truth, hope, or love.
- Worth Weighing: Real good and real concern together. Test it before you take it in.
- Take Caution: Leans toward what could dull or mislead. Approach carefully.
- Consider Avoiding: Celebrates what Scripture warns against. Little here builds up.
Weighed against Scripture
“The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.”
The song voices the crushed spirit and the brokenhearted places the psalmist describes. The very pain it expresses is the condition Scripture says God draws near to.
“For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”
Hope that is seen is not hope. The song's closing refrain reaches for something better without being able to name or see it clearly, which mirrors what Paul describes as the nature of genuine hope.
“And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LORD: Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.”
Jeremiah moves from 'I have forgotten what happiness is' to 'yet I will hope' in just a few verses. That same small, strained turn is what this song attempts.
This is a lament dressed in pain, not a polished message of hope. X voices suicidal exhaustion and then, almost against the current of the rest of the song, insists there is hope for people like him and like us. The tension is not resolved, which is honest. The dedication to the Parkland victims gives the song a posture of grief-sharing rather than self-indulgence. What holds it in 'mixed' territory is that the hopeful turn is brief and the expressions of wanting to die are front and center, which matters a great deal depending on where the listener is emotionally.
Contains repeated profanity and candid expressions of suicidal ideation ('I wanna die'). The language is raw but not gratuitous given the emotional context.
The song sits in genuine anguish but stretches toward something better. The closing refrain about hope for 'the rest of us' is a real, if fragile, reach outward. It does not arrive at peace, but it is not nihilistic either.
Dedicated explicitly to the Parkland shooting victims, the song functions as communal lament. The intent appears to be solidarity with the suffering rather than a celebration of despair.
This song sits in a heaviness it does not try to dress up, and if that repeated ache sounds like something you have been carrying, that is worth taking seriously. You do not have to hold it by yourself; someone who knows you would want to hear it.
When you listen to this song, are you borrowing its pain to feel understood, or are you also holding onto that closing thread of hope it offers?
