Coming from his excellent The Iceberg album from earlier this year, Oddisee‘s beautifully animated “You Grew Up” video is a poignant look at the sad and sometimes counterintuitive ways extremists become radicalized over time. The song relates Oddisee’s upbringing in Silver Spring, Maryland with a white best friend who eventually grows up to become a prejudiced police officer that shoots an unarmed, Black teen, as well as a tale of a young Muslim boy in the UK who feels isolated and discriminated against by the world despite his loving home and becomes a jihadist.
It’s an insightful song, full of glimpses of the cultural differences that divide us and the similarities that we stop being able to see as we age, speaking about the sense of apathy that can also take hold as we become world-weary and calloused by the hard realities of the world we live in. It’s especially relatable considering current events, as the news is filled with warnings of terror and images of protest against police brutality.
The Iceberg dropped in February, and was Oddisee’s third album in twelve months, including the Odd Tape, a collection of jazz-influenced beats like “Born Before Yesterday,” and 2016’s Al-Wasta, which was influenced by Oddisee’s Sudanese heritage.
