Everything Changes
Aceyalone feat. Mystic
By Natalie Silver
Change is the muse of the world. It is the very essence of the human condition, which is why so impossible to fathom and yet so easy to obsess over.
Some of our most celebrated songs are written about change, yet they can be abstract and incredibly difficult to resonate with. The key to creating relatable and powerful art is deconstructing these philosophical and cosmic concepts and rewriting them as real, personal stories.
In “Everything Changes,” trip hop pioneer Aceyalone and one of Oakland’s most alluring voices in music and culture, Mystic, duet the heartbreak of change, offering us a simple scene bursting with imagery and detail of a very particular and personal love story.
Together, Aceyalone—in his hard-fast, matter-of-fact and perseverant internal monologue—and Mystic—in her silvery, Old-Hollywood breathiness—weave the two diametric opposites of change into something stunning and relatable. They are the voices of the two poles of change; it is both the realest, most tangible thing in the universe, but also the most abstract and transcendent force that we will never, ever understand. The result is an entrancing, gangster and inevitable truth.
Aceylone’s explosiveness and Mystic’s seductive harmony are underlined by trippy, jazzy undulations that are trademark to Aceylone’s sound and pillars of early trip hop, keeping this narrative of a failed romance weird and enticing.
“Everything Changes” becomes next-level around the four minute mark, eventually peaking at 4:23. Between 4:23 and 4:44 everything is stripped besides a soft beat and Mystic’s chorus, and the result is eerie and disjointing. It’s where I start to hear the lyrics as more than anecdotal and closer to true gospel. As simple as this song’s story is, it’s an archetype of a heartbreak we all encounter, be it through romance, career, friendship, religion or sense of self. Everything changes. It is exciting, disturbing, disorienting; but also, as Mystic murmurs in the first seconds of their song inspired by it, it’s so beautiful.
July 20, 2019