{"id":1949791,"date":"2025-08-08T17:42:39","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T17:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1949791"},"modified":"2025-08-08T17:42:39","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T17:42:39","slug":"jid-is-a-new-father-and-uneasy-messiah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/jid-is-a-new-father-and-uneasy-messiah\/","title":{"rendered":"JID Is a New Father and Uneasy Messiah"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\tAt 34 years old and with 12 years in the rap industry, JID<\/a> finds himself matriculating from a student of the game to a leader. As he does so, the title of his fourth album God Does Like Ugly <\/em>suggests he\u2019s looking to the ultimate one. Despite the enormous successes of a four-times platinum appearance on Imagine Dragons \u201cEnemy\u201d (a pretty random collaboration from the outside looking in), a viral<\/a> hit with 2022\u2019s \u201cSurround Sound\u201d (which soundtracked videos where netizens held their phones high above them to rap, dance, or act into the camera), and many years of packed shows, JID<\/a> is less a superstar than a cult-classic type of rapper. It\u2019s clear he\u2019s a bit over that. \u201cJust took a fuckin ceiling challenge to show I\u2019m above my peers,\u201d he spits with slight disdain on his God Does Like Ugly<\/em>. \u201cBe serious.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tJID has made a career of looking at the bigger picture. His last album The Forever Story<\/em><\/a>, came out nearly three years ago, powerfully retelling his coming of age out of Atlanta and onto J. Cole\u2019s prestigious Dreamville Records, and describing how his family has showed up in his life along the way. The very last seconds of God Does Like Ugly<\/em> reveal that he\u2019s now started a family of his own, with JID asking, \u201cDaddy got best bars in the world?\u201d to a baby who gurgles back a definitive, \u201cYes.\u201d This is likely his first public announcement that he\u2019s now a father, putting him in one of the most consequential leadership roles there is. So, when JID proclaims his capacity to step up, whether he\u2019s humbly distancing himself from Dreamville by rapping, \u201cI ain\u2019t killing shit cause of Cole\/It\u2019s cause I\u2019m cold,\u201d on \u201cVCRs\u201d with Vince Staples, or promising, \u201cYou need a leader\/I can come and deliver,\u201d on the single \u201cWRK,\u201d there\u2019s an added sense here that in his personal life, he must.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut, of course, titulary, and functionally, God Does Like Ugly<\/em> also finds JID asking and answering the metaphysical questions embedded in that process, musing on what the hell we\u2019re doing here on Earth, who\u2019s in charge, and where we go when it\u2019s all over. His observations are rooted in the Christian traditions that permeate the Black American south where he was raised. \u201cI\u2019m tryna free the shackles\/My brother back inside the cell so I just said a prayer,\u201d he raps on \u201cGlory,\u201d an early declaration of JID charging himself to be some sort of spiritual guide towards the people he cares about \u2013 whether that\u2019s his troubled sibling or Black people more generally. No matter what though, his perspective is local, as he recounts the only-in-Atlanta trials of getting his car robbed outside a Falcons game (in the excellent \u201cGz,\u201d a prime example of what a hyper-specific storyteller JID can be and his mesmeric sense of cadence) or being hunted by city\u2019s oppressive Red Dog policing unit that brutalized Black people from the late Eighties to the 2010s. If Metro Boomin\u2019s recent A Futuristic Summa<\/em> mixtape revels in the sugary pulse of the city\u2019s hip-hop movement that came at the end of that era, God Does Like Ugly <\/em>lives in the dark underbelly that was always there.<\/p>\n

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\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tWhile some of JID\u2019s religious allusions can be too on the nose \u2014 like summoning Westside Gunn, known as FlyGod, for the intro, or Atlanta rap hero Pastor<\/em> Troy on \u201cK-Word\u201d \u2014\u00a0the album really shines when JID juxtaposes the promised salvation of Christianity with the grit of Atlanta\u2019s reality. \u201cAt the Lord\u2019s service like I\u2019m working a job\/Black mask shawty robbin\u2019 people in Cobb,\u201d he raps, skillfully balancing a set of what seem like contradictions on \u201cGlory.\u201d \u201cPlayin Crime Mob, he a child of the corn\/Take him into court and on the Bible he sworn\/Take him into church, you know yo mama and \u2018nem goin,\u201d he adds. The production warps choirs and tambourines into his own sort of gospel. JID also compellingly muddies capitalistic success and real transcendence throughout the album, pointing to money as a false god. \u201cEven seen the preacher on the TV tell me \u2018Send us 19.99\u2019\/And he can save our souls,\u201d he notes on the striking \u201cOf Blue,\u201d peppered with graceful beat switches. As a personal testament to how easy and tempting it is to follow the fake idolatry of cash, he also often juxtaposes how well he lives now through rap with some of the harder times he\u2019s been through, noting people have had to turn to more nefarious means to change their own fate: \u201cFar cry from bugs and cereal boxes on the shelves\/Now I order escargot on a plate, it\u2019s a fuckin snail,\u201d he says on \u201cYouUgly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

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\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tThe album\u2019s title is JID reconciling that all this \u201cugly\u201d \u2013 desperation, poverty, pain \u2013 happens under God\u2019s watch. On a pamphlet<\/a> announcing that he would be playing shows for just $1 in anticipation of the project, he wrote, \u201cGod loves you right where you are. Broken or whole. God does like ugly.\u201d It\u2019s a sentiment he repeats on the intro, lamenting his brother\u2019s constant incarceration. In the face of this, JID relays that, \u201cYou can only control what you can control,\u201d as he wrote<\/a> about his inspiration for the single \u201cWRK,\u201d but also fiercely acknowledges that the options presented are pretty grim and often predestined. \u201cCommunity,\u201d featuring Clipse, is one of the best portraits of this, as JID joins Pusha T and Malice as seamlessly as a third brother to color in shrewd vignettes of run down apartments full of people who have had their families and agency taken from them, caught up in a justice system from crimes of survival. \u201cMy mama said we gotta get away from them apartments\/It\u2019s graves in them apartments\/And it aint gotta end this way, \u2018cause we ain\u2019t start shit,\u201d says a pitched-down voice in the opener.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite its meticulous narrative cohesion, God Does Like Ugly<\/em> is by no means an easy listen, lacking the smoother and more unified sound of The Forever Story<\/em>, his discography\u2019s most impressive entry. (As he ushered in this new era, JID revealed<\/a> that he spiraled after Forever <\/em>went underappreciated \u2014 then joked that the hurt feelings only lasted, \u201cFor maybe 20 minutes, \u2018cause I ain\u2019t no bitch.\u2019\u201d) GDLU<\/em> can feel disjointed in a way that works well if you liken it to a movie score, but is less endearing as an album experience. Take the homage to Atlanta roller rink culture \u201cSk8,\u201d featuring Ciara (who has become a go-to for such things, also appearing on Latto\u2019s \u201cGood 2 You\u201d). With its upbeat, retro bounce, it\u2019s sonically jarring in the context of the album, but also introduces ideas of romance and friendship that are interesting pockets of levity in the otherwise brooding soundscape. This is similar to \u201cWhat We On,\u201d which spends its first minute and 45 seconds being a boring Don Toliver song before JID breaks through. His verses there and on \u201cWRK\u201d go on to commit a common offense for JID: as an incredibly dexterous and athletic rapper, he can be wordy for wordiness\u2019s sake, a tendency that has also fatigued fans of one of the legends<\/a> he\u2019s looked up to, Eminem. This is all to say, the album itself is often kind of ugly \u2013 which actually, might be part of the point.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.rollingstone.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At 34 years old and with 12 years in the rap industry, JID finds himself matriculating from a student of the game to a leader. As he does so, the title of his fourth album God Does Like Ugly suggests he\u2019s looking to the ultimate one. Despite the enormous successes of a four-times platinum appearance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1949792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[317429,340916],"class_list":["post-1949791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-j-cole","tag-jid"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/JID-Is-a-New-Father-and-Uneasy-Messiah.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1949791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1949792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1949791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1949791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1949791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}