“Happy” by NF, Tuesday, May 23, 2023 (Trigger Warning: Discussion of depression)

Nathan Feuerstein is one of the most successful Christian hip-hop artists today. Born and raised in a tiny town in central Michigan, Nate, better known by his moniker, NF, had a hard home life as a child. After his parents divorced, he was raised by his mother until he and one of his sisters were abused by his mother's boyfriend. After that, he returned to live with his father. NF channeled his struggles with anxiety and mental health in his music.

DEAR GOD, PLEASE HEAR ME OUT. Last month, NF released his fifth studio album, Hope, and the single "Happy" is still making waves on Spotify playlists. While NF does not claim to be a Christian Rapper but rather a hip-hop artist who happens to be a Christian, his music is played on both secular and Christian radio, especially due to his clean (though often brutally honest) lyrics. Currently, NF has amassed over 18 million monthly streams on Spotify, making him a highly successful artist, especially for a Christian artist. And while NF's career may have started out signed to a Christian label, slowly but surely, the rapper started branching into secular hip hop early in his career. His music became so popular that in 2018, Eminem even squeezed NF's name into the song "The Ringer," a dis-track about other rappers whom Eminem perceived to be imitating "The Real Slim Shady." Of course, NF had always listed Eminem as one of his biggest influences, but the fact that a clean Christian rapper was even on Eminem's radar is a testament to how popular he had become in the late '10s. That's more than KJ-52 ever got with his attempts to get Shady's attention in "Dear Slim" and "Dear Slim, Pt. II," unless you really read into Eminem's lyrics. 

I CAN'T IMAGINE WHO I'D BE IF I WAS HAPPY. "Happy," though, isn't a rap track in the traditional sense of hip-hop. It's rhythmic but sung in a way that much '10s and '20s hip-hop has become less distinguishable as rap. The song deals with NF's OCD, which he was diagnosed with in 2018, and his other mental health struggles. The song is a prayer to God, and the chorus asks the question about what happiness would look like for the speaker. No matter how much money and fame the speaker receives, he will always self-sabotage his happiness. And this is what keeps NF relevant to both Christian and non-Christian audiences. Typical Christian music fixes everything. The problems are all past tense and glory hallelujah I can keep talking about that one time I was delivered from depression. But you don't have to be a medical professional to realize that struggles are often ongoing. We all have crappy days that can turn into crappy years. Some have had traumatic experiences like when NF witnessed his mother getting addicted to opioids and overdosing in 2009. It's about messed up home lives that cause issues later in life prayer is not enough to set the mind at ease. After all, no person would get into a car accident and refuse medical help but rather go directly to church to pray away the injuries! Sometimes it takes years of therapy and that only reduces the pain. There's no happy solution, but listeners can find solace. We can know that we're not that abnormal. And that's the hope.

 

Read “HAPPY” by NF on Genius.