June is Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month. No person is worthless, no situation is hopeless. Please consult our Direct Help Resources page if you are someone you know is in distress. Help is out there.
Continuing what we started in May for Mental Health Awareness Month, S.L.A.M. is marking Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month with articles about emotionally powerful songs. Not necessarily the earworms, the chart-toppers, the wedding dance songs, the sappy romances, etc., but the ones that give you all the feelings. No emotion is off-limits.
Trigger warnings: suicide, depression, drug use.
Why me?
Naughty By Nature burst onto the scene with the playful, feel-good Summer hit of 1991. For about a year, EVERYONE was down with O.P.P. Easy as ABC, they spun a Jackson 5 sample into an infectious loop, then piled on Treach’s world-class lyricism and verbal dexterity, a catchy call-and-response chorus, and a risque, t-shirt-ready catchphrase. There was no denying this song, especially when it played every 10 minutes on pay-per-view music video channel, The Box. O.P.P. was a global smash, and was possibly even bigger in Naughty’s home state of NJ – – my home state too. I drove past the no-tell motel from the video on Route 1 a thousand times.
Treach, Vin Rock, and DJ Kay Gee grew up in East Orange, aka Illtown, around the corner from West Hell, two blocks from South Shit, and once in a jail cell. The follow-up single from their self-titled album was Ghetto Bastard, known in polite circles as Everything’s Gonna Be Alright. It took a tonal 360 shift from the fun of O.P.P, delivering 3 minutes, 16 seconds of unfiltered despair in song form. My Jersey hometown had rough places, but it was nothing like the unnamed hell of the Ghetto Bastard narrator. I can’t claim to feel the generational, cultural angst of the oppressed, poverty-bound Black American, but I know depression, pain, and defeat. They resonate powerfully in this song.
Many so-called “Reality Rap” songs of the 80s and 90s described the horrors of ghetto life with bravado, swagger, and Scarface-style fantasies or semi-autobiographical accounts. Gun clapping, violence, sexual conquests, getting high, illicit money, and lawless empires were often romanticized. See Cypress Hill, Ice-T, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Notorious B.I.G., and N.W.A. for a primer in tough-talking, hardass, in-your-face, defiant street-level rawness, wrapped up in some of the greatest beats and rhymes ever laid down.
In Ghetto Bastard, Treach’s lyrics take a different approach to the same subject. There’s no glamour, no wink, no defiant pride, no romanticized gangster tales; it’s just a blunt portrayal of a depressed African-American kid born next to the projects, stuck in a situation with absolutely no hope of escape, no chance for happiness. “If not for Hell I would have ended things awhile ago.”
The song bombards you with the bleakest, most downtrodden, fatalistic outlook possible, and worst of all, leaves no room for rebuttal. “All that man-to-man talk can walk, damn.” His mama says he’s priceless, so he twists that to mean he’s worthless in a classic negativity spiral. But then, while you’re lying in defeat on the curb, the chorus switches into a looped sample of the sweet “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright” vocal from Bob Marley’s classic, No Woman, No Cry. There’s just enough melancholy there to keep the change from being too jarring, but it’s still a brilliant juxtaposition of light and dark, like a guttering streetlight.
The lyric that has resonated most with me is:
“How will I do it? How will I make it? I won’t, that’s how.”
This phrase often rises in my mind during my own darkest moments. Across all of Doom Metal, Goth, Punk, Alternative, Blues, and Emo, there’s never been a more effective, more succinct lyrical depiction of despair and depression. The line concludes the second verse, leaving you stunned in its matter-of-fact certainty before te rapturous chorus returns, patting you on the shoulder, telling you “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.”
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The song was a decent Billboard hit for Naughty By Nature, but nothing close to the juggernaut of O.P.P. Their next major smash was a return to MTV-ready fun in the celebratory Hip Hop Hooray. “Hoooo, Heyyyyy, Hooo.” (Come on, you were thinking it.) It’s a pretty great song. . . serious, but not grim like Ghetto Bastard, flirtatious but not naughty like O.P.P..
Ghetto Bastard. . . pardon me. . . Everything’s Gonna Be Alright, spoke directly about the perpetual cultural crisis for inner city poor, but it also struck deeply with a personal statement about depression amid struggle. This isn’t the only song of its kind; C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me) from Wu-Tang Clan does a similarly great job of portraying the harsh reality of street life.
Though I don’t know why I chose to smoke sess
I guess that’s the time when I’m not depressed
But I’m still depressed, and I ask, ‘What’s it worth?’
See also KRS-One, Tupac, Too Short, Ice-T, N.W.A., Grandmaster Flash, Queen Latifah, Kool G Rap, Cypress Hill, Notorious B.I.G., MC Lyte, Jeru the Damaja, Nas, Public Enemy, and numerous others for unflinching Rap depictions of harsh ghetto realities. We recognize Ghetto Bastard here for its powerful mental health aspect.
It’s worth noting that the members of Naughty By Nature have reported afflictions by the familiar negative trappings of musical fame and success. Vin Rock has spoken in interviews of serious inter-band altercations, including an argument where a knife was pulled.
Life is hard for just about everyone, even if you’ve been an artist with major hits, popularity, income, and fame. Too often, the mental health sufferings of successful musicians are dismissed as less than the troubles of the rest of us, or not valid at all.
Not a shame, a problem.
Support Life And Music is working to improve conditions and social norms to make the music career safer, more supportive, and more sustainable. By shining a light on the bleak as well as the bright, the ones who “never planned on having, so didn’t” can find hope and a path to fulfillment, happiness, and satisfaction in life.
Someday.
Everything’s gonna be alright.
~
Jack Mangan is the founder and Executive Director of Support Life And Music (S.L.A.M.). His journalism and essays have also appeared at the Metal Hall of Fame, MetalAsylum.net, and The Metal Voice. His novel, “Dread Spherical,” released in March 2026.
All essays from Support Life And Music staff are intended as commentary and inspiration for mental health betterment. Nothing here is intended to replace appropriate treatment from properly-trained professionals. Please seek help if you feel that you’re in a hopeless or dangerous situation, whether the danger is to yourself or others.