At this point, the word “fine” can be shorthand for an earnest self-help maxim, a sarcastic weapon wielded to reflect the batshit nature of our current political discourse, and a defense mechanism used to shield against acknowledging tensions that lie just beneath the surface. We will usually claim to be fine when we’re not. Rappers Jean Grae and Quelle Chris are fascinated with the mechanics of actually being fine. Part biting satire, part cognitive behavioral therapy, their new collaborative album, Everything’s Fine, is a gorgeous consideration of how simply existing can beat the “fine” out of us.
Jean Grae and Quelle Chris have a considerable pedigree as soloists and collaborators. Since the early aughts, Grae has been a force on the indie rap circuit, building a sizable rap archive highlighted by her oft-leaked, constantly changing opus Jeanius with 9th Wonder. Chris first broke out with the 2013 mixtape Niggas is Men, and has since carved out space as a rapper and beatmaker on Mello Music Group. But Everything’s Fine is a great entry point to both their catalogs, an album that brings the best out of both MCs, as performers and producers. Over distorted soul and oddball funk beats, Grae and Chris create a mood that strikes a balance between their poles: Grae is technically precise, almost methodical, drilling through the skull with lacerating wordplay; Chris is looser, unbound, sometimes improvisational, pleasantly deadpan and wonky. Where Grae is layered, coiling in and out of complex schemes, Chris is blunt and almost brusque in presentation.
They use these extremes to map out the main question of why we’re so ineffectual these days—why everything’s just, you know, fine. Maybe it’s routine complacency, outright denial, or the unwillingness to unpack the everyday terrors of the world in our small talk. (When there’s a new reason to be angry pushed directly to your phone every few hours, it can be tough to come up with the bandwidth to process it all.) Grae and Chris never fault anyone for being tired, but they warn against the consequences of inaction. The album leans into the inherent ridiculousness of having to be OK amid our nation’s political farce, using skits, spoofs, and impressions to explore the balancing act of being mad online and all right IRL.
Tonally, Everything’s Fine follows a design that was first established by the duo’s pleasantly snarky That’s Not How You Do That trilogy from a few years ago, projects that were each tagged as “instructional albums for adults.” But Everything’s Fine is warmer and more sincere. Some songs feel like inside jokes traded among like-minded misanthropes as if you’re picking up in the middle of a private conversation. It’s just that Grae and Chris exposing their anxieties in the open, one quip at a time. The charms of this record involve the ways it navigates traumas with caustic humor, grace, and levity, without losing any of the gravitas. Somehow, optimism still sneaks through.
Adding to the many dynamics at play, several moments are like a surrealist musical written by comedian Hannibal Buress (who fittingly appears on the album as a rapper). There’s the eviscerating “My Contributions to This Scam,” which parodies everyone from fake-woke allies to Insta models-turned-rappers to white fans who listen to rap ironically or use it as a guise to say the N-word. After an opening from Grae and Chris, where a game-show intro becomes a stage for an existential crisis, the album pivots on interludes from comedians Nick Offerman, John Hodgman, and Michael Che, who offer that things are “fine,” with varying degrees of certainty.
One of the most thoughtful songs is a collage of spoken word digressions from former Das Racist hype man Ashok “Dap” Kondabolu. “It feels like it’s the worst time ever to be alive, ’cause the world is so fucked up, but it’s probably the best time ever to be alive for the most people on earth,” he says, calmly. Conflicting ideas get presented at the same time, each granted equal weight. These comics add color, and Chris and Grae’s sense of comedic timing is just as impeccable.
But the album is truly moving when it embraces urgency. The heartbreaking “Breakfast of Champions” is a dispatch on police killings. In their own ways, both Grae and Chris wrestle with the recurring misery of constantly seeing unarmed black people murdered in state-sanctioned violence and then watching the officers involved go free. “Saw somebody else got shot up, this time by some cops in Texas, or Virginia, can’t remember,” Chris intones; “Children called they mamas while they stared at they daddy’s entrails/C’mon, how much more evidence you want?” Grae pleads. But whenever things start to get too real, they crack another joke.
That’s the dizzying tone of Everything’s Fine, pulling and pushing you to the edge, constantly questioning the state of your emotions. On the chugging “Gold Purple Orange,” Chris punctures preconceived notions about everything from the alt-right to capitalism, his deflating, sarcastic delivery punching up each idea. “The Smoking Man” with Denmark Vessey takes on the faceless, all-powerful “They” (who “stopped Cosby from coppin’ these chicks” and killed your favorite MC), considering power and its corrupting influence, before summing up the entire record in a one-liner: “LOLs for the ELE” (that’s “extinction level event”).
There are ways to hear this album as both damning or redemptive, depending on the perspective. But it is never sanctimonious, and it is constantly breathtaking. Grae and Chris aren’t encouraged by the fire raging around them, but they soldier on, as we all must, finding a sort of black humor in the idiocy, the chaos, and the sheer absurdity of it all. Sometimes the only way to survive is to be “fine.” Sometimes all you can do to be fine is laugh.
