The Tallahassee-raised, Nashville-based artist known as kidDEAD has been making music for over a decade now. His last effort, Cut the Kite String, came out in spring of 2017, and marked his strongest effort to date. Earlier this year, he lost a bunch of music from his computer that he had worked on over the last eight years, so he felt compelled to release everything else he had, since it was music that meant a lot to him. The result is a collection called Optimistic Nihilism.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this collection is that for being essential a compilation of random songs that kidDEAD recorded over the years, Optimistic Nihilism plays like a proper album. Some of it is self-produced, but we also get beats from Deltarok, toofoursven, Phantom Farmer, and Felonious Drunk. You get everything from some Charles Bradley and Cocorosie samples, to tender songs with gentle guitar or piano, to more punk driven tracks, to some straight up backpack rap. The connecting line through all of this is kidDEAD himself, and how honest of an emcee he is throughout. He’s very open about his struggles to make as a musician, but also just making it through life – dealing with issues like poverty and addiction at younger ages and finding his way through punk and hip hop. He’s got a self-deprecating sense of humor, but he’s also not afraid to use sarcasm as a weapon and call people out on their shit, which he does on a song like “Hippies and Hipsters,” pointing out the ways in which the left can be guilty of intolerance. My personal favorite on the collection is “I Wish All My Friends Would Never Die,” which features what might be my favorite kidDEAD line to date, when he declares “If there’s a God, I hope he’s unimpressed/with the wars that we wage/and the flags that we erect.”

If you already know kidDEAD, this is excellent collection of cool stuff that he’s been holding on to, and it won’t take you any convincing how good it is. If you haven’t spent the time with him before, I wouldn’t normally recommend a collection of unreleased material, but in the case of Optimistic Nihilism, I’d make that exception. Just a couple songs in, and you’ll see why he’s such a unique talent, and hopefully you’ll be inspired to work back through his catalogue from there.