The Chorus Effect: Part 2 — Mental Health Mic Check

In a nod to International Youth Day, a look back at how two popular rappers helped turn mental health into a matter of public engagement.

Prologue

In a landscape of media moments where popular music artists routinely speak out about mental health, few transcend awareness to tangibly shift public behavior. In October 2016, rapper Kid Cudi posted a raw confession on Facebook: he was checking into rehab to confront years of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. The post went viral, catalyzing the hashtag #YouGoodMan, and igniting a wave of testimony — particularly among young Black men — that would later be studied for its measurable impact on mental health discourse. Six months later, in April 2017, rapper Logic released 1-800-273-8255, a song named after the phone number for the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. It dramatized a moment of crisis and was released alongside a high-impact music video and a series of major televised performances — including the Grammys — reaching millions, going platinum multiple times, and ultimately being linked to measurable spikes in help-seeking behavior and a temporary decline in suicide deaths. Together, these two moments didn’t just resonate — they created two distinct models of musician-led mental health communication: one grounded in vulnerable self-disclosure that rippled outward, the other in narrative craft, media strategy, and purpose-built intervention in song form.

In this second installment of The Chorus Effect — a six-part series — Sound Alive examines what happens when hip-hop culture becomes a site for mental health intervention. The piece unpacks how hip-hop can operate as a platform for public health messaging, where the language of care circulates not through institutions, but through the emotional architecture of a genre. Crucially, we also consider the lives of the two artists who birthed these interventions — and what their trajectories reveal about stigma, narrative authority, and the weight of becoming a conduit for collective healing.

Mental Health Disorders

In December 2021, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an alarming public health advisory: American youth were facing a mounting mental health crisis [1]. This crisis, while accelerated by COVID-19, had deep roots — depression rates among adolescents and young adults had been rising steadily from 2005 to 2018 [2, 3]. By that point, major depressive disorder (MDD) had become the most prevalent lifetime diagnosis among youth who had attempted suicide [4]. In this age group, depression was not only widespread — it was functionally disabling. According to Mental Health America’s 2021 report, the severe major depression being experienced was characterized by the “maximum level of interference over four role domains including chores at home, school or work, family relationships, and social life” [5].

The pattern was by no means confined to the United States. Recent estimates suggest that nearly one billion people globally now live with a mental health disorder, with depression and anxiety accounting for the majority of cases [6], and with the COVID-19 pandemic having triggered a sharp 25% global increase in both conditions during its first year [6]. Depression has since become the leading cause of disability worldwide, followed closely by anxiety disorders [7]. Suicide is now the third leading cause of death among individuals aged 15 to 29 globally — and for every person who dies by suicide, many more either attempt it or contemplate it silently [8].

The financial implications are staggering: according to research, the total economic productivity drop associated with mental illnesses between 2011 and 2030 is estimated to be US$16.3 trillion globally — more than cancer, diabetes, and respiratory illnesses combined [9]. Yet mental health remains severely underfunded. Most countries allocate less than 2% of national health budgets to mental health services [10], and mental and neurological conditions, which account for 10% of the global disease burden [11], receive just 1% of the global health workforce — a structural shortfall that all but guarantees ongoing suffering [12].

These are not isolated conditions. Depression, anxiety, and related mood disorders often overlap with trauma, substance use, and attention-related disorders [13], creating complex comorbidity profiles that are hard to detect and even harder to treat. The symptom profile of depression in youth — withdrawal, irritability, hopelessness, anhedonia — is often misread as laziness, rebellion, or character flaws [14], delaying early intervention.

Unlike many chronic diseases, mental health conditions often begin early. Half of all mental illnesses emerge before the age of 14; three-quarters before the age of 24 [15]. What emerges, then, is not simply a crisis but an architecture. Depression, anxiety, and related disorders are embedded in institutional neglect, inadequate funding, diagnostic blind spots, and structural stigma. The result is a silent epidemic — one that reshapes not only individual lives but the fabric of entire populations.

Celebrity Pop Star Disclosures

While professional help is the recommended course of action, it’s not where most youth begin. Most turn first to a friend [16]. Friends become the frontline — gatekeepers who can either open the door to healing or leave it firmly shut. Increasing the likelihood of that first disclosure, that first “Hey, I’m not okay,” has become a core challenge in public mental health strategy. Yet the factors standing in the way are entrenched: limited mental health literacy [17], stigma [18], maladaptive self-reliance [19], and low perceived support from peers [20].

Enter the celebrity pop music artist.

Pop music is a social scaffolding for adolescents and young adults — central to their emotional regulation, identity formation, and peer connection [21]. It carries authority. And when artists disclose their own struggles with depression in song, they don’t just tell a story — they model vulnerability. This is especially evident in rap music, where references to mental health rose significantly between 1998 and 2018 [15].

Health communication research has long acknowledged that celebrity disclosures have consequences. They can boost risk awareness [22], trigger information-seeking [23], and even embolden audiences to speak up [24]. Within the framework of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), celebrity artists become more than entertainers — they become role models. They normalize language around depression, “sanitize” the label, and “sanction” the act of disclosure [25].

But do they actually work as messengers? This was the question driving Alex Kresovich’s 2022 dissertation: can celebrity pop music artists who’ve disclosed depression in their music help change attitudes and behaviors around support-seeking among U.S. youth aged 16–24? [15]. The answer wasn’t simple.

In an initial survey of 417 youth, self-efficacy emerged as the strongest predictor of intentions to seek support from a close friend, while outcome expectations — beliefs about what happens when one does seek help — proved malleable and promising, even among those with elevated depressive symptoms [15]. Identification with a celebrity — what SCT refers to as “wishful identification” — was a double-edged sword. It correlated with higher support-seeking intentions, but also with increased public stigma [15].

A second study, involving 752 youth with depressive symptoms who had never been diagnosed or treated, explored whether messages delivered by celebrity pop artists were more effective than those from non-celebrities. The answer? Not always. In some cases, celebrity-led messages produced a boomerang effect — backfiring by increasing stigma instead of reducing it [15].

The experiment also tested direct language (“Are you depressed?”) versus mistargeted referent language (“Do you know someone who is depressed?”). While mistargeting was initially theorized as protective — based on research that non-targeted audiences counterargue less [26, 27] — the results were uneven. Mistargeted messaging was not a catch-all strategy. In fact, among male participants, direct language increased outcome expectations and self-efficacy — but also intensified self-stigmatizing beliefs [15].

So who, among the pantheon of pop stars, carried the most influence? From a pool of 23 artists — all known for either publicly disclosing depressive experiences or featuring depressive themes in their music — participants were asked to choose who they turned to when feeling low, and who they most associated with depression. The top-scoring artists across appeal, credibility, and demographic familiarity were Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Post Malone, and Lil’ Uzi Vert [15]. Grande and Malone were the only ones with broad appeal across both gender and racial lines. Lil’ Uzi Vert emerged as the only non-white artist who exceeded thresholds for appeal, credibility, and identification among non-white youth [15].

But the data revealed something more complex. Youth who modeled themselves after depression-associated celebrities were more likely to romanticize depression — describing those with it as “deep,” “creative,” “fascinating” [15]. Still, this romanticization was not linked to increased stigma or self-reliance. Instead, it correlated with higher help-seeking intentions and reduced counterarguing with the message [15]. The act of romanticizing, in this context, may not be pathological — it may be symptomatic of a broader cultural acceptance of mental health struggles [28].

Audience perception, though, remains pivotal. Celebrity sincerity, perceived expertise, altruism, and congruence with the cause were key predictors of their impact [29, 30]. Artists like Drake and The Weeknd, while widely recognized, scored lower in perceived altruism — an important deficit for health messaging aimed at trust-building [15].

Crucially, Kresovich's data challenged the default assumption that celebrities are always the most effective messengers. In many cases, non-celebrity depression public service announcements — or, D-PSAs — outperformed celebrity ones among youth with more severe symptoms [15]. The allure of the star can obscure the intent of the message, or worse, shift focus to recovery as individual triumph — reinforcing competitive self-reliance over collective care [31].

And yet, in the right conditions — particularly for youth who use music for mood regulation — the celebrity voice still carried weight. Those who strongly identified with D-PSA artists reported higher support-seeking intentions, greater perceived social norms, and more optimism about outcomes [15].

The challenge, then, is not whether to use celebrities, but how. Messaging must account for intersectionality [32], must avoid boomerang effects, and must be perceived as sincere. A fictional Instagram disclosure may lack the potency of a direct message from a known artist’s account. Likewise, celebrity messages may be more effective when paired with their music — anchoring the PSA in the emotional landscape the artist already occupies for the listener [15].

Ultimately, Kresovich’s work reveals a paradox: the same celebrity who opens the door can also shape the hallway. They bring youth in — but they also set the terms. Their influence is not just about appeal, but about legitimacy, credibility, timing, tone, and delivery. The modern public health communicator must think not just like a clinician, but like a casting director: because sometimes the right message, from the right voice, at the right moment, can save a life.

Hip-Hop, Rap, and Population Health

In 2015, Spotify analyzed more than 20 billion songs and delivered a clear verdict: hip-hop was the world’s most popular genre [33]. What began in the Bronx in the early 1970s as the voice of Black and Puerto Rican youth had grown into a global cultural engine built on the four pillars of rapping, DJing, graffiti, and breakdancing [34, 35]. But beneath the beats and bravado, researchers were asking a quieter question: what if this culture could heal?

That question framed a 2018 systematic review led by Robinson, Seaman, Montgomery, and Winfrey. They searched for studies that didn’t just cite hip-hop, but embedded it directly into health interventions. To qualify, each study needed to measure a psychosocial or physical health outcome and use hip-hop as a core component [36].

The need for such culturally grounded approaches was urgent. African Americans represent just 13% of the U.S. population, but suffer disproportionately from chronic disease and mental health problems [37, 38, 39, 40]. Among African American youth, rates of alcohol consumption are lower than among white youth, but alcohol-related harms are higher [41, 42, 43]. Between 1993 and 2012, suicide rates for Black youth doubled, even as they declined for their white peers [44]. Critically, access to care remains unequal. African American adolescents are less likely to receive services for substance use and comorbid mental health conditions [45]. In this landscape, interventions that reflect cultural identity are not a luxury — they are a necessity. Programs that speak the language of their audience often perform better than standardized, one-size-fits-all approaches [46, 47].

The review identified a growing body of work using hip-hop as a vehicle for health behavior change. Some drew on the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), which holds that behavior stems from intention — shaped by beliefs and social norms [48]. Others used Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), with its emphasis on self-efficacy and the dynamic interaction of personal and environmental factors [49].

In both cases, hip-hop served as a delivery system for persuasion. It was engaging, repeatable, and participatory [50]. But more than that, it was a structure of meaning — a tool for shaping social norms, building influence, and communicating values [50].

For nearly two decades, social scientists have explored this potential. Hip-hop has been used in classrooms, after-school programs, and therapy rooms to reach adolescents — especially ethnic minorities — who might otherwise remain unreachable [51, 52]. The interventions spanned three main categories: health literacy, health behavior, and mental health [36]. One study used curated hip-hop tracks to prompt self-disclosure, allowing participants to share difficult emotions and experiences through the buffer of music [53]. Another study reported a statistically significant improvement in peer relations among youth in a hip-hop therapy group compared to a standard group [54].

The methodology was careful. Each study was coded by two authors — one as primary, the other as reviewer. The codebook covered intervention targets, sample details, research design, intervention conditions, and results [36]. What emerged from this review was not a single program, but a field in formation — one that recognizes that culture isn’t ornamental. It’s infrastructural. Hip-hop isn’t just what young people listen to. It’s how they make sense of the world. And when health interventions are delivered in that idiom, they don’t just inform — they resonate.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration took note. Its “Fresh Empire” campaign employed hip hop artists and cultural references to deliver anti-tobacco messaging specifically targeted at multicultural youth populations [55]. The campaign was not merely stylistic — it represented a strategic alignment of public health messaging with the cultural frameworks familiar to its intended audience. This is because when culture is the conduit, health communication moves from abstract information to embedded meaning — contextualized, resonant, and more likely to be acted upon.

Kid Cudi’s Facebook Post

On October 4, 2016, Scott Mescudi — better known as the rapper Kid Cudi — published a Facebook post. It wasn’t tied to an album rollout or a tour announcement, but instead revealed something deeply personal: Mescudi explained that he was checking himself into rehab to begin confronting the anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation that had long governed his life in silence. For fans, it wasn’t the first time Mescudi had addressed his mental health, but the directness of this post — raw, immediate, and public — marked a rupture. It was not just a confession. It was an alarm. In its entirety, and as written:

“Its been difficult for me to find the words to what Im about to share with you because I feel ashamed. Ashamed to be a leader and hero to so many while admitting I've been living a lie. It took me a while to get to this place of commitment, but it is something I have to do for myself, my family, my best friend/daughter and all of you, my fans. Yesterday I checked myself into rehab for depression and suicidal urges. I am not at peace. I haven't been since you've known me. If I didn't come here, I wouldve done something to myself. I simply am a damaged human swimming in a pool of emotions everyday of my life. Theres a ragin violent storm inside of my heart at all times. Idk what peace feels like. Idk how to relax. My anxiety and depression have ruled my life for as long as I can remember and I never leave the house because of it. I cant make new friends because of it. I dont trust anyone because of it and Im tired of being held back in my life. I deserve to have peace. I deserve to be happy and smiling. Why not me? I guess I give so much of myself to others I forgot that I need to show myself some love too. I think I never really knew how. Im scared, im sad, I feel like I let a lot of people down and again, Im sorry. Its time I fix me. Im nervous but ima get through this. I wont be around to promote much, but the good folks at Republic and my manager Dennis will inform you about upcoming releases. The music videos, album release date etc. The album is still on the way. Promise. I wanted to square away all the business before I got here so I could focus on my recovery. If all goes well ill be out in time for Complexcon and ill be lookin forward to seeing you all there for high fives and hugs. Love and light to everyone who has love for me and I am sorry if I let anyone down. I really am sorry. Ill be back, stronger, better. Reborn. I feel like shit, I feel so ashamed. Im sorry. I love you, Scott Mescudi.” [56]

The timing of the post added weight. Depression, at the time, was already among the most prevalent global mental disorders, affecting over 300 million people worldwide [57], with nearly 16 million U.S. adults experiencing depressive symptoms each year [23]. But these numbers masked a deeper asymmetry: Black men were both more likely to experience persistent, disabling depression and far less likely to report it [58, 59, 60]. They were also the least likely demographic to access mental health care [23] [60]. Mescudi’s statement, in that context, was not just a personal disclosure: it was a public health signal flare.

Cudi’s Early Life and Influences

Born in 1984 in Cleveland, Ohio, to a mother of African-American descent and a father of African-American and Mexican heritage, Mescudi grew up in the suburban neighborhoods of Shaker Heights and Solon — the former, a progressive, upper-middle-class enclave; the latter, more affluent and traditionally conservative. His father, a World War II Air Force veteran, died of cancer when Mescudi was just 11 years old [61]. That loss marked what he would later describe as a defining rupture. The absence shaped his emotional development and left behind a weight that would recur across his music.

Addiction ran in the family, with Mescudi speaking publicly about his uncles struggling with crack cocaine, and later, about his own reliance on substances as a way to manage emotional distress [61]. He was expelled from Solon High School for threatening to assault the principal, though ultimately earned his GED. He had planned to enlist in the Navy — a bid to follow in his father’s path of military service — but his juvenile record barred that route.

As a teenager, his musical tastes were broad. In interviews, he listed listening to Coldplay, John Mayer, Electric Light Orchestra, Queen, and the Crash Test Dummies [61] — alongside hip-hop acts like The Pharcyde and A Tribe Called Quest. The emotional tones of alternative rock, blended with the lyricism of 1990s hip-hop, helped shape his sound. Mescudi’s music would later be praised not just for its genre-crossing experimentation, but for the vulnerability and pain it allowed in.

From MySpace to Man on the Moon

Mescudi’s rise to prominence was unconventional, especially for the time. He uploaded his breakout single — Day ’N’ Nite — to MySpace in 2007 using a borrowed computer. The song remained online in obscurity for nearly two years, moving slowly across digital circles and early online listening communities. By the time it began receiving regular radio play in 2009, Cudi had only just signed his first record deal two months earlier. Day ’N’ Nite would eventually break onto the Billboard Hot 100 chart, not through label machinery but as an independent upload that carried itself by the sheer gravity of what it was: a quiet, melancholy song about isolation, restlessness, and the internal drift of the mind at night [61]. Sylvia Rhone, the President of Universal Motown who stayed up for several nights during a fierce bidding war to sign him, recognized — as did her competitors — the paradigm shift. Mescudi wasn’t just a new sound; he was a new emotional register [61].

His 2009 debut, Man on the Moon: The End of Day, extended that register into a full narrative arc. Guided by narration from rapper Common, the album laid bare a fractured psyche. Tracks like Soundtrack 2 My Life, Solo Dolo, and Pursuit of Happiness did not present mental health as metaphor — they mapped it directly. “My music is really therapeutic for me,” Mescudi explained. “Hopefully it’ll help everybody else” [62].

Long before his 2016 post, Mescudi had been building a canon of introspection. His music repeatedly addressed loss, substance use, and emotional fragmentation. However, his transparency in music would later become a liability. As fame mounted, the openness he had once embraced became unsustainable. He described fame as isolating, saying he “stayed to himself a lot” [61]. The very fans who credited him with saving their lives became a source of emotional pressure. “People look up to me,” he said, “but I’m not a happy person... so a lot of the times, I felt like a fraud, and that’s what drove me to the dark side” [61].

Motivation for the Post

In June 2010, Mescudi was arrested in New York. Police found cocaine in his pocket, and charged him with felony criminal mischief and drug possession. He described the arrest later with quiet devastation. While he saw the arrest as a betrayal — “I felt like I was letting my mom down” — he also saw it as a rupture. If it hadn’t happened publicly, he said, he might’ve kept going. The arrest forced a stop. “If people didn’t find out about it, I would’ve kept doing it” [61].

After the release of Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager in November 2010, Mescudi changed labels — a moment he later identified as the beginning of a professional and emotional downturn. “I lost Sylvia Rhone,” he recalled. “And that was a big deal for me” [61]. Mescudi felt that his career would have taken a different trajectory if Rhone had remained in his corner. “Sylvia believed in me like nobody else in the industry,” he said. “No matter how weird or how strange the music would be, she would be totally all in with what I wanted to do” [61]. But at the new label, Republic Records, the creative atmosphere felt different — more transactional, more conditional. “It’s tough ’cause these labels are cutthroat,” Mescudi admitted. “I know they support me, but it’s still like, ‘Where’s the radio single?’” [61].

By 2016, the emotional conditions described on The End of Day had crystallized into reality. The rehab admission wasn't surprising — it was, in many ways, already foretold. By his own account, Mescudi reached a breaking point in that year. Despite professional success, he felt internally hollow. “I’m successful,” he told himself, “but I’m not happy” [61]. The fame that others admired became a kind of psychological exile. He described running — literally sprinting — away from nightclubs in the middle of the night, away from bodyguards [61], and ultimately away from himself.

In this unfolding context, his Facebook post was not a brand decision. It was a survival instinct. He had begun using again and was contemplating suicide. “I was trying to plan it,” he later admitted. “And I knew that if I didn’t go get help, that something would’ve happened” [61]. He didn’t want to die. He just wanted the noise to stop.

Dissecting the Disclosure

From a health communication standpoint, Mescudi’s Facebook post achieved a rare convergence of vulnerability, narrative coherence, and cultural resonance. Its impact cannot be separated from its structure: a raw, first-person narrative that disrupts celebrity distancing and collapses the space between artist and audience. The post is filled with affective disclosures — “I am not at peace,” “I feel ashamed,” “There’s a raging violent storm inside my heart” — that activate the emotional mechanisms known to increase message salience and empathetic engagement [63].

The post’s language models a full arc of emotional naming: shame, fear, sadness, anger, regret, guilt, love. These are not abstract declarations; they are granular, embodied experiences — “I never leave the house,” “I can’t make new friends,” “I feel like I let a lot of people down” — that resonate deeply, particularly among audiences conditioned to suppress emotional vocabulary. In doing so, the post functions as what health communication scholars call a narrative disruption — a message that reorders the social script by introducing a counter-narrative to dominant norms of masculinity and control [23].

Mescudi does not just confess illness; he narrates its consequences in daily life — social isolation, distrust, emotional exhaustion — and thereby renders visible the invisible architecture of depression, particularly as it manifests in Black men. Phrases like “I feel ashamed to be a leader and hero… while admitting I’ve been living a lie” directly challenge the stigma surrounding vulnerability in male celebrity culture. The admission “I don’t know what peace feels like” functions as both symptom report and existential reflection.

From a messaging perspective, what makes this post uniquely potent is its coded intimacy: a post addressed to the masses that reads like a private letter. It collapses the perceived distance between “Kid Cudi” and “Scott Mescudi.” This authenticity likely catalyzed identification among readers — especially Black men — who saw in his language a mirror of their own unspoken interiority. That empathy–identification link has been shown to influence health-related decision-making and information-seeking [23].

Most crucially, the post offers a clear rhetorical opening: it does not simply declare, it invites. By ending on phrases like “I’m scared,” “I’m nervous,” “I love you,” and “I’ll be back, reborn,” it balances fragility with forward motion. The line “Why not me?” does not ask for sympathy — it asks a collective question, one that invites cultural reflection.

Importantly, Mescudi’s post did not prescribe action: it performed it. It modeled what disclosure could look like — not abstractly, but line by line, emotion by emotion. That modeling, according to narrative persuasion theory, is more effective than directive health messages because it lowers resistance and promotes behavioral mimicry [23]. In short: people talk about what they’ve seen someone else survive.

#YouGoodMan: A Digital Ripple Effect

Within 24 hours of Mescudi’s Facebook post, Twitter erupted — not with critique, but with care. The hashtag #YouGoodMan began trending, initiated by a Black woman as an open prompt: an invitation for Black men to speak [64]. The hashtag generated over 20,000 tweets in a week, far eclipsing mental health campaigns like #WhyWeTweetMH, which had 132 tweets in a full month [65]. These weren’t casual posts. They were intimate, and often heavy. Black men disclosed diagnoses, described symptoms, offered support, and named the cultural forces that kept them silent — religion, family, and normative masculinity [64]. Tweets referenced suicidal ideation, shared resources, and credited hip-hop lyrics with giving language to depression. Black women were present throughout — affirming, supporting, and amplifying the conversation [64].

Empirical Findings on the Post’s Effect

In the years following Mescudi’s public revelation of his mental health struggles in October 2016, researchers began to document not just the cultural ripple effects, but the measurable psychological and behavioral shifts it triggered — especially among Black men. Chief among those researchers was Diane Francis, who conducted two distinct studies to trace the arc of that influence: one focused on immediate responses among viewers of the Facebook post, the other on the broader, communal discourse it generated through the #YouGoodMan hashtag. Together, these studies reveal how Mescudi’s moment of self-disclosure transformed a personal admission into a participatory health communication event.

Conducted just one month after the post, Francis’s 2018 study surveyed 182 Black men between the ages of 18 and 34 who had seen Mescudi’s announcement. The data revealed a striking pattern of health-seeking behavior: half of the participants reported searching for general information about depression, while 16% looked up ways to assess their own risk [23]. For a demographic historically less likely to report symptoms or access care, these numbers were significant.

What catalyzed this shift? Emotional distress emerged as the strongest predictor of engagement. Participants who identified more strongly with Mescudi experienced heightened emotional impact — an effect that drove them to seek information. Empathy, too, played a central role. Previous research has shown that empathetic engagement with media figures can enhance behavioral intent [63], and this study reinforced that connection [23].

Francis employed a range of validated psychological measures: emotional distress was assessed using a four-item scale, empathy via six items, and identification through a seven-item measure [23]. In this context, the concept of identification — as “conforming to the perceived identity of a mediated persona” [66] — offered a theoretical bridge between personal connection and public action. Mescudi’s post, then, was not merely expressive — it was efficacious. It prompted users not only to feel but to act, turning emotional resonance into real-time public health engagement.

Three years later, Francis followed up with a qualitative study analyzing 1,482 tweets from the #YouGoodMan thread. Using thematic analysis [67], she uncovered three dominant themes: advocacy for open disclosure, peer support networks, and the cultural framing of mental health within Black masculinity [64].

These conversations were more than isolated affirmations. They functioned, Francis argued, as acts of social representation — a process through which media events, interpersonal discussion, and cognitive processing interact to shape shared meaning [68]. Mescudi’s post served as the public spark that set this representational chain in motion.

Importantly, the study placed hip-hop’s evolving mental health discourse in historical context. Artists like Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, and Lil Wayne had begun to chip away at the genre’s stoic façade [69, 70, 71], but Mescudi’s vulnerability — raw, unfiltered, and situated within a body of deeply personal music — served as a watershed. His lyrics didn’t just reflect emotion; they activated it.

In that sense, Francis’s findings built on early models of “rap therapy” proposed by Elligan [51], but moved the framework outward — from the therapist’s office to the digital commons. “Everything I make has to help people in some way,” Mescudi later said. “That’s always been the goal — to inspire others so they can tell their story” [61].

Together, these two studies demonstrate that Mescudi’s 2016 post functioned not just as a personal release but as a communicative intervention. In the first wave, individuals took action — seeking information, reevaluating their symptoms, and beginning to speak. In the second, a communal vernacular took shape. Lyrics became touchstones. Tweets became testimonies. And a casual question — “You good, man?” — became something closer to a ritual: an encrypted gesture of care made possible by shared vulnerability and cultural resonance.

Cudi’s Legacy

Mescudi’s ability to connect — to voice what others couldn’t yet articulate — continues to this day. In a section of the 2021 documentary A Man Named Scott, directed by Robert Alexander, fans were asked how his music had impacted them. One said Mescudi’s songs had carried her through both sorrow and celebration — a private soundtrack for staying afloat. Another said she always felt that someone out there understood her. A third described Mescudi as a brother figure, crediting Man on the Moon with marking the beginning of his life in earnest. A fourth reflected on how Mescudi’s vulnerability helped her become more emotionally honest, not just with herself but with others. Each testimony offered something distinct, but together they built a singular truth: Mescudi didn’t just reflect pain. He rendered it visible, survivable, and, crucially, shareable.

Dr. Candice Norcott, a clinical psychologist featured in the documentary, helps name that dynamic. Healing, she explains, is often about reframing — recognizing that feeling lost is not a crisis, but a beginning. “You can feel lost with other people,” she says. Mescudi’s music made that proposition real. It didn’t promise clarity. It promised company.

Most prominently, though, Mescudi’s influence was felt within hip-hop itself. According to Noah Callahan‑Bever, former Editor‑in‑Chief and Chief Content Officer at Complex — a U.S. media platform that sits at the intersection of hip-hop, youth culture, and streetwear — Man on the Moon: The End of Day stands as one of the most influential albums of the past two decades. Its legacy, he argued, lies not only in genre-bending production or melodic experimentation, but in how it reframed the emotional bandwidth of rap music. Mescudi’s voice introduced vulnerability not as a momentary departure, but as a sustained mode — an ethos that would ripple through an entire generation of artists [61].

For artists like rapper ScHoolboy Q, the effect was immediate. Raised in environments where sadness was synonymous with weakness, he recalled being stunned by Mescudi’s Pursuit of Happiness — a song that gave language to emotional states he had never heard articulated in hip-hop. Mescudi, he said, made it acceptable to acknowledge feeling lost, carving out space in a culture that had often demanded stoicism. Rapper Travis Scott has called Mescudi a lifeline. “Kid Cudi is really one of the main dudes that I looked at and listened to all the time. He saved my life.” Rapper Lil Yachty, reflecting on his early college days marked by red hair and a polarizing persona, recalled the quiet judgment he endured — and the inspiration he drew from Mescudi. “I would never say this to his face,” Yachty admitted, “but definitely appreciate him for being him so that I could be me.” For Yachty, Mescudi’s gift wasn’t just self-expression. It was resilience — a blueprint for surviving scrutiny without surrendering identity. For rapper A$AP Rocky, the revelation was ontological: Mescudi didn’t just defy categories — he discarded them. “He mused himself,” Rocky said, referencing Mescudi’s ability to turn his own life into a creative engine, sidestepping archetypes and instead becoming a prototype. That, more than any particular sound, was what opened the floodgates for Rocky, making him realize “You can be yourself. You can be from Cleveland. You can be from wherever.” What Mescudi offered was not simply inspiration — it was permission [61].

One other rapper was watching, too. Someone Mescudi would go on to connect with — encouraging, collaborating, and sharing space. Someone who, just six months after Mescudi’s public disclosure, would make his own brave decision: to speak the unspeakable, and to do it out loud.

Logic’s 1-800-273-8255

On April 28, 2017, Bobby Hall — better known as the rapper Logic — released 1-800-273-8255, a song named after the U.S. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. At its core, the track is a dramatization of a crisis call: the first verse voices suicidal ideation, while the second introduces intervention, and the third moves toward recovery. Rather than offering abstract empathy, the song models a live emotional process — mapping a shift from hopelessness to help-seeking in real time. Mirroring this, the refrains evolve in tandem: from “I don’t wanna to be alive,” to “I want you to be alive,” to “I finally wanna to be alive.” This is not mere lyrical repetition, but deliberate emotional sequencing — a gradual reorientation from despair to connection, and ultimately, to the desire to stay.

It was a public health message embedded in song form. With guest vocals from singers Alessia Cara and Khalid, and a string arrangement conducted by Hall himself, the song avoided euphemism entirely. “You can’t sugarcoat it,” he later said, explaining the decision to center the track around the plainspoken line: “I don’t wanna to be alive” [72]. Despite initial skepticism from commercial gatekeepers, the song reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, went seven times platinum, and ultimately surpassed one billion streams [73]. More significantly, it catalyzed a significant increase in calls to the Lifeline in the days and weeks following its release.

Logic’s Early Life and Influences

Born in 1990 in Rockville, Maryland, Hall grew up in West Deer Park, a lower-income enclave within Gaithersburg — a diverse suburb of Washington D.C. marked by economic contrasts. His upbringing was shaped by chronic instability, racial marginalization, and domestic trauma. Raised by a mother with untreated psychiatric illness and a largely absent, drug-addicted father, Hall experienced physical violence, verbal abuse, and racial degradation throughout childhood [73]. Despite being biracial, his pale complexion and blue eyes made him a target for erasure in both white communities — including the frequent use of racial slurs against him by his white mother — and Black spaces. Institutional systems compounded these vulnerabilities. Hall was labeled “emotionally disturbed” and placed in special education classes, not due to intellectual deficits, but because of behavioral reactions to prolonged trauma [73]. He failed ninth grade three times and cycled through schools with no therapeutic scaffolding, eventually dropping out.

While members of the extended family often step in amid such instability, this wasn’t to be the case for Hall, whose predicament was exacerbated by estrangement on both sides. On his mother’s, the rift was partly about race: her family had distanced themselves from her, in part because her son was Black. Hall acknowledges this racism, but also recognizes that her untreated psychiatric illness had made continued contact untenable. “Some people are so toxic you have no choice but to cut them off,” he wrote. “And my mom was that person” [73. On his father’s, there was little refuge either, with both of Hall’s paternal grandparents being alcoholics [73]. The person who ultimately provided him with a sense of safety wasn’t family at all, but Mary Jo LaFrance — the mother of a friend. At her house, Hall found for the first time what it meant to be nurtured by consistency. She was kind, warm, trustworthy — everything his own mother was not. Her attic became his refuge. He decorated the walls with posters of Redman, Wu-Tang Clan, and The Roots. Music was everywhere. She gave him chores. She gave him space. She gave him structure [73].

Still, Hall doesn’t deny his parents’ influence. His mother, for all her volatility, was a compulsive writer. Pages of loose-leaf paper covered in cursive handwriting filled her room, and her obsessions with dictionaries and memorization were passed down to her son. “I know for a fact that I wouldn’t be the rapper I am without her,” he later wrote. [73]. His father, meanwhile, had modest musical talent and brought Hall to open-mic nights and radio station contests — giving him early proximity to performance, even if not stability [73].

Sonically, there was an eclectic range of influences. Depending on the mood of whichever adult was around, he would be absorbing either AC/DC or Run-DMC, either the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Funkadelic. He learned to read people by the music they played. But it wasn’t until he watched Quentin Tarantino’s two-volume revenge epic Kill Bill that things cohered. That the score had been composed by the rapper RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan connected the dots. “It was hip-hop plus Japanese anime and swords and action movies and kung fu movies,” Hall wrote. “Everything I loved… came together in one package” [73]. Something clicked. Art could make sense of chaos.

Mixtapes, Blogs, and Breakthrough

Hall’s musical ascent began in the shadows of the internet. He taught himself to record on pirated software after a stranger on Yahoo! Messenger handed him a copy of Cool Edit Pro, an early digital audio workstation [73]. With no formal training, he started uploading raps under the name Psychological, later shortened to Logic by a friend who thought the original was too clunky to chant at shows [73]. Early tracks were rough, but he had pages of material and an obsession with delivery. He immersed himself in open mics, YouTube beat battles, and low-level local gigs — sometimes even paying to perform [Logic, 2021]. His first break came when he opened for Ghostface Killah of the Wu-Tang Clan at a downtown venue in D.C., a gig he secured through a chain of acquaintances, and one he had to be escorted to and from by authorities, due to being underage [73].

What set Hall apart wasn’t merely technical skill, but the belief that he could build a career without a co-sign. Blogs — not labels — were his entry point. He and his manager Chris Zarou — who discovered him via Facebook — bet everything on the independent hustle [73]. By the time Def Jam Recordings came calling, Hall had already proven he could fill rooms, run campaigns, and generate viral moments without industry infrastructure. The major label deal was kept quiet to maintain the illusion of independence, but the trajectory was unmistakable: a mixtape rapper with internet roots was now operating on a national scale [73]. It was a signal: the industry was paying attention [73].

Crafting a Crisis Anthem

1-800-273-8255 was born from accumulation — not of data, but of testimony. For years, Hall had been receiving messages from fans who credited his music with helping them survive depression, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. At first, the weight of these unsolicited disclosures overwhelmed him. “Then it hit me,” he said. “The power that I have as an artist with a voice. I wasn’t even trying to save your life. Now what could happen if I actually did?” [72]. That question marked a shift — from incidental emotional resonance to deliberate behavioral intervention. From a health communication lens, this shift reflects a move from parasocial comfort to purposeful intervention — reframing celebrity not as influence, but as infrastructural conduit.

The timing of the song’s April release landed in uncanny alignment with the cultural atmosphere of 2017. The Netflix series 13 Reasons Why had exploded into public consciousness a month earlier, igniting controversy about teen suicide and media responsibility. Later on in the year, two high-profile musicians died by suicide: Chris Cornell of Soundgarden in May, and Chester Bennington of Linkin Park in July. Each death reverberated across the music industry and among fans, reinforcing the precarity of mental health in public life [73].

The song’s emotional gravity required time. “To sing that song and sing it well,” Hall explained, “I had to put myself in the same dark place as someone who did want to kill himself” [73]. Though it was the first track he conceptualized for the album Everybody, it was the last one he recorded — a task Hall admitted to having avoided for months: “This was a really, really hard one, so I made sure I didn’t just rush it out” [72].

The choice to feature Alessia Cara and Khalid on 1-800-273-8255 was as strategic as it was emotional. Hall shared a label home with Cara at Def Jam, whose breakout success in pop and R&B made her an ideal bridge to mainstream audiences. Khalid, signed to RCA through Right Hand Music Group, was an emerging voice in the same space — youthful, vulnerable, and resonant with Gen Z listeners. Together, the three artists spanned hip-hop, pop, and R&B, creating a coalition of styles that mirrored the song’s universal message. Beyond their sonic chemistry, the label alignment — particularly between Logic and Cara — streamlined production and rollout. But more importantly, the trio offered a blend of identities and emotional registers that allowed 1-800 to transcend genre and reach listeners across cultural and psychological spectrums. The track wasn’t just a song — it was a cross-demographic intervention. The song, however, initially struggled to gain radio traction. “Nobody was jumping on a record about suicide to be the song of summer that year,” Hall wrote [73]. Still, he knew the message mattered more than the metrics. It was his most emotionally expensive track — and the most deliberate [73].

The defining live moment came on August 27th at the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards. Initially, Hall wanted to perform America, a politically charged track he recorded with hip-hop pioneer Chuck D of Public Enemy. But Zarou, his manager, urged him to do 1-800. Hall resisted, but would eventually relent [73]. The performance was staged with survivors, families, and mental health advocates standing behind him, all wearing shirts emblazoned with the Lifeline number. Hall insisted on being given time to speak: “Any asshole could get up on TV and use survivors to look good and not mean it,” he said [73]. What followed was one of the most widely circulated moments of his career: “I don’t give a damn if you are black, white, or any color in between… I am here to fight for your equality… If you believe in this message of peace, love, positivity, and equality for all, then I demand that you rise to your feet and applaud not only for yourselves but for the foundation we are laying for our children” [73].

Analysis: Single, Video, and Performances

The song uses a narrative transportation model: the listener is pulled into the emotional logic of the protagonist, guided through despair and steered toward survival. This structure mirrors suicide prevention training scripts, where crisis workers first validate pain before introducing counter-narratives.

Logic's refusal to soften the language delivers authenticity. “You want to kill yourself. You want to slit your wrists. You want to eat pills. You want to shoot yourself in the head and eat a bullet,” Hall recounts, explaining why he refused to euphemize suicidal ideation [72]. This brutal honesty affirms a reality which many health campaigns attempt to avoid. By starting with explicit acknowledgment and then gradually introducing hope, the track adheres to best practices in behavioral health communication: lead with recognition, then redirect.

The second verse — voiced by the hotline responder — offers that redirect. “Switching up the perspective in the second verse is everything,” Hall said [72]. This shift in perspective functions as an embedded model of help-seeking. The lyrical content reframes the emotional landscape using imagery: “It’s the very first breath / when your head’s been drowning underwater.” This metaphorical language is designed to evoke not resolution, but the initial recognition that change is possible—a hallmark of early-stage intervention narratives in suicide prevention frameworks. The arc is simple: I want to die → someone stayed with me → now I want to live.

The closing verse avoids triumphant resolution. Instead, it offers a nuanced articulation of continued struggle: “I don’t wanna cry anymore. I wanna feel alive. I don’t even wanna die anymore.” The retention of emotional complexity prevents the narrative from appearing reductive or didactic. Rather than suggesting that suicidal ideation is fully resolved, the song emphasizes movement toward life, not total recovery — a distinction that reinforces its psychological plausibility.

Threaded throughout the single is the phrase “Who can relate?” — delivered as a shouted interjection. While casual on the surface, the line functions as a subtle behavioral cue. In the context of health messaging, it plays a dual role: normalizing emotional disclosure and modeling communal validation. Rather than presenting suicidal ideation as rare or pathological, Hall frames it as widely felt, even relatable. From a public health standpoint, this line reduces stigma by signaling to listeners that their feelings are neither isolated nor shameful. It also acts as a permission slip — an implicit call-and-response that transforms private pain into a shared experience.

The accompanying music video, directed by Andy Hines, expands the song’s narrative into a fully visualized, seven-minute short film. It follows a young Black gay teenager as he navigates family rejection, suicidal thoughts, and a moment of crisis — before receiving support from a Lifeline counselor, affirmation from a peer, and eventual acceptance from his family. The video closes with a cathartic reunion, a message of survival, and the lifeline number [74]. From a health communication perspective, the video expands the song’s reach by visualizing intersectional stigma. Race, sexuality, and masculinity all converge in the protagonist’s isolation. It avoids abstraction, instead placing emotional distress in real-world spaces: school, home, locker rooms, bedrooms. The inclusion of military imagery, queerness, and parental reconciliation signals the breadth of the song’s intent. This wasn’t about one demographic. It was about making a visual narrative that could function as a cultural script for survival, identity integration, and reconciliation.

Live performances of 1-800-273-8255 were never just musical sets — they became testimonial spaces. From the MTV Video Music Awards to sold-out arena shows, Hall used each performance as a hybrid platform for public grief, collective healing, and behavioral modeling. He often paused mid-song to speak directly to the audience, reiterating the existence of the suicide hotline and encouraging help-seeking behavior. The concerts took on the structure of live interventions — emotional, intimate, and unscripted.

Empirical Findings on the Single’s Effect

The song has since been cited in public health literature as a rare example of effective celebrity-based behavioral activation. Unlike traditional PSAs or awareness campaigns, 1-800-273-8255 embedded its message in a format that was replayable, emotionally immersive, and widely distributed across youth culture. More importantly, the track validated the emotional experiences of listeners who rarely see themselves in public health narratives—young men, people of color, LGBTQIA+ youth, and those living outside of urban care networks.

The song’s impact was not just cultural — it was measurable. In one of the most rigorously evaluated examples of popular music’s impact on suicide prevention, Niederkrotenthaler and colleagues conducted a study to assess the association between Logic’s 1-800-273-8255 and both help-seeking behavior and suicide rates in the United States. Using an interrupted time series analysis — a method that tracks changes in trends before and after a specific event — the study measured how public attention to 1-800-273-8255 correlated with changes in suicide rates and crisis hotline calls.

The results showed a statistically significant relationship between public attention to the song and subsequent increases in calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, alongside a measurable decrease in suicides [75]. Across a pooled 34-day window encompassing three major public moments — the song’s release on April 28, 2017, Logic’s MTV Video Music Awards performance on August 27, and the 2018 Grammy performance on January 28 — the Lifeline received an estimated 9,915 additional calls, a 6.9% increase above expected volume [75]. More strikingly, the observed number of suicides during that same period was 245 fewer than forecasted — a 5.5% reduction in suicide deaths [75].

These findings align with the Papageno effect, a phenomenon in which stories of overcoming suicidal crises result in a protective effect against suicidal behavior — especially in contrast to the well-documented Werther effect, where media coverage of suicide deaths, particularly by celebrities, leads to increased suicide rates [75].

Unlike traditional awareness days such as World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10 — which in 2020 generated roughly 94,000 tweets from 58,000 users in a single-day burst — Logic’s song sustained comparable levels of attention over multiple spikes tied to music industry events [75]. The study notes that while social media mentions of 1-800-273-8255 peaked at 82,000 tweets from 55,000 users, they occurred across a diverse timeline rather than one concentrated moment—extending the song’s resonance and potentially its effectiveness [75].

The song’s structure — a crisis averted through dialogue — combined with its repeated exposure across public and media channels, fulfilled many of the key criteria for suicide prevention communication: narrative immersion, message credibility, emotional accessibility, and repeated dissemination [75].

Still, the study offered one critical caveat: researchers were unable to determine whether those who called Lifeline and contributed to the spike were the same individuals whose lives were potentially saved [75]. But the aggregate pattern was clear. The release of 1-800-273-8255 coincided with a statistically significant reduction in suicide deaths—a rarity in music-linked interventions—and provided rare empirical support for the idea that celebrity-generated narratives of survival can translate into public health outcomes. [75].

The study’s final conclusion was both measured and affirming: the song demonstrated that it is possible to promote help-seeking and reduce suicide risk through emotionally resonant, culturally relevant media, without requiring tragedy as the entry point [75].

The Toll

For all the good that the song did, the emotional toll on Hall was immense. “I was singing about suicide every night and talking about suicide every day,” he later wrote. “I’d become the Suicide Guy” [73]. What had begun as a sincere act of advocacy gradually became a psychological burden. Backstage, at meet-and-greets, in hotel lobbies, people came to him not with fandom, but with grief. “It wasn’t like someone asking for a selfie,” he recalled. “It was their trauma” [73].

The cumulative weight of absorbing others’ pain, while daily reenacting a crisis narrative, eventually fractured him. During a show near Pittsburgh, he broke down mid-performance. Disoriented, vomiting, and overwhelmed by the blinding stage lights, he stopped the show — the first time in his career he failed to finish. “I’m tired. I’m sick. I feel like shit and I’ve been pushing myself too hard,” he told the crowd. “But I’m going to continue to persevere... to tell you that you’re special and amazing” [73]. The tears came. And the internet mocked him for it.

As the song’s popularity soared, so did the backlash. Longtime fans who once said his music saved their lives began accusing him of selling out. “The most popular thing I’d ever done suddenly became the worst song Logic ever made” [73]. The shift was disorienting. What had once been a space of “love and acceptance” now felt distorted, and he blamed himself. “I’d given those people too much power by giving them too much of myself,” he reflected, acknowledging that in the earlier days of the internet, “giving too much of yourself… felt like a good idea. But the Internet isn’t that anymore” [73].

For the first time in his life — after surviving childhood abuse, his mother’s instability, and his father’s addiction — Hall found himself contemplating suicide. “Now… I finally was thinking about suicide,” he wrote. “It was almost like Inception” [73] — a reference to the Christopher Nolan film centered on the notion that a planted thought, once embedded deeply enough, can blur the line between perception and reality. But there was one thing that kept him from acting on it: the song itself. 1-800 had turned him into a symbol of survival. “My biggest fear,” he admitted, “was becoming a meme”— that the artist who made the suicide hotline song would then go on to take his own life [73]. That fear would become its own twisted form of self-preservation.

To perform the song convincingly night after night, Hall had to constantly inhabit the psychological space he tapped into while writing the song. What began as acting — an emotional embodiment in service of others — began to blur into identity. The very performance that saved lives was now endangering his own. In the wake of the song’s success, Hall began experiencing symptoms he didn’t fully understand. He started searching online and came across the term “derealization” — a stress-induced condition where the world no longer feels real and one’s self feels detached. It gave a name to what he had been going through [73].

Reflections

Fast forward to 2021, four years after the release of 1-800-273-8255, Hall published his memoir, This Bright Future — a deeply personal recounting of his life, from childhood trauma to creative breakthrough. One chapter focused explicitly on the song that had made him a symbol: not of fame, but of survival.

In the book, Hall laid bare the personal cost of that symbolism. The public had embraced his message when it came from a young artist on the rise, but their empathy seemed to vanish once success entered the picture. “Everybody loved hearing about the struggles of a young man on the come-up,” he wrote, “but nobody wants to hear about a millionaire rapper who’s unhappy, because it’s champagne problems and who cares. Which is why so many famous people OD and kill themselves, because they get to a level of fame or success and then they’re not allowed to be human anymore” [73].

By this point, Hall had developed coping strategies for anxiety, panic attacks, and the lingering effects of derealization. He learned not to feed the spiral: “I still have anxiety. I still get panic attacks. I still feel derealization at times, and it’s nothing. I’ve just learned that if I’m feeling out of it, I can’t pay attention to it. It’s a pink balloon or a pink elephant—the more you feed into it, the more the monster grows. Now, whenever I feel a bout of anxiety coming on, I go, “Huh, I feel a little out of it.” And I have to talk myself down or just sit and work my way through it.” [73]

This wasn’t triumph. It was adaptation — the slow, imperfect work of carrying both the message and the cost.

Coda: Cudi and Logic in Parallel

As different as the two interventions were, it’s difficult to ignore the deeper similarities between Mescudi and Hall. Though their public images may have diverged in tone, their paths were shaped by eerily parallel forces.

Both men bore names that marked them as slightly out of place: Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi in a Cleveland neighborhood where his Mexican heritage added a layer of difference; and Sir Robert Bryson Hall II in a Maryland suburb where his formal name stood out even before his mixed-race identity complicated belonging. Both had fathers who were absent in different ways — Mescudi’s due to death, Hall’s due to addiction. School was not a refuge: Mescudi was expelled; Hall dropped out. Neither found the scaffolding they needed in institutional settings. Each crafted alter egos — Kid Cudi with Mr. Rager, and Logic with Young Sinatra — which served as both escape hatches and narrative devices. These were not mere stage names, but alternate selves through which to channel internal conflict. That instinct toward duality extended to their aesthetics. Both artists rejected conventional bravado in favor of vulnerability: Mescudi turned hip-hop inward, meditating on loneliness, space, and existential dread; Hall foregrounded peace, empathy, and emotional honesty. In doing so, each quietly redefined what was permissible in hip-hop — not by demanding change, but by embodying it. They shared not just aesthetics but clinical mental health profiles: Mescudi with depression and anxiety, Hall with derealization and panic disorder. And they shared an eclecticism of influence — hip-hop threaded through with rock, jazz, anime, film scores, and science fiction. Their sonic palettes were less about genre loyalty than emotional texture. Music wasn’t just a product; it was a survival mechanism.

Crucially, they were also children of the internet. Mescudi’s rise was propelled by MySpace, Tumblr, and early Twitter; Hall’s came through mixtape blogs, chatrooms, and YouTube videos. Both understood the power of digital intimacy — and, eventually, its cost. Fame, for each of them, brought connection but also collapse. The very openness that endeared them to fans became difficult to sustain in the face of mounting expectations and algorithmic exposure.

It’s easy to think of these disclosures as isolated moments — a Facebook post, a song, a performance. But what binds them is more than content: it is strategy. Both Mescudi and Hall leveraged their platforms not just to share, but to structure vulnerability: to build models of expression that others could follow. In that sense, their contributions weren’t merely emotional. They were infrastructural — laying groundwork for a culture in which pain could be voiced, documented, and maybe, for someone else, survived.

About the Author

Kevin Samuel is an early-career researcher exploring how sound, music, and mediated performance shape public narratives around health, identity, and collective wellbeing. The Chorus Effect is his first project within this domain.

Contact: kevin.samuel@soundalive.org

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