Issa Gold Offers Deep Introspection On “Cold Summer (Reprise)”
Just yesterday on July 5th, Flatbush-born rapper Marlon Fung, better known by his stage name Issa “SOLACE” Gold, released his album, Tempus. Tempus is Gold’s long-awaited solo album that he has been working on for several years, first planning to put it out four years ago around 2017.
Gold first appeared on fans’ radar back in 2013 as one half of The Underachievers, a Brooklyn-based rap duo with his long-time friend, AKTHESAVIOR. That was the year the duo released their first official mixtape Indigoism, a body of music that not only pointed to their strong lyrical abilities but their unique spiritual beliefs and ideas.
Songs such as “Herb Shuttles,” “Gold Soul Theory,” and “So Devilish” allowed listeners to learn about profound esoteric principles such as chakras, astral projection, and indigo children. The mixtape solidified them as a duo dedicated to spreading spiritual consciousness and enlightenment to their fans, some of whom may have been unfamiliar with those ideas before.
On July 3rd, Issa Gold released a reprise of “Cold Summer,” the tenth track on Tempus. In the song, he deeply reflects on his mental and spiritual state, taking a look at his internal struggles as well as his attempts of finding peace of mind in a very troubled world. The song functions as somewhat of an abstract journal entry, with Gold rapping in a manner that feels representative of jotting down notes and ideas as a form of therapy. He does the act of reaching deep into his subconscious and pulling out dark thoughts and memories so that he may look back on them as a means of moving forward and improving himself as a person.
Though the word “tempus” means time in Latin, Gold knows better than to cry over spilled milk. He understands that time is but a concept and that the only thing that truly exists is the present. There is no going back, and the closest thing he has to the past is his diary.