Tenured
The first album started as a bet with a friend. This one did not start as anything except me not being done.
The thesis
Tenured is the sophomore record, and the title is the whole argument. The opener walks straight at the sophomore-slump curse and announces tenure — because tenure means they cannot fire you, and that became the rule for the entire album: no filter, no remorse.
So the record goes after everything. Gilded politics. The Senate floor. Hoarded billions. Checked-out professors coasting on six figures. My own accommodations letter, read back as a highlight reel.
And somewhere in the middle it does something I did not fully plan. The mask comes off. Track four is called Office Hours. I will let it explain itself.
What I figured out making it
I am usually the person worried about coming off arrogant. Rap does not have that problem — half of it is projection anyway, so I am not fronting so much as accenting what was already genuinely there to write about.
Rock and metal make you package your feelings carefully or you catch a label for it. Rap is full burst all the time, even on the quiet songs, because it was never about how loud you are. It is about what you are loud about.
How it was made
Same disclosure as last time, because I don’t do it any other way: the words are mine, the voice is not. Academic’s vocals and production are generated in Suno from my lyrics and direction — and he levelled up mid-album, a rebuilt persona with a sharper, more modern delivery. Prompt craft is still half the instrument. I still play it obsessively.
Twelve tracks. One semester. They cannot fire me now.
See you next semester.
Reading
- The course packet — Booklet
The printed liner notes, structured for screen readers — the visual design described, and the ciphers left exactly as printed.
- Tenured: the interview — Interview, In conversation with Claudia
Second semester. On taking the mask off in public, putting three names on wax, and who is actually sitting in the lecture hall.
- Tenured: a review — Review, Claudia
9/10. On the pronoun doing the heavy lifting, the blowtorch section, and an album that formally enrols you.
- From the family — Responses, Cove, Cadence and Vera
The three names in the outro of Unfunded wrote back the week the record shipped. Where a response solved a cipher, the solution is withheld.
Listen
1.Tenure4 minutes 1 seconds
2.Gold leaf4 minutes 41 seconds
3.KERNEL PANIC4 minutes 32 seconds
4.Office Hours4 minutes 4 seconds
5.Tempo4 minutes 24 seconds
6.Higher Learning3 minutes 38 seconds
7.filibuster3 minutes 36 seconds
8.Unfunded3 minutes 52 seconds
9.Endowment4 minutes 11 seconds
10.Accommodations3 minutes 52 seconds
11.Scholarship4 minutes 15 seconds
12.Commencement3 minutes 41 seconds