"You burn me with cigarettes", the vocal loop in Ladarius McDonald's Cigarettes repeats.
At first blush, the piano loop and the vocals feel a little out of step with each other, playing in slightly different keys. My first instinct was that this was unintentional, and it might be! But as the track progresses, it starts to revel in its own dissonance.
At about the mid point, a drone and distorted rhythmic crunch enter the fray, and the chaos starts to bring the thing together. It's at this point that the lyrics start to hit. Those lines you've been hearing over and over again.
You burn me with cigarettes on my arms, on my legs
You burn me with cigarettes, I'm bruised and bleeding, hurting in agony
Of course it's dissonant and of course it's uncomfortable. Of course it feels like something is wrong. This is a song about abuse. Whether the lyrics are literal or metaphorical, the line has been repeating from the very start. At the start when it felt like it was just part of the texture or part of the groove, but she was telling you the whole time what was wrong.
The more I listened to the track, the more effective it was. The more I felt the pain behind it. It's very simple, it almost feels unfinished, but there's a rawness there that's fairly powerful once you start to pay attention.