K is for...

"King Without a Crown" by Matisyahu

Last part of the "religion" saga, I promise.  I knew about Matisyahu when I was still in high school, but I didn't get into it until my freshman year of college, in part thanks to the movie Call + Response.

That movie, about the human trafficking industry, features lots of musical acts to bring money and awareness to the issue.  One of those acts is Matisyahu.  His sound and appearance were both so striking (it's a reggae-singing Hasid, come on) that I got drawn in.  From there I ended up really liking him.  I'm pretty sure I didn't get into him earlier was because his content is very religious, and I just wasn't ready to listen to it yet.  Re-finding Matisyahu also coincided with my getting into 311, Sublime, and the like.

There was many a stress-filled night of paper writing with this album as the soundtrack.  At this time in my life I knew I had an anxiety disorder, and was working on ways to deal with it.  Music once again became part of my coping process, and I had several go-to "calm down" albums, Youth (the Matusyahu album this track is on) being one of them.  I did pretty good for a while, too.  That is, until I had to graduate and think of something else to do with my time.  Some errors in judgement occurred there, but I think I've talked about that enough by now.

Matisyahu=relax.  The end.