Addiction is a mental health concern that can destroy way more than it can create if left untreated/unsupervised. While I have never been fully addicted to any one thing, I’ve seen how terrible things can get. Higher-than-high highs and terrible lows accentuate the experience, whether it be addiction to substances, sex, food, et cetera. It’s some pretty nasty stuff and I’d never wish it on anyone.

Funk-soul group Wild Love Tigress’ “I Plead the Fifth” captures this back and forth/”good” and bad cycle well by looking at addiction through the lens of it being similar to Jekyll and Hyde. Instead of just focusing on the black and white of addiction, we get to see a variety of grays. In lieu of shaming addiction victims, the song attempts to understand them and help listeners empathize with the struggle. This is because the group talks about addiction as “the feeling that there’s a part of yourself that you can’t control, and the simultaneous desire to atone for [that “part’s] mistakes.”

While the message is an important, it helps that the song is catchy and groovy. It doesn’t bring you through the mud like it could’ve, which is good for me. The track is so groovy and lush with melody that, unless you knew what you were looking for, you wouldn’t know from the first few lines that we’re talking about addiction. I’m intrigued by the group’s instrumentation, the lead’s vocals and the stories discussed throughout. If you’re intrigued, I suggest checking it out and doing the thing us SOTB Faithful do: support dope music in all its forms.