L.A. VanGogh • "Wants & Needs"
In this current climate of crippling student loan debt, anyone with a college degree would not expect a song featuring a girl named Sallie Mae to be a fun and highly stylized jam. However, Dolton, Illinois’ own L.A VanGogh succeeds in making a danceable ditty about trying to “make a little paper” while grappling with the ‘wants and needs’ of friends, ‘fam’ and the private student loan company.
In the 33-second video snippet introducing this latest single ‘Wants and Needs,’ a friend hands the artist a blunt while sitting at a round table. Instead of taking a hit and passing, he pauses, and commits the ultimate party foul by taking another hit and perusing his phone. This prompts one of his friends to exasperatedly tell him to pass.
This is a perfect introduction to the single where L.A. VanGogh sings and raps melodically over a ‘bop’ with an up tempo beat about trying to live while being pulled into other people’s problems. The aforementioned bop is highly danceable if not comfortably twerkable.
In the single, the artist raps about wanting to move forward with his own career while coping with emotional vampires and people testing him - from the student loan company to ‘johnny-come-latelies’ making elevator pitches about money-making endeavors. In the midst of all of this, knowing ‘shit ain’t free’, L.A. VanGogh is just trying to be “in and out of the laboratory,” making the money to pay Sallie Mae back for his college education.
The single features DJ of the Innovatorz and is mixed by Matt Hennessy. It is seemingly an ode to an artist experiencing growing success, grappling with meeting his own needs, all the while avoiding emotional traps set by the demands of fickle friends, ‘fam’, and, good ol’ Sallie Mae.