What I Listened To In The Hospital

Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music I’ve been fixated on recently.

Having a severe chronic illness has made me intimately familiar with the American healthcare system and its hospitals. Hospitals here are terrifying and full of excruciatingly lengthy waiting periods, often for nothing more than the result of a blood test or X-ray. Hospitals are scary, even when you spend most of your stay doing nothing at all. It's kind a like a dream in that way. You are for all intents and purposes trapped, surrounded by people having the worst night of their lives. While passing the time, you get to luxuriate in the unique ambiance: belligerent fellow patients, some of whom are drunk or high; jaded nurses showing up whenever they can get to you; overhead lighting that is always too bright; and the dulcet beeps and blares of hospital machinery. As you might imagine, I spent most of my recent three-day excursion through the hospital system drowning myself in as much music as possible, mostly catching up on what's new and what I'm supposed to be checking for in this first quarter of 2026.

The specifics of my stay aren't that important. I have sickle cell anemia. No stay is ever easy, but some are more arduous than others. Due to an excess of patients and an overworked staff, I spent 48 hours in the emergency room alone, which is not built for extended stays. Even though I was exhausted, it's hard to fall asleep in a room full of fluorescent lights and screaming people. So, naturally, I decided to check out the new J. Cole project.