Waves
restless, boastful, tinged with tenderness and anxiety
"Waves" is Joey Bada$$ tracing his own origin story from a Brooklyn kid obsessed with hair waves to an MC determined to become a global figure, all while staying rooted in family struggle and street code. It's a dense, boastful but reflective verse-rap that moves from nostalgia to ambition to hopes for a future family, using density of wordplay to argue for his own skill as proof of his worth.
coming of age in Brooklyn ambition and self-mythologizing family sacrifice and generational hope authenticity versus commercial rap spirituality and protection
Who's speaking
First-person narrator speaking directly to listeners and imagined critics; the voice shifts between braggadocio aimed at doubters and a softer, confessional address to his mother and future children. He presents himself as reliable, almost defensively so, insisting on his own authenticity.
What happens
The song opens with a spoken, nostalgic aside about the hair-wave trend, setting up a frame of looking back. From there it moves into the present tightrope of poverty and hustle, then pivots into assertions of rap supremacy and distaste for trend-chasing peers. A middle stretch escalates into dense wordplay defending his lyrical complexity against media pressure to simplify. The final movement turns inward, imagining future fatherhood and reconciling with the strict upbringing he once resented, ending on a forward-looking vow to keep building.
How it's built
The track uses a loose, unbroken verse structure rather than clear verse-chorus alternation, functioning more like a continuous monologue with shifting subtopics. There's no traditional hook; instead the spoken intro acts as a framing device, and the final repeated word functions as a quiet refrain that closes the piece. The lack of a chorus reinforces the stream-of-consciousness, autobiographical feel.
Section by section
Spoken intro
The casual, conversational opening about rocking waves sets a nostalgic, almost oral-history tone, positioning the song as a personal retrospective before the beat even starts.3
Early verse — family and survival
“momma been working nine-five”
Establishes the economic pressure underpinning his ambition; prayer and neighborhood loyalty are framed as survival tools rather than abstractions.
Mid verse — ambition and disdain for trend-chasers
He draws a line between himself and rappers he sees as chasing fashion over craft, using self-deprecating humor about eating tofu and flying coastal to signal both aspiration and self-awareness about how success might look absurd.
Technical peak — wordplay and media pressure
“dumb it down to accomplish articles”
This stretch becomes a meta-commentary on the tension between commercial accessibility and lyrical complexity, with the density of the bars themselves acting as evidence against the demand to simplify.
Closing turn — fatherhood and reconciliation
The tone softens considerably as he imagines a future family and reflects on finally understanding his parents' strictness, reframing earlier resentment as something that shaped his discipline and success.
Craft
- extended metaphor
- The title image of hair waves becomes a stand-in for cycles of trends and self-image, bridging childhood nostalgia with later commentary on fashion-obsessed rappers who chase surface over substance.
- internal rhyme and dense multisyllabic wordplay
- Rapid internal rhymes and compound wordplay throughout the mid-verses serve as technical proof of skill, reinforcing the thematic claim that he's an uncompromising, 'real' lyricist.
- direct address
- Switching between addressing critics, fans, and his own future children personalizes abstract ambition and makes the boasting feel grounded in relationships rather than pure ego.
- juxtaposition
- Scenes of economic hardship sit beside lavish fantasies of global fame, highlighting the gap between present reality and aspiration that drives the song's motivation.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a self-portrait built around proving worth through craft: the obsessive internal rhyme and vocabulary density function less as empty flexing and more as the thematic argument itself—that his complexity is the evidence of authenticity he claims to possess. An alternative reading could see the final shift to family and legacy as slightly disconnected tonal territory, almost a separate song stapled on, but it also can be read as the natural end-point of the ambition narrative: fame isn't the goal itself, generational repair is.
Context
Joey Bada$$ emerged from Brooklyn's Pro Era collective in the early 2010s, known for a lyrical style indebted to 1990s East Coast boom-bap and golden-age complexity. This track reflects that era's aesthetic — dense technical verses, direct references to hip-hop publications, and claims of authenticity against a mainstream rap climate. I don't have confirmed details about this song's specific release or production credits, so I'm working from the lyric content alone.
Listen for
- the shift in tone between the nostalgic spoken intro and the more aggressive rapped verses
- how internal rhyme density increases around the media/critics section, mirroring the lyrical content
- the contrast between images of poverty early on and fantasies of luxury later
- the softening in cadence and subject matter in the closing passage about family
- the way the final repeated word functions as a makeshift refrain in place of a chorus
About Joey Bada$$
Jo-Vaughn Virginie Scott, known professionally as Joey Badass, is an American rapper and actor. Born in Brooklyn, he formed the regional hip-hop group Pro Era in 2011, with whom he has released three mixtapes and formed the larger collective, Beast Coast the following year.
b. 1995 / United States
Full biography and catalogue