There used to be an era when you couldn't watch a music video whenever or how many times you wanted to. With today’s technology, YouTube makes any music video available for access 24/7 from the moment the video is published. But back then, that wasn’t the case. I’m talking about the 80’s up to the early 00’s. Music videos started out as promotional films. And they were around for a while way before MTV even started. When a particular band could not show up for a television appearance to perform their music live, they would just record themselves on film and send it to the station to broadcast. So by the time MTV launched in 1981, they already had a handful of videos to broadcast. “We’ll be doing for TV, what FM did for radio,” said Mark Goodman, one of the first VJ’s to broadcast at MTV’s premiere. And here we are now… Thirty-six years later. MTV revolutionized the music industry by breaking many artist’s careers and introducing the importance of theatrics.

In 2017, MTV celebrated their 34th Video Music Awards. Kendrick Lamar left that night winning six awards, one for video of the year while Ed Sheeran won Artist of the Year. Many great artists presented themselves that night, and one, in particular, caught my attention…. Honestly, at this point, it's almost tiring speaking about Logic again. Mostly because a lot of people are discovering him now, so there's this whole new audience hearing about him for the very first time. It’s easy to see why so many people are appealing towards his brand. Logic promotes his very own tagline: Peace, Love, and Positivity. It's simple and on point. The song he decided to perform that night was "1-800-273-8255," which is the phone number of the Suicide Prevention Lifeline. This song is included on his third studio album "Everybody," which was released earlier this year. While the album did not make much of a dent in the charts, it was highly anticipated by the fans who have been waiting two years since his last full project dropped.

It’s refreshing to see a mainstream rap touch on mental health issues; a serious problem that affects the everyday person. Recently with the loss of Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell this summer, the issues of mental health, suicide, and depression have been brought up time and time again. Cornell was a pioneer of the Grunge sound during the early 1990’s along with other bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam. He tragically passed away in May of this year, meanwhile, Chester Bennington, frontman of rock band Linkin Park also died not only a few months after that. Both individuals were open about their feelings of insecurity and anxiety but sadly were not able to seek the help they needed. Mental health issues have also been reoccurring in the hip-hop scene. Kanye West had to cancel his Saint Pablo Tour due to exhaustion and Kid Cudi not so long ago checked himself into rehabilitation for suicidal urges. 2017 really needed a wake-up call, and Logic using "1-800-273-8255" and MTV as a platform elevated his message to every household in America. Everything just stopped when he gave that little speech at the end. Even though historically, the VMA’s this year tanked in ratings, everyone at least heard about Logic’s performance. It was shared immensely on social media and will probably be a highlight of the artist’s career.