What happens when a city can put a price on everything except the people struggling to survive inside it?
Los Angeles has never been short on contradictions. Palm trees and pavement. Luxury storefronts and people sleeping within their shadows. The promise of reinvention sitting right beside the reality of getting priced out of your own life. On “Tricky Times,” METAPHYSICAL steps into that uncomfortable territory with a question that feels less like a provocation than an overdue conversation.
The Los Angeles-based lyricist makes his intentions clear from the jump. “These are pretty Tricky Times for the scope of the day,” he writes, opening with a line that sounds almost casual until you consider how much ground those words cover. Tricky times for whom? Tricky times according to whose version of the economy? And who gets to call the shots when the people feeling the squeeze aren’t the ones holding the purse strings?
METAPHYSICAL’s “Tricky Times” Is a Wake-Up Call
By L TateOct 19, 2026, 22:47 pm0
0What happens when a city can put a price on everything except the people struggling to survive inside it?
Los Angeles has never been short on contradictions. Palm trees and pavement. Luxury storefronts and people sleeping within their shadows. The promise of reinvention sitting right beside the reality of getting priced out of your own life. On “Tricky Times,” METAPHYSICAL steps into that uncomfortable territory with a question that feels less like a provocation than an overdue conversation.
The Los Angeles-based lyricist makes his intentions clear from the jump. “These are pretty Tricky Times for the scope of the day,” he writes, opening with a line that sounds almost casual until you consider how much ground those words cover. Tricky times for whom? Tricky times according to whose version of the economy? And who gets to call the shots when the people feeling the squeeze aren’t the ones holding the purse strings?
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