#kingkunta

We gon be alright

K-Dot, Kung-Fu Kenny, King of the West Coast; these are some of the monikers that describe none other than Kendrick Lamar Duckworth. Born and raised in Compton, California, Lamar quickly entered the rap game when he released his first mixtape Youngest Head Nigga In Charge (Hub City Threat: Minor of the Year) at the age of 16 and later went on to create studio albums Section.80, good kid, m.A.A.d city, To Pimp A Butterfly, and DAMN which solidified his spot at the top of the rap game. 

For those of you that don’t know, rap is a musical art form which incorporates rhythmic speech and street vernacular. It lies in a grey area between speech and singing but with a lot more complexity. It originated as a sub-genre of hip-hop in the early 1980s where it was easily identified by its relatively simple raps, but quickly evolved into its own art form which needs multiple listens in order to fully understand a whole verse. It’s become an increasingly popular genre of music, even surpassing rock music sales just recently. Like Kanye West (another popular rapper) once said “Rap the new rock n roll” . 

Today, I’d like to talk about the highly praised album released in 2015, To Pimp A Butterfly. Lamar would always take influences from his past to tell a broader story in his music, such as the crack epidemic of the 80s for Section.80 and personal experience living in Compton for good kid m.A.A.d city, but he takes it a step further with To Pimp a Butterfly (which i’ll be referring to as TPAP from now on). He fuzes jazz, spoken word, funk, and soul into an album that delves into a very personal and political agenda as an African-American man living in the United States. To give some context, TPAP came out within a few years of police brutality victims: Mike Brown, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, and Trayvon Martin; tensions were, and still are, very high between the police and black community. 

Throughout TPAP, Kendrick brings up points of racial injustice, perseverance and reiterates the difficulties dealing with negative stereotypes of African Americans in the tracks: “Wesley’s Theory” , “King Kunta”, and “Alright’, but one track that really stands out is, “The Blacker the Berry”. The song starts off with a guitar opening, but the mood quickly shifts with a grunt into tribal percussions. The beat gets heavier with trumpets playing in the back that slowly dies off allowing Kendrick to create a raw and dark mood for the verses that come. He talks about generational hatred, his pride in his African-American heritage and racism in general. He uses the connotation of negative African-American stereotypes and flips it on its head and turns it into something he takes pride in. There’s also an underlying message that is cleverly hidden in the lyrics. Lamar starts off each verse with “I’m the biggest hypocrite of 2015″, but doesn’t elaborate on what he means. It’s not until near the end where it’s revealed that he’s talking about the black community itself “So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street when gang banging make me kill a nigga blacker than me? Hypocrite!”. The underlying message being the hypocritical nature of the black community (due to black on black crime) even though there was a huge outrage because of Trayvon Martin’s death. Despite bringing an unfavorable perspective into light, Lamar doesn’t mean that the black community is in the wrong, but rather, that there is a moral grey area. 

Genie. Manifestor. Eccentric. ✨