The Disambiguation of Kendrick Lamar

I'd like to start this blog out with a piece I wrote about Kendrick Lamar's new album, To Pimp A Butterfly. This isn't a review of the album, but my own brief personal commentary.

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The main character in To Pimp A Butterfly is a caricature of Kendrick Lamar. Or so it may seem. Emotions are amplified and ideas are expanded to the point of irrationality, until you understand it’s all from experience. He taps into his admonished self and falls into the cognizant abyss along the way, only to pull himself at least almost out of it.

This is a journey we listeners are in on, as well. But we can’t own it. I can’t own it. In no part of my life could I have written a song about being severely oppressed to the point of depression. This depression being depicted in the song “u”, an extreme account of serious self-hatred and doubt. Desolation stemming from success and its unforeseen woes. The adage misery loves company is true as he glares at himself in the mirror and berates himself as if he’s another person. But from this, there is “i”, a gleaming sliver of hope and lending credence to the act of loving one’s self and ultimate redemption.

When I first sang along to the chanting chorus of “King Kunta”, there was no part of me that thought this was an allusion to Kunta Kinte’s struggle in Roots. I just thought it was a reference purely to Kendrick’s new royalty-like status in the hip-hop world. This predilection to chant to the thumping beat can be tied to that feeling you get when you listen to a song like Big Sean’s “I Don’t Fuck With You”. Who doesn’t want to sing along and feel a part of something? Even if it is to just tell someone fuck you, because sometimes you just need to say that.

Carvell Wallace alludes to this ignorance in his Pitchfork think piece about the album:

“If I was a white guy, I would probably like [the community] aspect of hip-hop the most. The idea that I can become an honorary member of blackness just by listening. Hip-hop makes that easy. The songs are readily available. The hood is explained to the uninitiated. No longer would I have to feel that the Blackness of Black People represents mystery or the unexplained.”

This thought didn’t really shock or insult me, because I know it’s true. There isn’t much that I could complain about. At least nothing that compares to some of the distressing events I hear in these songs or see on the streets of Ferguson on my TV from the comfort of my white suburban home. I can actively participate as much as I want, but will never know the fight myself.

To Pimp A Butterfly is a response to the mushroom cloud of racism that has been rising and blanketing our media and overall life. It's ingrained in our American History and our time is being called the second coming of Jim Crow. This idea was addressed in D’Angelo’s much-awaited album of late last year, Black Messiah. While not as detailed and extensive as Kendrick’s, it was deliberately put out around the time Darren Wilson’s charged were dropped for the shooting of Michael Brown and the case was closed. If that isn’t a strong enough reason to urgently drop an album, I don’t know what is.

The feeling of solidarity that I get from listening to this album is fleeting. I can turn it off and go back to my normal life of grabbing an overly expensive coffee at the plethora of independent coffee shop near my house, because I like to keep things “local”. I like to sit and write my pieces there and have done so with this one. And what’s wrong with that? I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not, and neither is Kendrick Lamar.