Spotlight: Kendrick Lamar
“It's gonna be alright.” It’s a phrase whispered in times of distress. Sometimes those words are comforting. Aometimes those four words are infuriating. I feel that the latter is the point at which the black community has been stationed at for quite some time. I want to ask some tough questions: are protest songs enough? Do protest songs have to be accompanied by action? How do you critique a protest song? Who do you have to be, to be able to critique it?
‘Alright’ by Kendrick Lamar, a Compton native, is a song that presents the artist as a conscious rapper, from the empty and angry perspective of the members (both p.o.c. and non-p.o.c.) of the Black Lives Matter movement. There are so many ways to talk about the Black Lives Movement: from a place of hope, emptiness, apathy. In my previous articles about J. Cole there was a potential place for hope with a good helping of reality splashed on top. But now, I think it's only fair (especially given current events) to speak from a place of anger and frustration.
“Wouldn't you know
We been hurt, been down before, nigga
When our pride was low
Lookin' at the world like, "Where do we go, nigga?"
And we hate po-po
Wanna kill us dead in the street for sure, nigga
I'm at the preacher's door
My knees gettin' weak and my gun might blow
But we gon' be alright”
- ‘Alright’, Kendrick Lamar
When those whose literal job is “To Serve and Protect” become judge, jury and executioner, how can we say “we’re going to be alright”. It’s just hoping. It is just grasping at the idea that when you’re pulled over for a routine traffic stop that the cop is not a racist trigger happy officer. What is ‘hope’ supposed to mean? What is “but we gon’ be alright” supposed to mean. How can one find definition in something so obscure, so repetitive, and spoken from a place of anger?
"Came from the bottom of mankind/ My hair is nappy, my dick is big, my nose is round and wide/ You hate me don't you/ You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture/ You're fucking evil I want you to recognize that I'm a proud monkey/ You vandalize my perception, but can't take style from me"- ‘The Blacker the Berry’, Kendrick Lamar
This verse is the reality that has been forced down the throat of black people, whether they want to realize it or not. This is the kind of anger that makes one reevaluate what intentions are, what real sentiments are, there is no hope in this verse, its raw, its unapologetic, angry and daring in the sense that the labels given by the oppressor to those oppressed. The words of the oppressor are only going to be used as a war cry and a tool to make the oppressor swallow and choke on their own words and labels while shoving the reality so brutally handed to us back in the face of the oppressor. Are we to choose between anger and hope? Do we even have a choice anymore?