As Grantland‘s Rembert Browne reflects, “through this song, he carries with him traces of his outspoken, black music-making ancestors, from Nina Simone’s tone and overall focus to Tupac Shakur’s self-aware perfection.” He raps about the scrutiny black people face in America, and the tortured position of helplessness and guilt it leads to. The spotlight was on him, and he seized it, making clear he wasn’t pacified after being accepted into music’s elite. Just as unapologetically black is “The Blacker the Berry,” a single Kendrick released mere hours after winning his first two Grammys. It’s a brash statement, forcing listeners to confront the elephant in the room: Black people are in the White House. At a time when grumblings about a black man in the White House are bubbling just under the surface across the United States, Kendrick puts the manifestation of this unspoken tension on full-display – behold, black men with wads of cash and bottles of liquor, posing over a dead judge on the White House lawn. It’s brash, it’s unapologetically black, and most importantly, it’s a message of self-love and reassurance when, around the hip-hop landscape, those messages are so few and far between.įirst, the album cover. To Pimp a Butterfly is at once the encapsulation of this world of racial tension and a catalyst for its change. Cole – is close to matching Kendrick’s significance in the midst of what’s happening in South Carolina and (more broadly) the United States, and what has unfurled in the last half-decade after the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, and many others. No major label artist – save for perhaps J. “Who’s going to carry on that torch? It’s gotta be somebody, otherwise we are doomed if we don’t have anybody to continue that on, and talk about those issues, and stand for something, and fight, and pick up where they left off, and continue to march in the streets.” “When are all gone, who’s going to be the leader?” Jamla artist Rapsody asks. Now that America is in turmoil once again, many are asking the question: who’s making music for the times?
Brother Ali’s Mourning in America and Dreaming in Color was the perfect encapsulation of 2012, weaving a narrative around the presidential election, Islamophobia and the ongoing War on Terror, and income inequality in the aftermath of a recession. In 2004, Kanye West’s The College Dropout captured the self-identity crisis of middle-class America in the midst of ultra-consumerism, racism in a ‘post-racial’ society, and the search for spirituality in an increasingly-secular world. Some art is tailor-made for a moment in history.
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