Kendrick Lamar and the Collapse of American Politics
Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 masterpiece To Pimp a Butterfly is difficult to pin down. Hip-hop, jazz, funk, rock, metal (yes), soul, and more, just in the musical styles it explores, along with a multitude of lyrical themes, make it almost overwhelming. I don’t have any idea how to write about most of it. So I’m just going to write about some of it.
One of the (many) themes running through the album is an eerily prescient political critique. In the first song on the album, Lamar offers a sarcastic embodiment of racist ‘fears’ of hip-hop (passing out guns on the street, ect,) followed by a solid Chappelle reference. However, in the second verse he reverses: as his character gets richer and richer, he becomes a clear criticism of the capitalist American political system (stay with me!) — his financial gain leads him directly to the White House. In the world Lamar writes about, money and political power are the same thing.
Lamar is even more insistent about this in Hood Politics, a dark, trippy mash of poppy drums and vocals floating on a synthy, haunting river of sound. In the second verse:
“Streets don’t fail me now, they tell me it’s a new gang in town,
From Compton to Congress, set trippin’ all around
Ain’t nothin’ new, but a flu of new Demo-Crips and Re-Blood-licans
Red state versus a blue state, which one you governin’?”
His critique of politics in rap, which he later describes,
“Y’all priorities fucked up, put energy in wrong shit,”
becomes a critique of money centered, divisive politics. To Pimp a Butterfly came out three years into Obama’s second term, at the beginning of the now historic Republican obstructionist movement. His opinion of gang conflict reflects his opinion of the divisive political system. And the characterization of the self made man whose financial gain leads him directly to the White House is simultaneously parodied by and a parody of Donald Trump’s not-so-self made rise to prominence. In To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar offered a dark prediction of the future of politics, a future that is coming to pass almost more heavily that he could have expected.
One of the hallmarks of Trumps campaign is a cruel and selfish racism. In his world, any difference between people is an opportunity to drive a wedge between them and his white supporters — to use fear, hatred, and intolerance to gain power. Lamar delivers a stark description of the effects of these wedges in The Blacker the Berry, a blistering song that may be the first truly great bridge between hip-hop and metal. The song is full of anger and pain, and by the end, as he recognizes that
“This plot is bigger than me, it’s generational hatred
It’s genocism, it’s grimy, little justification,”
he has painted a picture of a person denied humanity by the world around him.
“You’re fuckn’ evil…”
There can be no stronger rebuke to Trump. To climb to power on the backs of others, propelled by fear and hatred, is exactly this.
I know that there’s more to this album, and that there are more important, more beautiful themes here. But I think that Lamar’s shrewd, fateful depiction of a world where money is power at the expense of humanity, is the frame in which every other brilliant piece is set. The fundamental pain he describes is countered with pride, love, and beauty throughout the album. At times, he is almost optimistic.
