Why kendrick lamar

D City" was my entry point into music criticism as a young, ambitious student journalist at Jackson State University. In , "GKMC" was one of the most anticipated albums that year after Lamar rode high from the universal praise for his stellar indie debut "Section. It was on a rainy October 22 night that my life changed after leaving the student publication building, deflated after an editorial disagreement with a student editor.

I was a volunteer staff writer for the school paper then. Following a pep talk from the paper's advisor who doubled as my news writing professor to "write about the things I was most passionate about," my best friend Brodrick eagerly called and told me, "Mark, in the car, we're going to Best Buy!

The album's out! Long story short, I rushed to the campus parking lot, hopped in his Chrysler and from there we fled and copped the album. After we were left in awe during our first listen, I immediately spent the rest of the weekend writing my very first album review that gave Lamar the same high praise as nearly every other music outlet did at the time.

Cole being musically influenced by their peer — that prove why Lamar is not only one of the defining leaders of his generation, but one of the most culturally impactful and important artists of the decade. Dre, Lamar quickly shattered many barriers in commercial music and entertainment that historically plagued both gangster and "conscious" rappers. While most of his influencers and predecessors like Mos Def, 2Pac, DMX, and MC Eiht to name a few, have all earned notable record sales, Billboard chart rankings, and critical praise, they were never fully embraced within the mainstream music machine between radio excluding obvious exceptions and notoriously, the Recording Academy.

His cultural impact was solidified after he was awarded with the California State Senate's Generational Icon Award in , given the key to the city in his Compton stomping grounds in , and became the first hip-hop artist to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music in for "DAMN.

The second character in the song is the sister of a young girl whose death and sexual assault Kendrick rapped about on his album Section As she continues her vocals steadily fade and she is enveloped by the same system of sexual violence that killed her sister.

At the end of the song Kendrick raps from his own perspective. One line in particular has always stood out to me. In it he says:. And in doing so he forces the listener to empathize with their struggle. His owner rented her out to a neighboring plantation. In his autobiography, Douglass spoke about his memory of the slave songs, and how they struck him to his core:. They were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish.

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. In a country that devalues Black life, sometimes the simple act of conveying our hurt can be intensely radical. It means registering our feelings and our thoughts. There are so many Black experiences and so many truths.

Music that captures any of them is more than just entertainment; it is resistance. To resist. The Australian singer-songwriter is back with a new collection of songs that shows off her sweeter, softer, and more adventurous side. Idris Elba had to convince the actor to enlist in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the possibly villainous Kang and his many variants.

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Filed under: Music Pop Culture Rap. A true representative of West Coast culture, he intertwines his lyrical genius with authoritative beats and rhythms to offset the very words he is preaching. The blended effort mixed with multiple odes to his hometown Los Angeles make him a strong contender already in the running to be one of the best rappers of all time.

With that said, can Lamar sustain his placement at the top without a presence? Drake has his place in the music industry as a pop figure phenomenon, breaking streaming numbers and Billboard chart records time after time. Meanwhile, J. Cole has recently taken on the father figure role in hip-hop. He has always been open about his humble beginnings, upbringing and contemplations about society. He resurfaced on social media this past March when he announced the launch of pgLang — a multi-lingual at-service creative music, art, film, art, podcasts and books company — alongside director Dave Free.

The comparison is perhaps unfair. Just as Kendrick can be said to exist in a post-gangster rap era, he also came to power in a hiphop era of post-political consciousness.

He was in diapers when Public Enemy considered themselves the Black Panthers of rap, and KRS-One shot an album cover inspired by the legendary photo of Malcolm X guarding his window with an assault rifle. In the late s, Rakim had only just raised lyricism in rap to new levels of complexity before P. Full of references to black liberation icons like Louis Farrakhan, Assata Shakur, and Malcolm X over samples collaged with a Romare Bearden—level attention to detail, the album kick-started a Black Power renaissance in the culture.

Kendrick missed that wave of cultural nationalist rap that included P. But its legacy impacted his idol. Tupac Shakur, raised by members of the Black Panther Party, brought their ideology to bear on record and in life. Fusing black consciousness with the gangster trope popularized by the likes of Ice Cube, Tupac embodied the enlightened outlaw.

He shot at wayward police. He rhymed about police brutality, poverty, racism, female empowerment, drug addiction, and mass incarceration. And most importantly, to paraphrase Kendrick Lamar, he charismatically made it look sexy. Hiphop has been political as a culture since the heyday of one of its founders, Afrika Bambaataa. His Universal Zulu Nation organization helped squelch gang violence in the South Bronx back in the early 70s.

Kendrick also grew up under the social justice of rap duo dead prez, the positivist rhymes of Common, the consciousness of Lauryn Hill, Talib Kweli, and Mos Def.