The song I chosen to analyze for this assignment from Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly” is the album’s second single “The Blacker the Berry” featuring Assassin. The song title is a reference to The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life by Wallace Thurman in 1929. In the novel, the main character faced several struggles due to her dark skin and both the song and the book title serves as positive affirmation to African American. “The Blacker the Berry” was produced at a studio in Los Angeles, even though most of the people involved in the production were not from the city. The song’s beat was produced by Boi-1da and KOZ, both from Canada, along with Terrace Martin who is a Los Angeles native. There are numerous writers involved with the
…show more content…
And although it is a controversial action, using a portion of an older song and reusing it in a new song, sampling has a long history in the genre hip hop. The first sample piece, “It’s Your Thing” appeared to be quite popular and inspiriting since the song was also sampled several by other rappers like Kayne West and Lloyd Bank multiple times. Kendrick samples the drum break of “It’s Your Thing” in the beginning of his song to mark the starting point of the vocal and also to capture listener’s attention as the beat drops and becomes louder. Kendrick’s second piece of sampling comes one of his older song, “The Art of Peer Pressure” around the thirty second mark of “The Blacker the Berry” with the vocal “You you you” in the adlib. It seems like this piece of sampling not only serves as a call for attention to the listener, but also accusing the listener of their …show more content…
He explains the stereotypes and what and how it is like to be African American in America because of the socially constructed image of his race in the media. He fills the rest of the verse with references of discrimination his people faced in the past due to their skin color and physical appearance. However, Kendrick took a turn to criticize the media instead of bluntly venting at them with the line “You vandalize my perception but can’t take style from me”7. This is an address to culture appropriation in society, which also refer back to how people want to be part of the culture, but not the people. It appears that Kendrick wants to reassure himself and other African American of their identities through the saying “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice,” in the song’s hook, but the last line seems to imply racial profiling that resulted in white-on-black violent. This appears to only fueling up the conflicts between the racial groups rather than conforming African American for their
And although it is a controversial action, using a portion of an older song and reusing it in a new song, sampling has a long history in the genre hip hop. The first sample piece, “It’s Your Thing” appeared to be quite popular and inspiriting since the song was also sampled several by other rappers like Kayne West and Lloyd Bank multiple times. Kendrick samples the drum break of “It’s Your Thing” in the beginning of his song to mark the starting point of the vocal and also to capture listener’s attention as the beat drops and becomes louder. Kendrick’s second piece of sampling comes one of his older song, “The Art of Peer Pressure” around the thirty second mark of “The Blacker the Berry” with the vocal “You you you” in the adlib. It seems like this piece of sampling not only serves as a call for attention to the listener, but also accusing the listener of their …show more content…
He explains the stereotypes and what and how it is like to be African American in America because of the socially constructed image of his race in the media. He fills the rest of the verse with references of discrimination his people faced in the past due to their skin color and physical appearance. However, Kendrick took a turn to criticize the media instead of bluntly venting at them with the line “You vandalize my perception but can’t take style from me”7. This is an address to culture appropriation in society, which also refer back to how people want to be part of the culture, but not the people. It appears that Kendrick wants to reassure himself and other African American of their identities through the saying “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice,” in the song’s hook, but the last line seems to imply racial profiling that resulted in white-on-black violent. This appears to only fueling up the conflicts between the racial groups rather than conforming African American for their