Kendrick Lamar's Poem In The Rap River

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Kendrick Lamar is a very respected, powerful rapper in the rap game right now. He has a lot of influence on the rap community and to the listeners of his music. He has a lot of different songs that focus around the idea of racism, police brutality, and equality. One of his most well known songs and one of the songs that focuses on racism is his song “Alright” of the album “To Pimp A Butterfly”. The music video to this song is what really tells the story to this song along with the very powerful poems at the beginning and end. Kendrick’s music video is a lot different than the song and goes a lot deeper than just the lyrics. About half the video takes place before the song even starts, during this time Kendrick focuses on the visuals and his …show more content…
Kendrick has seen first hand the effects of racism in all communities whether it be rough, poor neighborhoods like Compton or the music industry and the people in it. Kendrick as a kid grew up like most people in Compton do, surrounded by gangs, drugs, alcohol, and crime. When Kendrick started school he found his passion in language arts or english. He found himself writing frequently and really liking it, soon writing turned into poems and then they turned into lyrics. Years later he releases his second album “To Pimp A Butterfly” which went platinum and on that album is a very special, very powerful song “Alright”. “Alright” speaks on racism, police brutality, and equality. Police brutality is a major subject in this song and references police shootings of African-American people like the shooting of Michael Brown and many others. Kendrick, in the music video shows many kids, kids are Kendrick’s main inspiration and reason to write, in an interview with legendary producer Rick Rubin he talks about how kids have no fear, they are not scared of anything and how that inspires him to write and to help. Kendrick’s main goal is to help, he doesn’t want kids to grow up in the same environment he did he just wants everything to be

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