Kendrick Lamar is a widely recognised American rapper and songwriter from Compton, California. His music is notorious for its diverse range of musical genres and exposure of the socio-political struggles that African-Americans face growing up in America. Through the study of Section80 (2011) and How to Pimp a Butterfly (2015), this essay will explore the ways in which Kendrick Lamar uses his music to express socio-political issues, and if his rise to fame effects this. Lamar’s first independent studio album, which he refers to as a mixtape, is Section80. The title itself is a reference to the American inner-city housing epidemic and also his childhood in the 1980s. The album illustrates difficulties within Lamar’s community in Compton through
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This is a common characteristic in hip hop realism which is typically ‘filled with metaphors that expose social, political perspectives’, it provides the listener with an insight into the black community to understand the issues which Lamar explores.
Hood Politics
Compton is a city notorious for its gang violence and gun crime, the crime rapidly increased after many of the middle-class residents left, in which a ‘new black culture emerged out of high crime and poverty rates’. The threat of death became a constant fear on the streets due to the destabilisation of neighbourhoods built up around government housing. Lamar expresses the harsh reality of growing up in such a threatening environment within his music. In Pimp a Butterfly, Compton is represented by a ‘cocoon’ which emphasises its confining nature to the ‘caterpillars’; young black men who find themselves restrained within the gang-governed community. ‘Institutionalised’ is a track on the album which further expresses this, by portraying the ingrained …show more content…
To Pimp a Butterfly opens with the recurring statement that ‘every nigger is a star’. This is a response to the marginalisation of black lives, which hints at the overall perspective of the album: that ‘blackness is power’. This notion is also suggested by the song title ‘Fuck Your Ethnicity’ from Section80, yet this title points towards ideas of equality rather than focusing on the struggles of the black lives. However, it is Pimp a Butterfly’s ‘Blacker the Berry’ which expresses Lamar’s perspective on racial tensions in its rawest, most aggressive form. This venomous track is a ‘mighty reflection on race relations’, which is influentially absorbed by the
This is a common characteristic in hip hop realism which is typically ‘filled with metaphors that expose social, political perspectives’, it provides the listener with an insight into the black community to understand the issues which Lamar explores.
Hood Politics
Compton is a city notorious for its gang violence and gun crime, the crime rapidly increased after many of the middle-class residents left, in which a ‘new black culture emerged out of high crime and poverty rates’. The threat of death became a constant fear on the streets due to the destabilisation of neighbourhoods built up around government housing. Lamar expresses the harsh reality of growing up in such a threatening environment within his music. In Pimp a Butterfly, Compton is represented by a ‘cocoon’ which emphasises its confining nature to the ‘caterpillars’; young black men who find themselves restrained within the gang-governed community. ‘Institutionalised’ is a track on the album which further expresses this, by portraying the ingrained …show more content…
To Pimp a Butterfly opens with the recurring statement that ‘every nigger is a star’. This is a response to the marginalisation of black lives, which hints at the overall perspective of the album: that ‘blackness is power’. This notion is also suggested by the song title ‘Fuck Your Ethnicity’ from Section80, yet this title points towards ideas of equality rather than focusing on the struggles of the black lives. However, it is Pimp a Butterfly’s ‘Blacker the Berry’ which expresses Lamar’s perspective on racial tensions in its rawest, most aggressive form. This venomous track is a ‘mighty reflection on race relations’, which is influentially absorbed by the