On Feb. 10 2015, Kendrick Lamar dropped his newest single “The Blacker the Berry.” That and his previous two-Grammy winning single “i,” both generate heavy anticipation for his newest album, still lacking a name. Kendrick Lamar, ring-leader of TDE, Compton native, and prodigy of Dr.Dre has been in the limelight for some time now; since his 2012 release, Good Kid, M.A.A.D City which sold an impressive 242,000 copies its first week. With singles reaching the charts and almost all positive critical response, Kendrick Lamar’s album debut was a force to be reckoned with. With an astonishing combination of song-writing and wordplay like on “Art of Peer Pressure” and “Backseat Freestyle”, Good Kid quickly became a top album for both casual rap fans and heavy hip hop heads. [pullquote align=”center”]The Blacker the Berry’ is a song that will leave you floored. While it seemingly passes off as the polar opposite of “i,” they somehow manage to intertwine, both focusing on racial matters.[/pullquote]
“The Blacker the Berry” is a song that will leave you floored. While it seemingly passes off as the polar opposite of “i,” they somehow manage to intertwine, both focusing on racial matters. While “i” focuses on loving one’s self and celebrating one’s culture, K-Dott’s newest song takes a look at racial tension and racialized self-hatred. Lamar has not sounded this fierce since his jaw-dropping “Control” verse (If you haven’t heard it, listen to it and understand why people call it the rap verse of 2014) and for good reason. The first verse begins from the portrait of angry young black man, Lamar at 16. “You hate me don’t you? You hate my people. Your plan is to terminate my culture,” he shouts at the listener, directly talking about his fans, as well as black culture as a whole. He feels that anything created by black culture is at the same time loved and hated. Loved for its obvious creativity and expression and hated because it wasn’t the product of white consciousness. Lamar ends his song with one of the heaviest lines, explaining why he refers to himself as a hypocrite in his first verse. “So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street? When gang banging make me kill a ***** blacker than me? Hypocrite!” He believes that, quite often, hypocrisy is a much more complicated moral position than is generally allowed. The song brilliantly executes social commentary on racial stereotypes, parallels of African tribes and gangs, and black culture as a whole – with none better to do it than Kendrick Lamar.
On the other side of the coin is “i” (sometimes known as “I Love Myself”), which won two Grammy’s this year – Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance. When he premiered this song on LA’s Power 106, he explained that this song is about self-expression and the fact that there isn’t enough self-love on the streets of Compton, where he grew up. It’s easy to understand how this is a song about self-love, if it isn’t made quickly apparent by the hook, “I love myself!” but the feel the whole song brings is upbeat. The production (done by Rahki) will make mostly everyone dance – even if it’s only a head nod – or at least feel joy. The hook embraces the fact that there are many things in this world that go wrong, but that still doesn’t leave reason to love the world and, of course, yourself. For his last verse, Lamar hopes that people like him can take him as an example. “Finna run into a building, lay my body in the street,” stating he’d plan to run into a building to avoid the gang violence he now sees, but at times prefer that his past would catch up to him, and kill him – leaving him as an example for future gangbangers.
Kendrick Lamar has always been considered lyrical, from his first mixtapes like Overly Dedicated and Section.80, to his newest songs, allowing him to remain a top player in the rap game for many years to come. Be sure to keep a look out for his newest album sometime in 2015, alongside the rest of the TDE crew (Ab-Soul, ScHoolboy Q, Isaiah Rashad, Jay Rock, sza), four of which dropped an album in 2014.
Zach Ritz is a second-year student majoring in communication studies. He can be reached at ZR812833@wcupa.edu.