The police cruiser was designed by a painter named Blue, an acquaintance of Kendrick and TDE. The label approached him with the idea of having Kendrick perform on top of the cop car, and because the artist had sketched a live painting a month prior for the rapper’s gig on Ellen, he was a natural fit to tag the police cruiser for Kendrick’s BET Awards performance. At the BET Awards, in a room full of black people, “Alright” hit harder. There was something poignant about it, and not since N.W.A, Ice-T’s “Cop Killer,” or J Dilla’s “Fuck the Police” had an artist been so direct about how he and his community felt about abusive law enforcement. To see it interpreted that way—atop a symbol of such mistreatment—crystallized the song and the moment. Think of the irony: a young black man, with twisted hair and ripped denim, who looked like the others being targeted by police, was publicly taking back the idea of freedom and prosperity. Then consider the shock of seeing it live for the first time, the delight in seeing someone like Kendrick take that kind of stance. The imagery was striking: we already knew him as a supreme lyricist, but with gigs like these—along with his Grammy turn with Imagine Dragons in 2014—the rapper was becoming one of the world’s greatest entertainers and a full-on artiste.
But there was at least one person who did not like Kendrick’s statement: talk show host and pundit Geraldo Rivera, who went on Fox News to condemn the “Alright” performance. On a segment of The Five, Rivera lambasted the track, saying that the song wasn’t helpful. “This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years,” he said. “This is exactly the wrong message.” Kendrick, in response to the TV pundit, asked, “How can you take a song that’s about hope, and turn it into hatred? The problem isn’t me standing on a cop car, his attempt [dilutes] the real problem… the senseless acts of killing these young boys out here. For the most part, it’s avoiding the truth. Hip-hop is not the problem, our reality is the problem.” Geraldo’s narrative was the same type of “All Lives Matter” rhetoric that some right-wing conservatives used to minimize the long-standing abuse that people of color have been exposed to for generations. To say “All Lives Matter” was to say “Let’s get back to how things used to be, back when we could look away from the abuse and not have to address it.” It was to ignore the privilege that created this chasm, hoping that this fad would go away. Now, due to the prevalence of social media and smartphones, there was no way to avoid the issue. You couldn’t act like police brutality wasn’t a problem, or that blacks in the inner city didn’t have viable concerns with how they were being treated in their own neighborhoods. They were handled like they didn’t belong, like they were somehow hindering police officers who were there to protect and serve. To say “All Lives Matter” was to insinuate that “we’re all in this together,” but U.S. history had shown that simply wasn’t true. “All” meant “white,” and with the rise of Black Lives Matter, a new generation of black people were saying they’d no longer be silent, that the fight of our ancestors had not gone in vain.
Geraldo’s stance echoed the same argument used after each mass shooting in the States. When a young man grabs an assault rifle and shoots up a school or a mall, conservatives blame violent video games, or heavy metal music, or anything that skirts the real problem: that citizens shouldn’t be able to buy an assault rifle at a department store. We pray for the fallen, we mourn for the families, but then our leaders don’t do anything to regulate gun purchases. So to claim that hip-hop has done more than racism to damage the black community is a flat-out lie: hip-hop saves the community; it’s the voice of the voiceless, the sound of oppressed people spinning negativity into vibrant art. Genres like soul and jazz also carry healing powers, and they, too, can get political, but not like hip-hop. When done correctly, rap knows how to cut directly to it. Jazz is mostly about tone; it’s largely instrumental, so listeners have to surmise what musicians like Kamasi Washington are trying to say with their instruments. Rappers use very direct language, and Kendrick was no exception, at least on “Alright.” Though he was known to shield his message behind dense layers of poetry and dual meanings, the words here don’t leave anything to the imagination. This wouldn’t be the last run-in between Kendrick and Fox News.
As people began to digest To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick took subtle steps toward blending his community back home. The rapper had signed a deal with Reebok to release his own sneaker with the words BLUE on the left shoe and RED on the right one. While this was Kendrick’s way of trying to push for a resolution between Pirus and Crips in Compton, it was also a savvy business move. This was Kendrick trying to create the world that he rapped about. He had aspirations of the two groups getting along, or at least coming together to fight common enemies who threatened the livelihood of red and blue alike. In his view, as gang culture eradicated black men in Compton—whether by death or incarceration—there were still trigger-happy cops and shady politicians with whom to contend, and those battles were more important than fighting for city blocks they didn’t even own. Kendrick’s plan was ambitious; to combat a long-standing gang culture took incredible fortitude. Yet this signaled a major breakthrough for him personally: in years past, the shy kid from Compton would’ve never gotten involved in the battle, but now, as the hottest rapper in the world, Kendrick was using his celebrity to bring awareness to a range of issues. Finally, after twelve years of honing his craft, the rapper was on top. All that he’d seen, all those poems in Mr. Inge’s class, those sidewalk freestyles with Matt Jeezy, the pressure-packed audition for Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, the days of dreaming with Dave Free, being shot at, traveling up and down the road in a bus and performing to half-empty arenas, all those things led to this point—to the day where he’d have Compton on his back and the public’s full attention. At last, Kendrick’s father, Kenny, could see him on the BET Awards. He was dreaming big like his mother had told him to. He kept going and kept God first, just like his friends asked, and like Tupac indirectly urged him to do. The days of food stamps and Section 8 rentals were gone. The years of pain were no more.
But although Kendrick’s professional dreams were coming through, an intriguing consequence began taking shape: He was becoming a political figure—however reluctantly. To Pimp a Butterfly was being hailed as a different kind of breakthrough, mostly because of songs like “Alright,” “The Blacker the Berry,” and “Hood Politics,” the last of which thumbed its nose at the U.S. political system. Kendrick’s new perch unsettled him; he was still coming to grips with his own political views—in rap music, and otherwise. In 2012, Kendrick admitted that he didn’t vote, that he was disillusioned with the country’s political leaders and the direction the U.S. was headed. He put his faith in God, not man. “I don’t believe in none of the shit that’s going on in the world,” he once said. “So basically, do what you do, do good with your people and live your life because what’s going on isn’t really in our hands. If it’s not in the president’s hands, then it’s definitely not in our hands.” The song “Hood Politics” doubled down on this notion; Kendrick compared Congress to gang members fighting over territory, just like his friends whom the public sought to vilify. “From Compton to Congress, it’s set trippin’ all around,” Kendrick rhymed. “Ain’t nothin’ new but a flew of new Demo-Crips and Re-Blood-licans / Red state versus a blue state, which one you governin’?”
In his heart of hearts, Kendrick didn’t want to be the catalyst of any sort of political fodder. He was still a loner, still the isolated soul who’d rather sit in the corner and watch from afar. He preferred self-reflection; America was headed down the wrong path and he was trying to comprehend it like everyone else. He didn’t have all the answers, but his music proved that he was willing to work through it with the rest of us. With his newfound stardom, Kendrick was finding out that he couldn’t have it both ways, that he couldn’t create that kind of music and say those kinds of things without touching nerves. He was the voice of the people now, and to sit on the sidelines wa
s no longer an option. It was a compelling contradiction and an unintended side effect. Kendrick had high hopes for good kid, m.A.A.d city and To Pimp a Butterfly, but he didn’t anticipate this level of reaction or dissection of his art so soon. Changing the course of hip-hop is one thing, but raising the ire of right-wingers was something entirely different. That’s partially why Kendrick’s message echoed so deeply in the black community: he wasn’t trying to become a legislator, and that he couldn’t be bullied only riled up the right even further.
Kendrick’s worlds were beginning to collide. That December, President Barack Obama spoke to People magazine about his favorite songs, albums, and moments of 2015, and revealed that Kendrick’s “How Much a Dollar Cost” was his favorite track of the year. Within the scope of pop culture, this news proved once again that Obama was a man of the people, that even though he was the commander in chief, he tapped the pulse of what was in vogue. It also showed that he was open to differing opinions and respected the free speech that Kendrick epitomized throughout To Pimp a Butterfly. The record wasn’t at all flattering to politicians or the societal constructs that divide the country. But the president heard the art in it, and he respected Kendrick’s viewpoint, even if it didn’t paint him or the system in the best light. President Obama even got an explicit shoutout on “Hood Politics”: “They give us guns and drugs, call us thugs / Make it they promise to fuck with you / No condom, they fuck with you, Obama say, ‘What it do?’ ”
The president took it a step further when asked in a YouTube chat whom he’d pick in a rap battle between Kendrick and Drake. “I think Drake is an outstanding entertainer,” Obama said in 2016. “But, Kendrick, his lyrics… his last album [To Pimp a Butterfly] was outstanding. Best album I think last year.” Obama had been elected to the White House when Kendrick was just twenty years old, back when the rapper was still in Compton and hadn’t seen the world. In those days, Kendrick could only imagine a way out, and no politician could solve his friends being killed in cold blood. President Obama wasn’t there in the city; Kendrick couldn’t touch or see his impact. So it was tough to fathom that some man in an office 2,700 miles away could solve the struggle in his backyard. Obama wasn’t there to negotiate peace between Pirus and Crips, and he wasn’t there when Kendrick’s uncle got popped at Louis Burgers.
But to see Obama was something completely different; you didn’t realize his magnitude until you were in the same room with him, or at least in the same vicinity. For those of us in Washington, D.C., and its suburbs, the Obama presidency hit us differently. We were on constant Obama Watch; you never knew when he’d pop up in the restaurant you were in, or if he was at the same concert you were attending. Not only was he the country’s celebrity, but he was our celebrity. To see him and Michelle was the ultimate thrill, and with each passing motorcade, there was this question: “Was that… him?!”
In January 2016, Kendrick traveled to Washington, D.C., and to the White House, to meet President Obama in person. Not even a year earlier, Kendrick had photoshopped himself and his friends mobbing in front of this very building, flashing stacks of money on its lawn. But now he was there, speaking directly to the man. According to reports, they were there to discuss community building, to talk about cities like Compton and South Side Chicago and the challenges they were facing. In photos from the meeting, Kendrick looked reverent, almost intimidated by Obama’s presence, like a child meeting his hero for the first time. Obama was no longer an idea; he was a living, breathing human who was just as excited to meet the rapper. “The way people look at me these days—that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him,” Kendrick told Billboard. “We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human. When [the president] said to my face what his favorite record was—I understood that, no matter how high-ranking you get in this world, you’re human.” That’s what drew the two together in the first place: the two men arose from unlikely places to the pinnacles of their respective professions, and in that quiet moment in the Oval Office, Kendrick and President Obama openly wondered how they arrived here.
Kendrick’s road hadn’t gotten any easier; with great success came the pressure to top it, and to always be on. The TDE team had spoken openly about this notion of “hustling like you broke,” of never ever resting on your laurels and to keep working in silence. And while Kendrick was already thinking about his next record, he had let his guard down just a little to receive praise. If President Obama liked his music, he must’ve been doing something right. As he told Billboard, “Even the president has got to hear that snare drum.” That Kendrick became acquainted with the nation’s first black president was a dream that he wished his grandmother had been there to see.
The accolades were beginning to roll in for To Pimp a Butterfly. Pretty much every major publication lionized it, even if they were still trying to unpack all its density. By early 2016, it’d been almost a year since the album’s release, but the record just sort of stuck around, even with the lightning-fast speed of the web-driven music industry, where albums are considered old just a few months after their release. That was because musicians were largely focused on singles, not full albums as a body of work. We were in the streaming era, and there was a notion that fans didn’t listen to albums as art anymore. So some musicians put their full attention into one song that could secure millions of plays and land on someone’s playlist. Kendrick harkened back to the likes of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, both of whom saw the album medium as a listening experience meant to transport souls from one point to another. They created full suites of music, bending the culture toward them and not the other way around. At the time of this writing, Marvin’s 1971 opus, What’s Going On, was forty-nine years old and still incredibly relevant; its denouncement of war, poverty, and child neglect applied equally to the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan. Stevie’s 1976 double album, Songs in the Key of Life, is still volleyed as perhaps the greatest record of all time (though one could argue that any of Stevie’s albums from 1972 to 1976 are in the conversation). These albums didn’t conform to the arbitrary notion that mainstream records should cater to what was popular on the radio; in fact, those albums showed that they weren’t overly preoccupied with mainstream acceptance. To Pimp a Butterfly was very much of that ilk, and Kendrick’s music should be held in the same canon as Marvin and Stevie, as artists who shifted the culture, and made everything before them feel obsolete.
Post-Butterfly, it seemed every record had some elements of jazz or creative freedom, which led to the most fertile period of socially conscious black music since Marvin and Stevie ruled the terrain. You had records like Freetown Sound by the New York musician Blood Orange, which unpacked the fragility of black life over a wide-ranging soundtrack of eighties-centric funk and pop. The Barbados-born, British-based saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings traveled to Johannesburg, linked with a group of local jazz musicians, and released an album called Wisdom of Elders, which, much like Kamasi Washington’s The Epic, reflected the tenor of black people through murky sonic textures and chants. The Knowles sisters had the most powerful records of the 2016 set—Beyoncé with Lemonade (Kendrick was a guest on album cut “Freedom”) and its theme of empowerment for black women, and Solange’s A Seat at the Table, a sprawling soul opus that helped calm the black rage burning outside. In part, Kendrick’s album made it okay for his peers to go in, to create and release whatever their vision desired regardless of what the public and critics expected. Through artists like these, a heightened black awareness began to emerge in pop culture, and thus a new class of protest music began taking shape. They were the new vanguard.
* * *
The scene was a familiar one: Kendrick Lamar was at the Grammy Awards, back at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. This time it was 2016, two years removed from the 56th annual awards, which had now become a legendary tale. Kendrick wasn’t the baby-faced newcomer who’d barely entered the industry. He was a little older, a little wiser, and walked
into this year’s ceremony with eleven nominations. He had been nominated for seven awards two years prior and hadn’t won any. This year, To Pimp a Butterfly was nominated for Best Rap Album, Album of the Year, Best Rap/Sung Performance for “These Walls,” and Best Rap Song, Best Music Video, Song of the Year, and Best Rap Performance for “Alright.” This wasn’t like 2014; because Kendrick had seen a lot more of the business, the rapper—at least professionally—was no longer the demure creator who just seemed happy to be there. He was coming to take everything. Simply put, “I want to win them all,” Kendrick told Billboard before the awards show.
He was up against history, though: only two rap albums before his—Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in 1999, and OutKast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below in 2004—had won Grammys for Album of the Year. Though good kid, m.A.A.d city had also been nominated for Album of the Year in 2014, Kendrick’s follow-up album had touched way more people. good kid was stellar work, and in the years following its release, there was a large contingent of fans who held that record in higher esteem than To Pimp a Butterfly. Yet given the mass critical acclaim, along with the captivating live sets to promote it, there was a feeling that To Pimp a Butterfly had a legitimate shot to win the Grammy for Album of the Year in 2016. Kendrick winning that award for that album would’ve been perfect, given the way it shifted black culture.
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