Kendrick Lamar 6

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Good Kid, M.A.A.D. Industry:
Kendrick Lamar and the Reclamation of Mainstream Rap
by Mark McNulty
December 14, 2105
Undergraduate Thesis in the Honors Program for American Studies
Fordham College Rose Hill at Fordham University

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Table of Contents
Section Page
Thesis statement 3
Introduction: The Crossroads, Hip Hop, and Kendrick Lamar 4
Chapter 1: Context for Contemporary Rap 9
“The Blueprint”: Corporate Consolidation and Black Music Marketing 9
“Fight The Power”: Rap’s Original Grassroots 15
“Trap Queen”: Narrow and Negative Creative Spaces 21
Chapter 2: Kendrick Lamar 31
“Good Kid”: Biography 31
Section 80 36
Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City 40
To Pimp a Butterfly 47
Conclusion: “One Time For Your Mind” 55
Bibliography 57

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Thesis Statement:
Corporate consolidation in the music industry has driven from mainstream rap music the
empowering, grassroots messages which rap was originally built upon by forcing rappers who
seek commercial success into narrow creative spaces which encourage homogenized content that
is often destructive to black self-identification. In this context the career of Kendrick Lamar is an
anomaly. By producing highly-marketable and commercially successful rap music centered upon
Afro-centric messages, challenges to dominant ideologies, and criticism of oneself and one’s
community, Lamar defies this premise. He seemingly proves that a rapper can become
commercially successful in the new millennium while offering content that, true to rap’s original
ethos, is constructive towards black self-identification.

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Introduction: The Crossroads, Hip Hop, and Kendrick Lamar
This research began as an investigation into the stigma surrounding the convoluted
concept of “selling out” in popular music. A sell out is one who betrays a cause to which he or
she is loyal for personal gain1. The concept of selling out is particularly prevalent among the
black community, where it “haunts the African-American imagination.”2 I recalled the myth of
Robert Johnson, a well-known tale in the world of Blues music. Arguably the most talented of
the Mississippi Delta blues singers from the 1920’s and 1930’s, Johnson allegedly sold his soul
to the devil at midnight at a crossroads for skill and fame. His catalogue, including the often-
covered “Me and the Devil Blues”, is one of the only corps of music to survive from the Delta as
a result of the recording contract afforded Johnson. When I spoke to contemporary blues player
Guy Davis about the myth, he suggested that “every Black performer in this country has his or
her own crossroads moment at one point in a career.”
The idea of selling out, or selling one’s soul appears countless times in mainstream and
underground rap lyrics.3 I asked myself why Black musicians must grapple with a moment at the
“crossroads”, and why is this discourse so prominent in rap music? Thus my research became
focused on rap, and the wider hip hop culture which encompasses it. The more hip hop
scholarship I consumed, the less determinant the concept of selling out became. This is not to say
that sellout rhetoric is not relevant in rap. It’s meaning has simply been called into question by
my research, which demonstrates that rap music in general has “sold out” in a profound way.
Over the past 25 years the cultural expression of rap music has become a cultural product created
1
Randall Kennedy, Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal (New York City:Pantheon Books, 2008), 4.
2
ibid, 3.
3
Gang Starr - “Mass Appeal”(1994), Snoop Dogg - “Murder Was The Case” (1994), Eminem - “Say Goodbyeto
Hollywood”(2002), French Montana- “Devil Want My Soul” (2012), Kanye West - “TheMorning ft. Raekwon, Common, Pusha
T, 2 Chainz” (2012)

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and marketed through a cultural industry. The dominant culture now incorporates the hip hop
subculture and regurgitates a mutation of it to the masses.
Hip Hop arose in the 1970’s as a cultural expression through which black youth could
negotiate an identity in opposition to the dominant culture, employing artistic forms like graffiti,
rapping, and break dancing which challenged pre-existing standards in art and society. Ground
zero was the South Bronx, a densely populated part of New York City where urban dysfunction
and displacement created a flailing Black and Latino community. Hip hop, with rap functioning
as its most prominent expression, was a response to this dysfunction. As hip hop grew in the
1980’s, and proliferated outside of New York City, it continued to respond to the ever-changing
circumstances in urban communities of color4. Tricia Rose asserts that rapping is centered on
three concepts of style: flow, layering and rupture. “These effects at the level of style and
aesthetics suggest affirmative ways in which profound social dislocation and rupture can be
managed and perhaps contested in the cultural arena.”5 Writer Nelson George suggests, however,
that hip hop no longer belongs to its creators. Corporations which own the rights to the music,
Sony/BMG, Warner Music Group, and most importantly Universal Music Group, act as
gatekeepers for the mainstream, that is the most commercially promoted and financially
successful of rap music. In this climate rap music which challenges dominant ideologies and
provides empowering negotiations of identity for black youth is conspicuously absent from the
mainstream because of its perceived lack of marketability6.
4
George Nelson, Hip Hop America (New York City:Penguin, 2005). In chapter three, “Gangsters Real and Unreal” George
establishes that gangsta rap, a hip hop subgenre emphasizing crime and deviance which sprang up around 1989, was a direct
responseto the violence and destruction of the crack epidemic. The “loss and desire” which the epidemic fostered led to an
elevation of materialism in the Black community as the 1990’s unfolded, and therap music mirrored this, too.
5
Tricia Rose. “A StyleNobody Can Deal With: Politics, Style and the PostindustrialCity in Hip Hop,”in Microphone Fiends:
Youth Music and Youth Culture, ed. by Andrew Ross (New York City, Routledge, 1994) 71-87.
6
Pierre Bourdieu. The Rules of Art (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992). Critical theories on cultural production suggest
this scenario is inevitable in an artistic field. Thosewho control the means of production seek profit, and artisticproducts which
are viewed as less marketable are not sponsored by thesegatekeepers. In his analysis of 19th century French literature, Bourdieu

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Since 2012 and his major label debut album, rapper Kendrick Lamar has defied these
precedents by producing commercially successful mainstream rap which offers challenges to
dominant ideologies like elitism and White supremacy, and constructive, empowering
negotiations of black self-identity. He also levels critique directly at the music industry.
Kendrick’s lyrical content is almost always autobiographical, and whatever he offers to the Black
community is a by-product a lyrical negotiation of his own identity, and his own experience from
growing up in the ghetto of Compton, California. It is crucial that Kendrick’s lyrics remain in
proper context. When asked who he was speaking to in the controversial third verse of his 2015
single “The Blacker the Berry”, Lamar suggested he was speaking only to himself. “I’m not
speaking to the Black community, or of the Black community….Know who I am, and understand
where I come from before you make any remarks,” Lamar asked of listeners in his interview
with hip hop journalist Rob Markman. “I’ve been through a lot, and I’ve seen a lot. Where I
come from we…I did a lot to tear down my own community.”7 Lamar participated in the warfare
between Blood and Crip gangs that has become institutionalized in Compton, and it spawned
resentment which he still carries.8 Since entering the record industry four years ago Kendrick has
quickly become one of the most controversial, yet most respected rappers ever by fans, critics
and artistic peers. Rolling Stone magazine even calls him “the greatest rapper of his generation.”9
I will analyze Kendrick’s three most recent and commercially successful albums, Section
80 (2011), Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City (2012), and To Pimp A Butterfly (2015), which serve to
found that authors can accrue either market value or symbolic value, but not both, as the two are inversely correlated. Thus, those
cultural products with a high market value tend to have less symbolic value, and represent a narrow range of themes or ideas
which have already been proven successful in the market. Letrez Myer and Christine Kleck rely on Theodor Adorno’s theory of
cultural production in their analysis of therap music which topped Billboard charts in the 1990’s and early 2000’s.
7
Kendrick Lamar, interview by Rob Markman, MTV, March 31, 2015.
8
ibid.
9
Kendrick Lamar, interview by Ellen Degeneres, The Ellen Degeneres Show, May 28, 2015.

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open up the constricted creative space in mainstream rap. Because of the near hegemonic
influence of rap music on black youth, and a degree of visibility in the white community which
outstrips that of all other black cultural products,10 Lamar’s music has the potential to reshape
how black youth define their identities through rap, and how white audiences perceive the black
community through its representation in rap. Kendrick Lamar is making substantial contributions
to the particularly American debate over racial tension, a debate which has returned to relevancy
as a result of frequent incidents of police brutality and murder, and the subsequent “Black Lives
Matter” campaign. Conscious of the opportunity he has to reach a mass audience, Kendrick is on
a self-described mission to connect with black youth who continue to negotiate their identity as a
marginal population in an increasingly polarized America.
10
Tricia Rose. The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why it Matters (New York City:
Basic Books, 2008) p. ix-30.

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Distinguishing rap from hip hop:
The words “rap” and “hip hop” are often used interchangeably. Rap music, however, “is
one cultural element within the larger social movement of hip hop.11” “While hip-hop has been
recognized as a music genre by the Billboard charts, culturally it is not viewed as an actual style
of music. Hip-hop is used to refer to culture, language, and behavior….while rap is the musical
form that emerged from this culture12.” George Nelson highlights the symbiotic relationship
between rap music and the urban culture which spawned it, with influence flowing both ways.
The wider point which this thesis seeks to establish is that the mainstream rap music from the
past twenty years dating back to the mid 1990’s, by failing to display the diversity of the Black
experience, has a negative affect on Black youth. Kendrick Lamar, through an honest and
unvarnished appraisal of his own experience, reappropriates that affect and offers a positive
influence.
11
Rose, “A Style Nobody Can Deal With”, p. 72.
12
Myer, Letrez and Christine Kleck, “FromIndependent to Corporate:A Political Economic Analysis of Rap Billboard
Toppers,”Popular Music and Society 30 (2007): 137-148.

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Chapter 1: Context for Contemporary Rap
“The Blueprint”: Corporate Consolidation and Black Music Marketing
Scholars assert that to understand contemporary rap music one must first comprehend the
structural factors in the music industry which weigh on black cultural production, particularly
how the industry has dealt with black music in the past.13 Though it began as a cultural
expression, rap music has become a business, with Black cultural expression existing as the
“product”. Rapper Bahamadia articulated this frankly in the mid 1990’s. “You have to
understand that this is a business,” she says, “When you sign your name on that dotted line on
your contract you are literally a walking human business as well as a human being.”14 A glance
at the net worth of prominent rappers demonstrates how valuable these “walking human
businesses” are. Many are also entrepreneurs, like Jay Z and P. Diddy, who are worth $650
million and $730 million respectively. Rappers who do not have clothing and media empires are
also worth astounding sums of money. Drake, whose music I will analyze later in this thesis, is
worth $75 million. Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa, who signed with Warner Music Group one
year after his first album in 2007, is now worth $45 million. The Game, a rapper from Kendrick
Lamar’s hometown of Compton, is worth $22 million.15 In 2004, Forbes Magazine, which noted
that rap has “moved beyond its musical roots”, estimated that the music generates over $10
billion annually.16 These stupendous sums lend credence to the belief that African American
culture is the most marketable pathology in the world.17
13
Keith Negus, “TheBusiness of Rap: Between theStreet and theExecutive Suite”, in That’s The Joint: A Hip Hop Studies
Reader, ed. by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal(New York City:Routledge, 2012) 656-669.
14
ibid, 657.
15
“Top 50 Rappers.”Celebrity Net Worth. Retrieved November 27, 2015.
16
Julie Watson. “Rapper’s Delight: A Billion Dollar Industry,”Forbes, February 8, 2004 (accessed November 29, 2015).
17
George, Hip Hop America, xiii.

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In the 1940’s, jazz and the blues were crassly categorized as “race music”, with Billboard
music magazine first dedicating a chart to rank this music in 1945.18 Though the language has
become more palatable, major record labels still promote and market rap music in its specific,
black context. Major labels deal with black music in separate, semi—independent divisions
through a process of portfolio management. A report for Columbia Records Group by the
Harvard Business school in 1971 advocated for these separate divisions, and they were seen as a
solution for major labels like Columbia and others which struggled in the 1960’s and 1970’s to
effectively market soul music19. It is important to note here how record labels handle music
based primarily on business initiatives as opposed to cultural or artistic ones. This is not
surprising, as the music industry is, at its core, an “industry”, though this can too often be
neglected by artistic purists. This reality now structures hip hop scholarship, which has “shifted
from reading the music and culture as an expressive community that resisted co-optation, to
understanding it as a commercially dominant culture and industry.”20
Letrez Myer and Christine Kleck lay bare some of the effects of corporate consolidation
on rap music’s aesthetic content. Published in 2007 by Popular Music and Society, their study
called “From Independent to Corporate: A Political Economic Analysis of Rap Billboard
Toppers” made an immense impact on my research. Their analysis provides a tangible
correlation between corporate practices and the aesthetic quality of the music which those
practices produce. The authors rely on a theory of culture industries which seeks to articulate
“how the pursuit of profit affects media content and structure.”21 They then combed Billboard
18
Myer and Kleck, “FromIndependent to Corporate”, 142.
19
Yvonne Bynoe, “Money, Power, and Respect:A Critique of the Business of Rap Music,”in Rhythm and Business: The
Political Economy of Black Music, ed. by Norman Kelly (New York City:Akashic Books, 2002) 221-234, 223.
20
Mickey Hess, “TheRap Career,” in That’s The Joint: A Hip Hop Studies Reader, ed. by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony
Neal (New York City:Routledge, 2012) 635-652, 640.
21

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Magazine’s Hot 100 chart, which ranks the popularity of songs in a given week according to
factors such as sales, and radio and video play. Their analysis spans from 2005 back to 1990, the
first year when rap appeared on the chart.
Myer and Kleck reference Keith Negus, who has suggested that independent labels drive
changes in popular music.22 On the contrary, major labels tend to rely on proven formulas for
success, taking little artistic risks with the music they sponsor. Most influential independent
labels were bought up by the majors in the 1990’s. By 1998 just five companies controlled 90%
of the music industry’s revenue: Seagram’s Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony
Music Group, EMI Group PLC and Bertelsmann Music Group. In 2004, Sony merged with
Bertelsmann to form Sony BMG, leaving control of the music industry to just four companies.23
In 2013, Universal absorbed EMI and then there were three. Universal Music Group exerts a
particularly dominant influence on the creation of rap music, having acquired ownership of
virtually every significant rap label. Cash Money founded by rapper Birdman, GOOD Music
founded by rapper Kanye West, Aftermath founded by rapper Dr. Dre, Bad Boy founded by
rapper P. Diddy, Def Jam founded by hip hop mogul Russell Simmons, and Roc-A-Fella
founded by rapper Jay Z are all under Universal’s umbrella. Even TDE, Top Dawg
Entertainment, the originally independent label which Kendrick Lamar is signed to, is now
owned by Universal Music Group. The media conglomerate was behind 20 of the 25 chart-
topping hit singles in 2013.24
In addition, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 eased regulations on the ownership of
radio stations, and a massive wave of consolidation ensued which saw hundreds of independent,
22
Keith Negus, Music Genres and Corporate Cultures (New York: Routledge, 1999) 58.
23
24
Noah Hubbel, “One Label Controls Almost All of Hip Hop, and That’s a Problem for MusicFans,” Westword, March 24, 2014
(accessed December 1, 2015).

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black-owned stations absorbed by multi-national corporations like Clear Channel
Communications. Before 1996, a company could own a maximum of 28 stations, and today
Clear Channel Communications owns over 1100, many of which compete for the same market
share in the same city. Bobbito Garcia was a co-host of “The Stretch Armstrong Show”, a New
York college radio show which played the music of rap superstars Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, and the
Notorious B.I.G. before these artists found success with major labels. As a result of the
consolidation in radio, he says, “artists started making music not for the audience, but for the
radio.”25
Even before this consolidation occurred, most independent labels were owned by white
executives.26 This further complicates the relationship between black music and the white
business interests which steer its direction based on commercial imperatives. In addition,
between 1995 and 2001, approximately 75 percent of rap’s consumer market was White, a figure
which has remained relatively constant to this day.27 This may be surprising, but that is because
most people underestimate the degree to which white suburban youth relate to black urban angst.
As Nelson George states, “There is an endearing part of white teenage mind (and, occasionally,
the adult one) that detests the outward manifestations of this nation’s mainstream culture,”28
manifestations which urban rap music often strikes against.
Through the lens of political economy, Negus succinctly summarizes the consequences of
corporate consolidation:
Political Economy has provided many insights into the various ways that corporate
ownership impinges upon cultural practices, highlighting how production occurs within a
25
Eric K. Arnold, “TheEffects of MediaConsolidation on Urban Radio,” Future of Music Coalition, May 16, 2008 (accessed
December 1, 2015).
26
Bynoe, “Money, Power, and Respect”, 226-228.
27
Rose, The Hip Hop Wars, 4.
28
George, Hip Hop America, 68.

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series of unequal power relations, how commercial pressures can limit the circulation of
unorthodox or opposing ideas, and how the control of production by a few corporations
can contribute to broader social divisions and inequalities of information, not only within
nations, but across the world.29
These words were echoed by rap duo Dead Prez in the chorus of their most famous song, “Hip
Hop” (2000), which simply suggests, “It’s bigger than hip hop! Hip hop! Hip hop!” Dead Prez is
alluding to the fact that rap’s impact goes beyond music. As a cultural practice, rap can affect
social dialogue and act as a form of advocacy. Yet the music has been reduced to a simple
commodity, with the duo claiming “these record labels slang our tapes like dope.” This discourse
does not suggest that rap music was taken over by corporate interests, for “the contexts for
creation in hip hop were never fully outside or in opposition to commodities.”30 Rap has been a
valuable commodity since “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang sold two million copies in
1979 for a black-owned, independent record label.31What is crucial then is not a supposed
transition to commodification, but rather the shift in the profit-making process in which the
power over rap’s commodification was transferred from small-scale black and Hispanic
entrepreneurs to white-owned, multi-national corporations.
29
Keith Negus, Music Genres and Corporate Cultures, (New York: Routledge, 1999) 15.
30
Rose, “A Style Nobody Can Deal With,” 82.
31
Hess, “TheRap Career,” 647. Mickey Hess quotes Chris Parker, a Bronx native who began rappingin theearly 1980’s as
KRS-One. KRS, described by George Nelson as one of rap’s “most complex minds”, suggested that the success of “Rapper’s
Delight” in 1979 drew focus to rap as a selling tool, and not a communication tool.

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“Fight the Power”: Rap’s Original Grassroots
In an attempt to hash out how structural factors in the music industry have diluted rap’s
grassroots resistance to mainstream culture and ideology, one must examine rap music before the
corporate consolidation which occurred in the 1990’s. Rap music from the 1970’s, 1980’s and
the early 1990’s was contextualized by urban upheaval, acted on behalf of marginalized black
populations, and offered constructive forms of self-identification as well as challenges to
mainstream culture and dominant ideologies. This nostalgic view of rap’s past is also pervasive
in lyrics, and many rappers reference this past as a method of aligning themselves with “the real
hip hop.”32 Hip hop scholarship is full of, and one could argue haunted by, dramatic exultations
of the past.
In That’s The Joint: The Hip Hop Studies Reader, Murray Forman and Mark Anthony
Neal condensed hip hop scholarship into one comprehensive volume which was last updated in
2012. In his chapter titled “The Rap Career”, Mickey Hess states that “several hip hop songs
depict rap’s formative years as less violent, more uplifting, less divisive, and most importantly,
untainted by the record industry.” He offers the example of rapper Common’s tune “I Used to
Love H.E.R.” which personifies hip hop as a female romantic interest. “Stressin’ how hardcore
and real she is / She was really the realest before she got into showbiz.” Here Common directly
references how business, or “showbiz”, has compromised the authenticity of hip hop. Hess also
points out that his example highlights the degree to which a debate over rap’s authenticity exists
in the music’s mainstream.33 My own example comes from Nasir Jones, aka Nas, considered by
many to be the greatest lyricist ever.34 On his 2006 track “Hip Hop is Dead” he complains,
32
Hess, “TheRap Career,” 646-647.
33
ibid
34

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“Everybody sound the same / commercialize the game / reminiscing when it wasn’t all business /
it forgot where it started / so we all gather here for the dearly departed.”
Tricia Rose is unequivocally at the forefront of rap scholarship, having penned multiple
books on rap music’s past, present, and future like Black Noise (1994) and The Hip Hop Wars
(1998). She offers a careful portrait of rap’s genesis in her 1994 piece “A Style Nobody Can
Deal With: Politics, Style and the Postindustrial City in Hip Hop”. She points to rap’s origins as
a cultural expression of resistance, and a means of establishing Black identity in the face of the
urban annihilation of black communities which took place in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
Afrika Bambaataa, one of rap’s most influential early producers, formed one of the first hip hop
crews and named it the Zulu Nation. This moniker immediately associated hip hop with a
powerful African tribe which warred with European colonizers during the New Imperialism of
the late 19th century. Bambaataa’s crew offered a collective identity for Black youth outside of
neighborhood gangs, and “filled the fraternal role gangs play in urban culture while de-
emphasizing crime and fighting.”35
As the title of Tricia Rose’s article suggests, the urban context in which rap music arose
is of particular significance to its identity as a cultural expression.
Life on the margins of postindustrial urban America is inscribed in hip hop style, sound,
lyrics and thematics. Emerging from the intersection of lack and desire in the
postindustrial city, hip hop manages the painful contradictions of social alienation and
prophetic imagination. Hip hop is an Afro-diasporic cultural form which attempts to
negotiate the experiences of marginalization.36
35
ibid, 18.
36
Rose, “A Style Nobody Can Deal With,” 71.

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When it began, hip hop sought “to seize the shifting urban terrain, to make it work on
behalf of the dispossessed.”37 A classic example of this is Grandmaster Flash and the Furious
Five’s bellwether track “The Message” featuring Melle Mel and Duke Bootee, which went
platinum a month after its release in 1982.38 The first verse begins, “Broken glass everywhere /
people pissing on the stairs, you know they just don’t care / I can’t take the smell, can’t take the
noise / got no money to move out I guess I got no choice.” The rest of the song runs through
scary and tragic portraits of the ghetto, harping particularly on the social and financial pressures
which make a decent standard of living nearly impossible to attain for Black urbanites. The now
famous words in the chorus resonated with Black youth trying to survive while pushed to the
brink by their shrinking urban landscape and the drugs and crime which saturated it. “Don’t push
me because I’m close to the edge / I’m trying not to lose my head.”
Rose offers a thorough discussion of the destruction wrought on the Black community in
the South Bronx as a result of Robert Moses’ remaking of New York City, and states that hip
hop was a direct result of this. “Hip hop emerged as a source of alternative identity formation
and social status for youth in a community whose older local support institutions had been all but
demolished along with large sections of its built environment.”39 She also points to a study of
punk music by Dick Hebdige and connects it to hip hop. “Style can be used as a gesture of
refusal, or as a form of oblique challenge to structures of domination. Hip hop artists use style as
a form of identity formation which plays on class distinctions and hierarchies by using
commodities to claim the cultural terrain.”40 Bolstering this assertion is scholar Kristine Wright
37
ibid, 72.
38
To be certified platinumby the Recording Industry Association of America a record must sell at least one million copies.
39
ibid, 78.
40
ibid, 80.

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in her chapter titled “Rise Up Hip-Hop Nation: From Deconstructing Racial Politics to Building
Positive Solutions”. She claims:
In the beginning, the expression of hip hop culture known as rap was the voice of the
urban youth underclass….Not only was rap music a black expressive cultural
phenomenon, it was also a discourse of resistance, a set of communicative practices that
constitute a text of resistance against white America’s racism, and its Euro-centric
cultural dominance…..In other words, rap was the political voice of this sector of
society.”41
The preeminent example of rap as “a discourse of resistance” is the music of Public
Enemy, a rap collective from Long Island who signed to Def Jam Recordings in the late 1980’s
while it was still an independent label. They were the first rap act to dominate the mainstream
with music grounded exclusively in dissent. Competing with pop, rock, jazz and other musical
forms, their second release, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, was the first rap
album voted album of the year in 1988 in the Village Voice’s influential poll.42 Their third
album, Fear of a Black Planet, bears a title which alludes strongly to concepts of Black power.
With “Fight The Power”, that album’s most popular single, Public Enemy solidified their place
as rap’s most subversive mainstream act.
In the music video for “Fight The Power”, thousands of Black people march in the streets
of New York City alongside Public Enemy’s frontmen Chuck D and Flava Flav. The entire
crowd chants the song’s chorus against a backdrop of Malcolm X’s portrait bordered by the
African color combination of red, green and black. In the second verse, Chuck D suggests that
41
Kristine Wright, “RiseUp Hip Hop Nation: From Deconstructing Racial Politics to Building Positive Solutions,” in That’s The
Joint: A Hip Hop Studies Reader ed. by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal (New York City:Routledge, 2012) 519-526,
520.
42
Joseph McCombs, "Decking the Hall: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's New Members – Public Enemy,” Time, December 11,
2012 (accessed November 11, 2015).

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revolutionary, thought-provoking rap will strengthen the Black community. “As the rhythm’s
designed to bounce / what counts is that the rhyme’s / designed to fill your mind / Now that you
realize the pride’s arrived / we got to pump the stuff to make us tough.” He also recognizes and
critiques the racism of mainstream American entertainment icons. “Elvis was a hero to most but
he never meant shit to me / because he’s straight out racist /the sucka was simple and plain
/motherfuck him and John Wayne!” In the next section I will justify why it is so extremely
difficult for a song with the lyrical and visual presentation of “Fight the Power” to gain universal
recognition today.
Dissent was not universally present in rap music from decades past, but an artist could
achieve commercial success and widespread visibility with raps like those of Public Enemy. The
creative space in mainstream rap music was simply wider in the 1980's and early 1990’s. This
creative space encompassed not just dissent, but myriad topics and conversations which today
seem absent from the mainstream. In her treatment of the political economy of black music,
Yvonne Bynoe claims, “Whereas in the past there was a wide array of rap music styles and
messages, today the Hip Hop industry markets ghettocentric and lascivious rap content globally
as the singular Black experience.” Fed up with the content which dominates rap today, content
which I will treat in my next section, Bynoe asks, “Would White consumers be so interested in
rap if more of the music and videos depicted Black Americans as multi-faceted human beings
rather than ghetto primitives?”43
43
Bynoe, “Money, Power, and Respect,”231.

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“Trap Queen”: Narrow and Negative Creative Space
I closed my discussion of corporate consolidation with a quote from Keith Negus
detailing how commercial pressure can consolidate the artistic field, constricting it and leaving
no room for “unorthodox or opposing ideas”. As cultural theorists like Pierre Bourdieu and
Theodor Adorno have noted, corporate and commercial influence affected artistic fields long
before hip hop, and even before the recording industry began. So it should come as no surprise
that the expressive content of rap music is affected, and some even say compromised by the
business practices employed to sell it. This relationship has such profound implications in the
case of rap music precisely because it began as a cultural expression of resistance, and a method
of negotiating identity for a population on the margins of society.
To distinguish the affect of corporate consolidation on rap’s content I revisit the analysis
of rap’s Billboard chart toppers by Myer and Kleck, who again quote Negus. “In terms of
production, rap has, since it first began to appear on recordings, been produced from multiple
points of origin with distinct inflections of geographical place, class identity, and ethnic
representation, urban and rural differences.”44 When independent record labels are bought up and
the production of rap music is, to a degree, centralized within the subsidiaries of three major
labels, the “distinct inflections” of identity and representation which Negus mentions may begin
to disappear. This is one method through which corporate consolidation weakens creativity in rap
music, but to fully establish the depth of this claim I would need to perform an entire study of
music labels, music studios and the geography associated with certain rap content, an
investigation I may undertake in the future to bolster the research already presented here.
44
Myer and Kleck, “FromIndependent to Corporate,”147.

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Myer and Kleck found that rap really became visible on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in
1997, approximately 20 years after hip hop began in the South Bronx, and almost 20 years prior
to this thesis. Five years later the music’s content began to shift.
After researching the history and creation of the music genres known as ‘‘R&B,’’ ‘‘hip-
hop,’’ and ‘‘rap,’’ we saw that 1997 was also the year in which their presence grew on
the charts. The rotation of these genres on the Billboard ‘’Hot 100’’ charts dramatically
increased in 2002. We also discovered a change in the way songs were categorized after
2002. Song titles, genres, and even artists became more homogenized.
The authors also note that one-hit-wonders are typically products of the independent labels, and
after corporate buyouts in 1997 (particularly of SBK Records, Captive Records, and A&M
Records) the one-hit-wonder disappeared from the charts. “With corporate dominance came
more mainstream music and artists.”45
Myer and Kleck’s analysis concluded that the primary method by which creative space in
mainstream hip hop became constricted was the integration of pop styles. “R&B, rap and hip-hop
songs that were present on the charts were all infused with pop artists, themes, lyrics, and even
beats. Therefore, homogenization of music and corporate ownership and influence helped to
cross hip-hop music over into the mainstream.”46 After a string of financially successful songs
which employed pop music in the mid 1990’s, record labels continued to practice this until it
became formulaic. This led to the proliferation of so-called “pop rappers”, those rappers whose
success has less to do with their skill as lyricists or the degree to which they represent their
45
ibid, 144-145.
46
ibid.

21
community, but rather how catchy their music is to mainstream sensibilities.47 In an interview
clip at the end of his song “Never Been Pt. 2” Wiz Khalifa is confronted with an accusation that
he is a pop rapper. With tongue-in-cheek he states, “Yea I’m a pop rapper. I’ll pop up and make
five million dollars.” Khalifa’s quote illustrates how a rapper can neglect the impact of stylistic
changes if the profits are lucrative enough. If one analyzes Khalifa’s music, one will find that his
first album, Show and Prove, is his most lyrically dense release, while his newer music relies less
on lyrics and more on catchy hooks and melodies in the vein of pop music.
For a broader summary of how rap has changed as a result of commercial pressures I turn
again to Tricia Rose, whose 2008 book The Hip Hop Wars has functioned as a lynchpin for this
thesis.
Relying on an ever-narrowing range of images and themes, this commercial juggernaut
[the most commercially promoted, and financially successful hip hop] has played a
central role in the near-depletion of what was once a vibrant, diverse and complex
popular genre, wringing it dry by pandering to America’s racist and sexist lowest
common denominator.
Rose stresses how different this contemporary scenario is from rap music 25 years ago when
“gangsta rappers were only part of a much larger iconic tapestry.”48 Yet by 2008, lyrics grounded
in the image of the black gangsta, pimp and hoe, what Rose calls the “commercial trinity of hip
hop”, had “been promoted and accepted to the point where it now dominates the genre’s
47
Opposition to “pop rap”and mainstream content exists in rap’s underground. “Underground” is a specific distinction, and it
encompasses hundreds of rappers and record labels which do not participatein thesame commercial practices as mainstream
artists and labels. Unorthodox ideas, particularly resistance to dominant ideologies and institutions, can be easily found in the
underground. Yet underground rap gets little radio play or mainstream recognition. As Tricia Rose argues in The Hip Hop Wars,
the mere existence of the underground does not detract from thefact that the majority of hip hop content has been diluted and
altered by corporateconsolidation.
48

22
storytelling worldview.”49 From the mid 1990’s on, particularly after Public Enemy’s reign as
mainstream heavyweights, these negative themes began to proliferate and appear in the content
of almost every influential rapper starting with Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace a.k.a. the
Notorious B.I.G. As Nelson George puts it, “Tupac and Biggie, like most of the controversial
and best rappers who came after Public Enemy’s political spiels, were both poets of negation, a
stance which always upsets official cultural gatekeepers and God-fearing folks within black
America.”50
To clarify, a pimp is a man who manipulates and controls women, and he has existed as a
prevalent theme in Black popular media for decades. In the Black community, the pimp, because
of his power and material wealth, is often exalted in the absence of wealthy community members
who have acquired their money legally.51 “Hoe” is a derogatory term for a woman. The term,
which implies a woman is promiscuous and “sleeps around”, is a weighty insult, but it’s ubiquity
in contemporary rap music serves to transform it into a synonym for “woman”. “Gangsta”,
though it denotes a member of a criminal organization, is often used in contemporary rap music
to connote a specific lifestyle of crime even that which occurs outside of actual street gangs.
Encountering Rose’s conclusions in The Hip Hop Wars was a watershed moment for my
research. She articulates so accurately the suspicions I came to harbor through constant contact
with mainstream rap in 2012-2015 about the “ever-narrowing range of images and themes.” To
substantiate her claims I performed my own cursory analysis of the Billboard charts, both the
Hot 100 and the Hot Rap chart. Given how brief my analysis is, its aim is not to prove anything,
but rather to simply offer a snapshot of “the most commercially promoted and financially
49
ibid, 4.
50
51
ibid, chapter 3.

23
successful hip hop” in any given week of 2015. I chose to highlight charts for only one week in
order to give great attention to each song and its content. I believe this provides shines a more
luminous light on negative themes than an analysis spanning many weeks, which only touches
on a few songs from each week.
During the week of November 8, 2015 four rap songs placed in the top 20 of Billboard’s
Hot 100, “Hotline Bling” by Drake, “679” by Fetty Wap, “Watch Me” by Silento, and
“Jumpman” by Drake and Future. “Hotline Bling” is a relatively clean song lyrically, featuring
no references to crime or “gangsta” lifestyle, and only a modicum of sexist lyrics which,
containing no explicit references to pimps or hoes, one could argue are not sexist at all. The song
is, however, concerned solely with one of Drake’s romantic interests and thus does not touch
upon any “larger iconic tapestry.” The lyrical content of “679” by the upstart Fetty Wap fits well
into Rose’s framework. “Baby girl, you’re so dam fine though / I’m tryna know if I can hit it
from behind though / I’m sippin’ on you like some fine wine though / and when it’s over, I press
rewind though.” Again there are no explicit references to pimps or hoes, though he only speaks
of the opposite sex in regard to just that, sex. Fetty Wap seems only concerned with his ability to
“hit [have sex with]” an unnamed woman. He nods to the “gangsta” lifestyle of guns and
violence with the line “I got a Glock in my ‘rari [Ferrari], 17 shots, no 38.”
“Watch Me” by Silento is particularly void of any discernible themes or ideas save
dancing, as he implores the listener, “Now break your legs / break your legs/ now break your
legs / break your legs / now watch me / now watch me.” “Jumpman” is the most lyrically
complex of the four songs, but it has little to offer outside of Rose’s “commercial trinity” besides
consumerism and general braggadocio. The word “jumpman” refers to the trademark symbol for
Nike’s Jordan sneakers, a ubiquitous piece of hip hop fashion. In the second verse rapper Future

24
claims, “Trapping [selling drugs] is a hobby, that’s the way for me / Man they comin’ fast they
never gettin’ sleep / I, I just had to buy another safe / Bentley Spurs and Phantoms Jordan
Fadeaway.” Drake then takes back the mic: “Jumpman, Jumpman live on TNT I’m flexing
[asserting dominance through body language] / Jumpman, Jumpman they gave me my own
collection / Jump when I say jump girl, can you take direction? / Mutombo with the bitches, you
keep getting rejected.” Drake is undoubtedly clever with his lyrics, and the poetic prowess of his
basketball metaphor is hard to deny. Yet his reference to Dikembe Mutombo, the NBA’s most
famous shot-blocker, serves only to denigrate women by suggesting he’ll never sleep with them.
I also chose to examine the content of the rap song with the most longevity on the Hot
100, “Trap Queen” by Fetty Wap, which has spent over 42 weeks on the chart and currently sits
at no. 25. A “trap” is a house which drugs are dealt from.
I just wanna chill, got a sack [of marijuana] for us to roll / Married to the money,
introduced her to my stove / Showed her how to whip, and now she remixin’ for low /
She my trap queen let her hit the bando [abandoned ghetto house] / We be countin’ up,
watch how far them bands [rubberbands for holding money] go / We just set a goal,
talkin’ matching Lambos [Lamborghinis] / a 50, 60 grand, prob’ a hundred grams though
/ Man I swear I love her how she work the dam pole [stripper pole] / Hit the strip club,
we be lettin’ bands go / Everybody hatin’ we just call them fans though / Married to the
money I ain’t ever lettin’ go.
The extreme popularity of this song is a testament not only to it’s undeniably catchy melody
(many of rap’s most popular songs in 2015 rely on similar pop-influenced melodies), but the
degree to which lyrics about dealing drugs, exalting the pursuit of money, and pimping out
women are welcomed by audiences. Yet many of hip hop’s most credible creators lament these

25
circumstances. Railing against record labels who perpetuate what he views as demeaning
content, Houston rapper Scarface speculated that by releasing banal material like “Trap Queen”
and “Watch Me”, labels may be motivated by something besides profit. “There’s no fucking way
that you can tell me it’s not a conspiracy against the blacks in hip hop, because you put out
fucking records that make us look stupid. You make us look dumb.”52
The top songs on Billboard’s Hot Rap chart for the week of November 8, 2015 also put
forth virtually no symbolic material outside of Rose’s “commercial trinity.” After the songs I’ve
already covered, which hold the top four spots on the chart, comes “Downtown” by Macklemore
with the extraordinary featuring of old school hip hop icons Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee and
Grandmaster Caz. Despite the presence of such rap heavyweights, the song is concerned with
mopeds and taking them “downtown”. Macklemore makes it to the top of the charts with a
textbook integration of pop styles, with the catchy hook on “Downtown” as a perfect example.
Next comes “Hit the Quan” by ILoveMemphis at number six. Like “Watch Me”, this tune makes
incessant reference to dancing, while the rest of the lyrics deal in typical braggadocio, “paper
chasing”, and getting “chicks”.
Coming after “Trap Queen” is Travis Scott with “Antidote” at number eight, a song
which falls perfectly into the framework established by Tricia Rose. After claiming in the hook
that, “Popping pills is all we know / in the hills is all we know (Hollywood!),” Scott continues
into the verse:
Party on a Sunday (that was fun!) / Do it all again on Monday (one more time!) / Spent a
check on a weekend (Oh my God!) / I might do it again (that’s boss shit!) / I just hit a
three peat / Fucked three hoes I met this week (Robert Horry!) / I don’t do no old hoes
52
Scarface, interview by Hard Knock TV, April25, 2013 (accessed November 28, 2015).

26
(oh no, no!) / My nigga that’s a no-no (straight up!) / She just want the coco (cocaina!) / I
just want dinero (paper hunting!) / Who’s that at the front door (who it is?) / If it’s the
feds oh no-no-no (don’t let em’ in shhhh).
With these lyrics not only does Scott associate with “gangsta” lifestyle, and denigrate woman
through repeatedly calling them “hoes”, but he also reduces his interests to two things, “popping
pills” and “dinero,” a Spanish translation for “money” which he uses to rhyme with “coco”.
Lyrics like these offer listeners nothing to identify with besides the exultation of drugs and
money, and the denigration of women. Though Yvonne Bynoe criticized raps which depict
Blacks as “ghetto primitives” long before 2015, her words are all the more appropriate in the
context of this brief content analysis.
Rounding out the top 10 are more songs from the Drake and Future collaboration, and
Fetty Wap. “Where Ya At” by the former has Future asking a series of questions about the
whereabouts of others while he was struggling before success came, and participating in violence
and narcotics sales. He uses slang to signify narcotics sales like “serving piles” and “Pyrex”, the
Tupperware often associated with cooking crack cocaine, before coming out and saying, “Had to
struggle to get where I’m at and sell dope.” Drake asks the same series of questions, but speaks
of his growth as a rapper instead of the criminal themes which Future harps on. The thrust of
Fetty Wap’s “My Way” is concerned with taking another man’s “bitch”, and keeping her
through threats of violence to her former lover. Fetty Wap pops up again at no. 12, as does Drake
at no. 13. This lends significant credence to the earlier assertion by Myer and Kleck that not only
is content homogeneous in mainstream, chart-placing rap, but in fact the field of artists has
become homogeneous as well, with the same artists topping the charts over and over again.

27
A song like “Where Ya At” could be argued as a legitimate tale of the struggles many
black men endure on their way to success. Many debates surrounding hip hop suggest that
unsavory themes like gangsta lifestyle and misogyny are an organic reflection of lived
experiences. This argument is most often employed as a justification for the proliferation of such
themes.53 But Tricia Rose dispels such a justification, as nonsense, countering that:
By choosing to represent this sliver of black life [pimp, hustler, and playa street culture]
at the expense of all other modes of survival and growth that poor black people have
devised, these rappers are choosing to continue to reinforce the most limited, destructive
thinking and acting about women (for excessive personal – and corporate – profit)
without taking any personal responsibility for it.54
Despite still operating as a veritable negotiation of identity for black urban youth, lyrics like
these, by signifying only a narrow and negative range of black urban experience, are ultimately
destructive to black self-identity.
Into this context of banal mainstream rap steps Kendrick Lamar, who has spoken about
an internal struggle within himself to pursue “what needs to be said, and what needs to be heard”
outside of “industry standards.”55 Scholars in the discipline of communication and media studies
constantly discuss media affects i.e. the way in which popular media affects culture. S. Craig
Watkins argues that popular media culture is, “one of the main locations where the struggle for
ideologically hegemony is waged.”56 Kendrick Lamar is well aware of this debate outside of its
scholarly context, speaking about it to Hot 97.1 radio host Ebro Darden.
53
54
ibid, 173.
55
Kendrick Lamar, interview by Ebro Darden, Hot 97.1, November 4, 2014 (accessed November 28, 2015).
56
S. Craig Watkins, “Black Youth and the Ironies of Capitalism,” in That’s The Joint: A Hip Hop Studies Reader, ed. by Murray
Forman and Mark Anthony Neal(New York City:Routledge, 2012) 691-707.

28
The things that we [rappers] say on the record, it goes out into the street and the kids
believe this stuff. It ain’t all entertainment at the end of the day. It sells music, but at the
same time you affecting somebody. And I hate the word ‘role model’, but you can’t
run from it….I could sit up here and talk slick all day on record, but who’s gonna relate
to it at the end of the day when they gotta go back to this crazy world, and feel like they
don’t love themselves enough to stay humble, and not commit suicide? Who’s gonna
make those records?

29
Chapter 2: Kendrick Lamar
“Good Kid”: Biography
Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was born in Compton, California on June 17, 1987 at the
zenith of the crack epidemic and hip hop’s so-called “golden era”. Named for singer and
songwriter Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations, Kendrick, or K-Dot as he often refers to himself
in his lyrics, may have been fated to join the esteemed yet convoluted tradition of black
musicians in America.57 He chooses not to flash or show off the wealth he’s recently
accumulated, preferring modest clothing which matches the modest, and even soft-spoken
demeanor which Kendrick displays when not behind a microphone. When he is holding a mic,
Lamar’s discourse is defined by autobiography in the form of self-reflection and self-criticism.
Through his music Kendrick humbly grapples with his violent past. As he says in the song “Hol’
Up” (2011), “Peddling with the speed of a lightning bolt / as a kid I killed two adults / I’m too
advanced / I lived my 20’s at two years old / the wiser man / truth be told I’m like 87.” Given the
platform he has as an internationally-known recording artist, his autobiography reads as a
relatable text of inspiration for black youth who are growing up under similar circumstances.
K-Dot attended Centennial High School in Compton, making straight A’s. He released
his first mixtape, Youngest Head Nigga in Charge (Hub City Threat: Minor of the Year), at the
age of 16 under Konkrete Jungle Music.58 The tape earned Kendrick a contract with the upstart
label Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) based in Carson, California, a group of “good-hearted
folks”59 who have helped Lamar maintain creative control of his music throughout his career.
57
George, Hip Hop America, chapter 1. Nelson George emphasizes hip hop as an expression of the“post soulgeneration”, noting
how rap music rests on theBlack cultural expressions which predate it.
58
Nadine Graham, “Kendrick Lamar: The West Coast Got Somethin’ to Say,” HipHopDX, January 6, 2011 (accessed November
13, 2015).
59
interview by Ebro Darden. November 4, 2014

30
Recording with the label, he soon released a voluminous 26-track mixtape titled “Training Day”,
and with his local reputation established he began opening shows for famous Compton rapper
Jayceon Taylor aka The Game. After 2009, Kendrick dropped the “K-Dot” moniker and began
working on his first full-length albums, Overly Dedicated and then Section 80, under his real
name. During this time he also aligned with labelmates Schoolboy Q, Ab Soul and Jay Rock to
form Black Hippy, a west coast rap supergroup which has served as an outlet for many of
Kendrick’s less political, more playful, boasting raps.
Released in 2011 to critical praise, Section 80 garnered national recognition for Lamar,
and a degree of validation from hip hop veterans which most rappers dream of. That year at the
Hollywood Music Box, Kendrick was given a live co-sign by The Game, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dog
and Kurupt, all of whom are legends of rap from the west coast who saw fit to pass their mantle
to Kendrick. A co-sign is a high-handed way of describing an endorsement from another, more
established rapper, a form of validation and promotion which all mainstream rappers have earned
at one point or another.60 Despite such high praise from hip hop’s old guard, Lamar’s music did
not crossover over to mainstream markets until his major label debut.
Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City (GKMC) was released on October 22, 2012 through TDE and
Aftermath, a record label belonging to Dr. Dre,61 which is itself owned by Universal Music
Group. Containing three Billboard Top 40 singles and 10 Billboard singles overall, the album
debuted at number two on Billboard’s Hot 200 album chart, and was later certified platinum by
60
Uba Anyadiegwu, “ThePower of a Co-Sign: How Far it Can Take a Hip Hop Artist,”Bonus Cut, February 26, 2014 (Retrieved
November 16, 2015).
61
The connection between Kendrick Lamar and Dr. Dre deserves particular attention. Like Kendrick, Dr. Dre, whose real name
is Andre Young, grew up in Compton, California. He was a founding member of N.W.A. (Niggas with Attitude), thefirst gangsta
rap group to achieve mainstream success, and followed up that success with an influential solo album. As a producer and label
owner, Dr. Dre was behind the success of prominent rap stars like Eminem and 50 Cent. He is also the wealthiest man in hip hop
with a net worth of approximately 800 million dollars. When Dr. Dre backs an artist, critics and audiences understand that the
artist must be “thereal deal”. Though Kendrick achieved recognition in thehip hop community based on his extraordinary talent,
he may have never achieved mainstream success and commercial viability without his relationship to Dr. Dre.

31
the Recording Industry Association of America after selling over 1.4 million copies.62 Unlike
Section 80, GKMC featured music from hit producers like Pharrell and Just Blaze, and vocals
from commercial juggernauts like Drake, Mary J. Blige and Dr. Dre himself. Outside of only
Eminem’s landmark Marshall Mathers LP (also produced and released by Dr. Dre in 1999)
Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City is the most successful major label debut ever by a rapper. It won the
Album of the Year award at the 2013 Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards, and was
nominated for seven Grammy awards. When the white rapper Macklemore was awarded the
Grammy for best new artist instead of Kendrick, there was a widespread outcry in the hip hop
community, so much so that Macklemore sent a later-publicized text message to Kendrick Lamar
admitting to, and apologizing for, “robbing” him.63 This incident highlighted the intense respect
and widespread admiration for Kendrick that was generated by GKMC.
In between the release of GKMC and his magnum opus, To Pimp A Butterfly (TPAB),
Kendrick effectively shook up the entire “rap game” with one verse on Detroit rapper Big Sean’s
song “Control”. Often manifested through “battle raps” in which one rapper calls out another,
competition is an indelible and invaluable facet of hip hop culture, and with his verse on
“Control” Kendrick reignited the flame of competition in contemporary hip hop by calling out
other famous rappers for their alleged impotency.
I’m usually homeboys with the same niggas I’m rhymin’ with / but this is hip hop and
them niggas should know what time it is / and that goes for Jermaine Cole, Big KRIT,
62
This information, as well as all other statistics concerning chart placement and album sales, was gathered from the valuable
resource AllMusic.com
63
MikeAyers, “Macklemore to Kendrick Lamar After Grammys:‘You Got Robbed’,” Rolling Stone, January 27, 2014
(Retrieved November 13, 2015).

32
Wale / Pusha T, Meek Mill, A$AP Rocky, Drake / Big Sean, Jay Electron’, Tyler, Mac
Miller / I got love for you all but I’m tryna murder you niggas.
Kendrick’s extreme emphasis on challenge on competition in this verse is one reason why he is
characterized by critics as “old school”. “He’s the first person in a long time that a lot of the old
heads respect,” says Nelson George. “They see him as a real hip hop MC.”64
Hype can be a powerful, but destructive force in hip hop, a fact which Public Enemy
cautioned listeners about with their seminal track “Don’t Believe the Hype” (1988). Living up to
the hype surrounding one’s release can heighten its impact ten-fold, but disappointing on
expectations can have a negative effect of similar potency. Never, perhaps, has a rapper
exceeded expectations as greatly as Kendrick did with his most recent album, To Pimp a
Butterfly. According to Metacritic, a service which compiles and averages the ratings from all
relevant album reviews from magazines and newspapers, TPAB is the highest-rated rap album of
all time with a universal rating of 96/100. Unabashed in its Afrocentricity, one critic suggested
TPAB is one of the reasons we will look at 2015 as “the year radical Black politics and for-real
Black music resurged in tandem to converge on the nation’s pop mainstream,”65 while another
hailed it as a contribution to the revival of Black Postmodernism.66 Virtually all critics
acknowledge its lyrical and musical creativity, and praise its integration of jazz and soul forms.
To Pimp a Butterfly transcends rap music. Professors in the discipline of African
American studies began integrating the record into their curriculum. Kendrick even visited the
64
Lizzy Goodman, “Kendrick Lamar: Hip Hop’s Newest Old School Star,” New York Times. June 24, 2015 (retrieved November
13, 2015).
65
Greg Tate, “To Pimp a Butterfly,”Rolling Stone, March 19, 2015 (accessed November 15, 2015).
66
Casey Michael Henry, “Et Tu, Too?: Kendrick Lamar’s “To Pimp a Butterfly”and the Revival of Black Postmodernism,” Los
Angeles Review of Books, July 26, 2015 (accessed November 17, 2015).

33
classroom of one such professor to talk with his students about poetry.67 At this year’s Million
Man March, an annual assertion of Black pride and solidarity organized by the Nation of Islam,
crowds were heard chanting lyrics from the single “Alright”.68 Even Ellen Degeneres brought
Kendrick onto her show for a now famous performance of the single “These Walls”. For these
reasons among others, Lamar now stands as perhaps the most important rapper in the industry
outside of influential rapper/moguls like Sean Carter (Jay Z) and Sean Combs (P-Diddy). The
35th State Senate District of California, which encompasses Compton, even gave Kendrick its
Generational Icon Award, citing his charitable donations to the Compton school district and the
positive example he sets for the community’s youth.69 I’ll now explore the content of Lamar’s
last three albums to highlight themes of Afrocentricity, challenges to dominant ideologies and
structural factors in the rap industry, reappropriation of negative themes like the “commercial
trinity”, and constructive forms of black self-identification.
67
Sami Yenugin, “A Visit from Kendrick Lamar – Best Day of School Ever?” NPRed, June 13, 2015 (accessed November 16,
2015).
68
Mitchell Peters, “Million Man March Activists Chant Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Alright’ on 20th
Anniversary,”Billboard, October 10,
2015 (accessed November 16, 2015).
69
Grow, Kory. “Kendrick Lamar Named ‘Generational Icon’ by California Senate.” Rolling Stone. May 15, 2015 (accessed
November 12, 2015).

34
Section 80
Section 80 was released through the independent label Top Dawg Entertainment in 2011,
and with little mainstream promotion or coverage it peaked at number 113 on Billboard’s Hot
200 albums chart. Thick with lyrics of social and political relevancy in addition to
autobiographic narration of Kendrick’s emergence into rap, Section 80 was received positively
by critics who spoke highly of the “introspection” through which Kendrick examines not just his
own flaws, but those of his generation.70 The title of the album alludes to this, a double entendre
which signifies children born in the 1980’s, what he calls the “dysfunctional bastards of the
Ronald Reagan Era”, while referencing more directly the Section 8 clause of the Housing Act of
1937. The clause led to the creation of urban housing projects populated exclusively by low-
income tenants, the majority of whom are black or latino. With this title, Lamar contextualizes
this album in the same dysfunctional urban milieu which, according to Tricia Rose, provided the
original backdrop for hip hop in the South Bronx, and cities across the country. This is another
significant reason why critics recognize Kendrick’s alignment with original, or “old school” rap,
with the New York Times calling him “hip hop’s newest old school star.”71
“HiiiPoWeR”, the last track on the record and also its first single, offers its most
explicitly political lyrics, and the most effectively articulated expressions of Kendrick’s self-
doubt. He name-drops black leaders from the past including Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Bobby
Seal, and Fred Hampton, though it’s clear that Kendrick struggles with these associations as he
struggles with his own self. The second verse begins:
Dreams of Martin Luther staring at me / if I see it how he seen it that would make my
parents happy / sorry Mama I can’t turn the other cheek / they wanna knock me off the
70
Jayson Greene, “Kendrick Lamar: Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City,”Pitchfork, October 23, 2012.
71
Goodman, “Kendrick Lamar”.

35
edge like a fuckin’ widows peak (uh!) / and they always told me pray for the weak (uh!) /
them demons got me I ain’t prayed in some weeks (uh!).
Adding to the track’s firm context in the Black freedom struggle, the hook implores those of his
generation to, “get up off them slave ships / build your own pyramids, write your own
hieroglyphs,” and the bridge has a female vocalist chanting, “every day we fight the system just
to make our way / we been down for too long, but that’s alright / we was built to be strong
because it’s our life.” With extraordinary poetic prowess and creative inflection the final verse
has Kendrick explicitly speculating about the black freedom struggle and his own place within it.
Last time I checked we was racin’ with Marcus Garvey / on the freeway to Africa ‘till I
wrecked my Audi / and I want everybody to view my autopsy / so you can see exactly
where the government had shot me / no conspiracy, my fate is inevitable / they play
musical chairs once I’m on that pedestal.
The complexity of each song on Section 80 warrants individual attention, but I do not
have the time for such analysis in this thesis,72 particularly because GKMC and TPAB deserve
the lion’s share of attention. Certain tracks like “Keisha’s Song (Her Pain)” and “Poe Man’s
Dreams (His Vice)” offer glimpses of Lamar’s unique negotiation of urban ghetto life, in which
he critically addresses prostitution and the generational context of black crime. The climactic
final verse in “Keisha’s Song (Her Pain)” hears Lamar lamenting the sad fate of a young
Compton girl forced to turn tricks.
This motherfucker [a pedophilic step-father figure] is the fucking reason why Keisha
rushing / through that block away from Lueders Park / I seen the El Camino parked / and
in her heart she hate it there, but in her mind she made it where / nothing really matters,
72
On thealbum’s first song, “Fuck Your Ethnicity”, Kendrick’s first words are, “Fire burning inside my eyes / this the music that
saved my life / ya’ll be calling it “hip hop”/ I be calling it ‘hypnotized’.”

36
so she hit the back seat / then caught a knife inside the bladder, left her dead, raped in the
street / Keisha's song.
Though you may catch Kendrick colloquially referencing “hoes” and “bitches”, his sobering
portrait on “Keisha’s Song (Her Pain)” demonstrates why New York Times journalist Lizzy
Goodman suggested Kendrick is “unusually attuned to women” in her 2014 expose on the
rapper.73 When Kendrick does use the words “bitch” and “hoe”, it is often coupled with a
sarcastic tone to point out the immaturity of such language, as in the tongue-in-cheek “The
Spiteful Chant”, or the next album’s hit single, “Backstreet Freestyle”. Moreover, as Tricia Rose
demonstrates, these words have become fixed in rap’s dialogue, and to speak them does not
necessarily mean one endorses their objectifying purpose.
On “Poe Man’s Dreams (His Vice)” Kendrick deals with the insidious problem of
generational crime in the Black community through the lens of his own childhood and the
tensions present within it.
I used to wanna see the penitentiary way after elementary / thought it was cool to look the
judge in the face while he sentenced me / Since my uncles was institutionalized, my
intuition had said I was suited for family ties / My mama is stressin’, my daddy tired / I
need me a weapon these niggas ride / Every minute, hour and second ministers tried / to
save me, but how I’m gon’ listen when I don’t even hear God?
This lyric is one of many in which Kendrick, speaking about his criminal youthful tendencies,
employs the signifying slang of gang violence. Instead of glorifying his past actions, or even
leaving their meaning to ambiguity, he explicitly places them in counterpoint with the reputable
aspects of his life, namely his relationship with God. Kendrick further developed this technique
73
Goodman, “Kendrick Lamar”.

37
of signifying gansta themes without endorsing them on his next album; a project which I will
show is saturated, lyrically and musically, with the mainstream, gangsta aesthetic that fares so
well on the Billboard charts.

38
Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City
Despite its praise and relevant success, Section 80 was an independent release incapable
of achieving widespread impact or visibility outside of the most dedicated facets of the hip hop
community. I must admit that I, like many others, knew of Kendrick Lamar by name but never
fruitfully engaged with his music until his major label debut Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City. The irony
of this is blistering. Section 80 is an extraordinary album, but as a white listener who admittedly
is not part of the dedicated hip hop culture, it took a major label debut with mainstream
marketing to make me aware of Kendrick.
The album begins with a prayer in which a chorus of young, black voices say, “God, I
come to you a sinner.” GKMC is punctuated with voicemail messages from Kendrick’s parents,
and skits portraying different scenarios from Kendrick’s adolescence that are distributed in
between songs. Some are playful and others, like when Kendrick’s friend is gunned down by a
rival gang, are quite serious. The concept album is extremely precise, with no lyric or interlude
failing to contribute to the greater narrative. This narrative is one of growth and change in
Compton, California. At the beginning of the album Lamar is a confused yet boisterous
adolescent with violent and carnal fantasies. From song to song, events take place which force
him to mature, and look at his life critically. On the album’s final track,“Now or Never”, we see
Kendrick as a matured man who has “made it”, achieving success by learning from his mistakes.
Seven Grammy nominations demonstrated the impact GKMC made on America’s
mainstream sensibilities. Kendrick also gained an immense amount of respect from the
aforementioned “dedicated facets hip hop community”, with XXL magazine calling the album
“one of the most cohesive bodies of work in recent rap memory.”74 Musically, the album has
74
XXL Staff, “Kendrick Lamar, good kid, mA.A.d. city,” XXL. October 23, 2012.

39
“mainstream” written into its credits, with featured verses from chronic chart-topper Drake, new
queen of soul Mary J. Blige, as well as gangsta rap progenitor Dr. Dre. Producers like Just Blaze
lent their talents and gave the album a popular, mainstream production style noticeably absent
from Section 80, and the forthcoming To Pimp a Butterfly. This ultimately spawned a work
which had a unique opportunity to earn mass appeal, and mass respect.
Like Section 80, the name of the album again refers to urban dysfunction and the black
youth’s place within it. The album’s five most popular singles used different techniques and
aesthetics from mainstream rap to establish a place on the Billboard charts. On songs like
“Swimming Pools (Drank)”, “Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe”, and “Money Trees” we hear Kendrick
boasting, speaking seductively, and at times derogatorily, to women, and offering what at first
appear to be homages to money, substance abuse and gangsta lifestyle in the typical vein of
mainstream rap. Layered beneath this veneer of novelty, however, are critiques of these very
lifestyles. Take the album’s first single for example. “Swimming Pools (Drank)” is outfitted with
a hook destined for mainstream ears.
Nigga why you babysitting only two or three shots / Im’ma show you how to turn it up a
notch / first you get a swimming pool full of liquor then you dive in it / pool full of liquor
Im’ma dive in it / I wave a few bottles and I watch them all flock / all the girls wanna
play ‘Baywatch’ / I got a swimming pool full of liquor and they dive in it / pool full of
liquor Im’ma dive in it.
On the album’s deluxe edition “Swimming Pools (Drank)” is offered in an extended
version. The last verse, which departs lyrically and musically from the rest of the song after an
abrupt rupture in the beat, finds Kendrick offering honest caution to substance abusers. “All I
have in life is my new appetite for failure / and I got hunger pain that grow insane / tell me do

40
that sound familiar? / If it do then you’re like me / makin’ excuses that you’re relief / is in the
bottom of a bottle or the greenest indo leaf [marijuana]”. On Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, Lamar’s
positive lyrics, which encourage careful reflection on oneself and one’s community, are often
hidden inside typical mainstream themes, in this case partying and abusing alcohol. “Backseat
Freestyle” is particularly duplicitous in this way, as it begins with the lyric, “Martin had a dream
/ Kendrick have a dream” before launching into self-aggrandizing and vulgar raps about
Kendrick’s many “bitches”, and his lifelong desire for “money and power”. Jayson Greene notes
how this duplicity operates when he considers the song in the context of the full story on GKMC.
“It marks the moment in the narrative when young Kendrick's character first begins rapping,
egged on by a friend who plugs in a beat CD. Framed this way, his ‘damn, I got bitches’ chant
gets turned inside out: This isn't an alpha male's boast. It's a pipsqueak's first pass at a chest-
puff.”75
Though not one of the album’s singles, with “Compton”, Kendrick deliberately recycles
the gangsta aesthetic that is Compton rap’s calling card. The song features one of Compton’s
first rap stars, Dr. Dre, who gives roughneck rhymes full of braggadocio and chest-beating, with
Kendrick following suit. “So come and visit the tire screeching / ambulance, policemen / won’t
you spend a weekend on Rosecrans nigga / khaki creasin’ crime increasin’ on Rosecrans nigga.”
With allusions to crime, and the (Rosecrans) boulevard so notoriously associated with gang
violence, lines like these play to the imaginations of rap listeners who are well versed in gangsta
themes. Still, deep in the track are acknowledgements from Kendrick about the state of
contemporary rap music and its ubiquitous embrace of such themes.
75
Greene, “Kendrick Lamar.”

41
Now we can all celebrate / we can all harvest the rap artist of NWA / America target a
rap market, it’s controversy and hate / Harsh realities we in made our music translate / to
the coke dealers, the hood rich and the broke niggas that play / with them gorillas that
know killas that know where you stay.
“Compton” is Kendrick’s most brazen boast on Good Kid M.A.A.D. City, and Jayson
Greene points out how out of place it feels. “The moment of arrival in any artist's story is always
less interesting than their journey, and there's a disconnect in hearing Lamar and Dre stunt over
Just Blaze's blaring orchestral-soul beat.”76 He’s right, for though the track was one of many that
helped give the album a mainstream appeal, Kendrick’s “chest-puff” here seems half-hearted.
Regardless, “Compton” and the other singles earned Good Kid M.A.A.D. City a huge amount of
visibility through their high rankings on the Billboard charts, and it’s safe to say the record
would never have fared as well as it did without lyrical features from commercial juggernauts
like Drake and Dr. Dre. In one lyric buried inside the serene and relaxing single “Bitch Don’t
Kill My Vibe”, Kendrick explains his motives and appeals to the hip hop community at large:
“I’m trying to keep it alive, and not compromise the feeling we love / You’re trying to keep it
deprived and only co-sign what radio does.”
Recall Tricia Rose’s discussion of flow, layering, and rupture, which are the definitive
stylistic features of rap. The technique of rupture is employed on “The Art of Peer Pressure” to
emphasize the song’s theme, which is the decision a Black youth faces when challenged with
pressure from peers to perform disreputable actions. The track begins with a fluid, jazzy beat
behind these lyrics. “Smoking on the finest dope, ayayaya / drink until I can’t no more, ayayaya /
really I’m a sober soul, but I’m with the homies right now / and we askin’ for no favors / rush a
76
ibid.

42
nigga quick [beat someone up] then laugh about it later ayayaya / really I’m a peacemaker, but
I’m with the homies right now.” Abruptly shifting, the mellow, relaxing music gives way to a
dark, rigid beat over which Kendrick relates a story about conducting a break-in with friends.
This shift acts as a musical metaphor for when “things get real”: when seemingly fun and
harmless actions give way to serious, impactful consequences.
The album’s seventh track, “Good Kid” finds Kendrick frantically debating with himself.
This is part of a turning point in the album where Kendrick highlights the pitfalls of gang
affiliation, and the harsh reality of police brutality.
But what I’m supposed to do when the blinking of red and blue / flash from the top of
your roof and your dog has to say “proof” / and you ask ‘lift up your shirt” ‘cause you
wonder if a tattoo / of [gang] affiliation can make it a pleasure to put me through / gang
files, but that don’t matter because the matter is racial profile / I heard them chatter “he’s
young but I know that he’s down [in a gang]” / step on his neck as hard as your
bulletproof vest / he don’t mind, he know we’ll never respect the good kid, mad city.
Kendrick uses the same violent and criminal iconography in this track which other mainstream
rappers harp on, but he offers a critique of it based on self-reflection instead of a simple
denunciation or glorification of such lifestyles. In other words, Kendrick recontextualizes the
discussion of a gangsta lifestyle to portray it not as a glamorous business, but as a destructive and
dangerous reality.
The bonus track “Black Boy Fly” is a particularly empowering song which offers to
young, black listeners the assurance that they can rise above a toxic environment, negative
stereotypes, and peer pressure. In the lyrics Kendrick reveals the jealousy he harbored for Aaron
Aflallo and Jayceon Taylor. The former is a professional basketball player and the latter, as I’ve

43
already noted, is the rapper The Game, both of whom made it out of Compton because of their
talents. Lamar emanates pessimism on this song, doubting that he will ever escape his violent
and intoxicated neighborhood. “Nigga, I was rehearsing in repetition the phrase / only one in a
million will ever see better days / especially when the crime waves was bigger than tsunamis /
break your boogie board to pieces you just a typical homie.” He then reveals in the song’s final
bar that he was not jealous of their talents, but rather, “I was terrified they’ll be the last black
boys to fly / out of Compton.” This song exemplifies the positive forms of self-identification
which Kendrick offers to young, black listeners on Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City by simply relating
his own life’s story.
The history of hip hop in the “mad city” of Compton is defined by gangsta rap and the
gang violence which first spawned the genre in 1988. Songs like N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta
Compton” (1988), and films like Boyz In The Hood (1991) portray the neighborhood as a
veritable war zone in which Black gangs compete with the Los Angeles Police Department for a
higher murder rate. Just as Kendrick Lamar use to affiliate with the Crips gang, Compton rapper
The Game affiliated with the Blood gang.77 Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City is the latest installation in
rap’s ongoing narrative of this community. The album’s cover is a polaroid picture which depicts
Kendrick’s uncle displaying a Crip gang sign while holding baby Kendrick. Yet unlike any
Compton rap album before it, GKMC explicitly attempts to break the generational cycle of
violence by breaking from traditional rap depictions of it. Through narrating his own
experiences, Kendrick ultimately shows how a youth in this violent community can overcome its
77
To see how these gangs affect the community, I suggest watching thedocumentary film Made In America: Bloods and Crips
(2008). It offers a wrenching and infinitely tragic first person analysis of the destruction wrought by these community
institutions, in addition to tracing their origins back to the Watts riots of 1965 and the federal squelching of positive, Afrocentric
freedom movements in the1970’s.

44
trappings and achieve a better life. As he says during an interview with Ellen Degeneres after the
release of his next album, “I know there’s a lot of kids in my neighborhood that’s watching the
TV saying ‘you know what, I wanna be a positive influence just like Kendrick Lamar’.”78
78
Kendrick Lamar, interview by Ellen Degeneres.

45
To Pimp A Butterfly
After transcending his violent past and achieving success with Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City,
the context of Kendrick’s music changes. He’s no longer a gangsta or a troubled youth, but rather
a platinum recording artist, and he speaks from this perspective on To Pimp a Butterfly. In his
own words, the album is a discourse about his struggle not to be “pimped out” and manipulated
by the music industry, which he is now an integral part of.79 With the success of his debut album,
in early 2015 Kendrick is officially a part of mainstream rap according to all commercial
standards. This is Kendrick Lamar’s “crossroads moment”. “How far am I willing to go to get
the message across,” he rhetorically asks MTV’s Rob Markman. “This is my second album on a
mainstream, commercial level. Now, me making the decision to make this album is just as
simple as, or just as hard or how however you want to put it, as me making an actual commercial
album full of hit records. That is the temptation right there.”80 As hip hop scholarship has
demonstrated, in the past 25 years commercial success has almost always entailed a curtailing of
subversive content. Kendrick understands the need to make a commercial, mainstream album,
but he does not want to sacrifice his message. With To Pimp a Butterfly he achieves his goal. The
album is an extraordinary commercial success, generating platinum sales in under a year and
earning 11 Grammy nominations. Simultaneously it is one of the most socially and politically
relevant rap album of all time.
Though autobiographical like the rest of his albums, To Pimp a Butterfly ultimately
functions as a commentary on Black culture, and the systematic racism which Black people still
experience in America. Here we find straightforward assertions of black pride and
condemnations of white supremacy adjacent to well-articulated critiques of the black
79
Kendrick Lamar, interview by Rob Markman.
80
ibid.

46
community. Kendrick continues to grapple with the poverty and strife in his Compton
community, though it now comes in the context of his newfound wealth and success. Using
myriad voice inflections to signify different personas and attitudes, Kendrick covers an
extraordinary amount of thematic ground on TPAB.
The artwork released with the album’s first single, “I”, is a picture of rival Blood and
Crip gang members making hand gestures in the shape of a heart. This image reappropriates the
language of gang hand gestures and, if only for a moment, erases its negative connotation. The
song received a Grammy award, and the very next day Kendrick dropped the second single, “The
Blacker The Berry”. This is arguably the album’s most aggressive and outspoken track, and its
visual component consists of two black African babies breastfeeding. This powerful imagery was
expanded upon when the entire album finally dropped in March, 2015. On its cover are
numerous, shirtless black males holding stacks of cash and champagne bottles in front of the
White House. Kendrick is among them holding a white baby and grinning from ear to ear, as if
this is his life’s proudest moment. Beneath the crowd is a judge lying dead or passed out, but
undoubtedly subdued.
To Pimp a Butterfly departs from GKMC through its exclusive treatment of politically
and socially relevant concepts. I discussed how on GKMC Kendrick’s “conscious raps” were
peppered in with smooth hit songs in the vein of mainstream rap. On TPAB Kendrick pulls no
punches and gives no poetic or aesthetic disguise to his vigorous critiques of himself, the black
community, white supremacy, and the music industry. The characters of Uncle Sam and “Lucy”,
Lucifier i.e. the devil, pop up again and again throughout the album, indicating the subjugating
presences in Kendrick’s world which he seeks to strike out against. In the words of Rolling Stone
critic Greg Tate, “this is Lamar's moment to remake rap in his own blood-sick image. If we're

47
talking insurgent content and currency, Lamar straight up owns rap relevancy
on Butterfly, whatever challengers to the throne barely visible in his dusty rear-view.”81
The first song, “Wesley’s Theory”, describes how rap stars become “pimped out” by the
music industry, and the American capitalist system at large. With a title that references black
actor Wesley Snipes and his tax evasion, Kendrick ultimately suggests that black people are not
taught in schools how to manage their money, an idea he connects to the album artwork.82 The
first verse comes from the perspective of a black entertainer, beginning, “When I get signed [to a
record contract] homie, Imma act a fool.” This is the only time in his career when Kendrick uses
a phrase which is so often heard in mainstream rap, “married to the game”. This phrase alludes to
a sort of union between a rapper and the record industry i.e. the “rap game”. It’s an unholy
matrimony, not unlike the alleged union between Robert Johnson and the devil. The second verse
in the track is rapped from the perspective of Uncle Sam, a foil for the music industry: “What
you want? You a house or a car? Forty acres and a mule? A piano a guitar?” By referencing
Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15,83 Kendrick is situating the dialogue between black
entertainers and Uncle Sam in the context of the unfulfilled promises of reparations.
“Institutionalized”, the fourth song on the album, points directly to the premise of this
thesis. Kendrick acknowledges his ability to break free from the corrupting influences of the rap
industry and manipulate “the game” instead of marrying it. “I can just alleviate the rap industry
politics / milk the game up, never lactose intolerant / the last remainder of real shit / you know
the obvious.” The second verse finds him lamenting “the constant big money talk ‘bout mansions
and foreign whips” which has become hegemonic in hip hop, and explaining why he feels
81
Tate, “To Pimp a Butterfly.”
82
Kendrick Lamar, interview by Rob Markman.
83
After the Union victory in the Civil War, Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15 was meant to provide freed Black slaves in the
Carolinas with “forty acres and a mule” to make a living with.

48
obligated to lyrically attack rappers who perpetuate these themes. He then suggests that his
function at Hollywood award ceremonies is to steal from the rich and give to the poor.
It’s after the catchy funk disco song “These Walls” that Kendrick introduces a spoken
word narrative which develops in between tracks for the rest of the album. “I remember you was
conflicted / misusing your influence / sometimes I did the same / abusing my power, full of
resentment / resentment that turned into a deep depression / found myself screaming in a hotel
room.” The emotional toll exacted upon Kendrick as he simultaneously confronts the music
industry and his inner demons is related in this poetry. With “Alright”, nominated for song of the
year at the 2016 Grammy awards, Kendrick, for once, speaks to the black community.
Wouldn’t you know / we been hurt, been down before / Nigga when our pride was low /
lookin’ at the world like “where do we go?” / and we hate po-po [police] / wanna kill us
dead in the street fo sho / Nigga I’m at the preacher’s door / my knees getting’ weak, and
my gun might blow / but we gon’ be alright.
These were the lyrics chanted by activists at this year’s 20th anniversary of the Million Man
March.
On the interlude “For Sale?” Kendrick takes on the persona of Lucy. We learn through
extra lyrics on the music video for “Alright” that Lucy is, in fact, Lucifer the devil. Through
assuming this persona Kendrick details the devil’s influence on him as a rapper.
I loosely heard prayers on your first album truly / Lucy don’t mind ‘cause at the end of
the day you’ll pursue me / Lucy go get it, Lucy not timid, Lucy upfront / Lucy got paper
work on top of paper work, I want / you to know that Lucy got you / All your life I
watched you / and now you all grown up to sign this contract if that’s possible.

49
These lyrics harken back to the myth of Robert Johnson, and the confrontation of a devil figure
who asks the black musician to sign a contract and sell off something. We do not find out until
later in the album, however, how Kendrick reacts to Lucifer’s proposal. His spoken word
narrative continues, “I didn’t want to self destruct / the evils of Lucy was all around me / So I
went runnin’ for answers / until I came home.” This narrative serves not only an expository
purpose, but an aesthetic one. It makes the transition from one song to the next more meaningful,
and elucidates the album’s larger narrative.
The album continues with “Momma”, which finds Kendrick “coming home” and
realizing that he may not know as much as he thought. Only after coming home to Compton and
spending time away from the music industry does Kendrick become modest and humble again.
Like “Good Kid” on GKMC, “Momma” is a turning point in the narrative on TPAB. Now
situated back in Comtpon, Lamar turns back the clock on the next track “Hood Politics”, and
uses a whiny inflection to signify that he is rapping from the perspective of his younger self. As
violence has become “rap’s calling card” many rappers discuss their violent pasts in glorified
language. Kendrick, however, goes far deeper, and describes the gang violence in his community
and in himself as a product of the larger white society in which he lives.
From Compton to Congress, set trippin’ [gang fighting] all around / ain’t nothin’ new, but
a flu of new Demo-Crips and Re-Blood-icans / red state versus a blue state, which one
you governin’/ 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?”)
With his next lyric, Kendrick asks the same questions I ask in this thesis by referencing Killa
Mike, a rapper with extraordinary technical skill who never achieved mainstream success
because of his politically relevant, and thus controversial, content. “Critics want to mention that

50
they miss when hip hop was rappin’ / Motherfucker if you did then Killer Mike’d be platinum.”
The next song, “How Much a Dollar Cost” ends with a prayer from Kendrick. Prayers
punctuated Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, but they don’t appear on To Pimp a Butterfly until the
eleventh track. After struggling with himself and the devil for the first ten songs, Kendrick gives
his answer to “Lucy”, and demonstrates that he’ll always be faithful to his true self and to God.
Then comes “Blacker the Berry” with an aggressive assertion of Afrocentrism that serves
as the dramatic climax of the album. It’s no coincidence that Kendrick released this song as a
single at the height of his visibility i.e. the day after he won a Grammy in early 2015 for “I”.
Well-established in the mainstream of American music, Kendrick decided to drop a mainstream
single as powerful and though-provoking on the subject of black identity as any song ever made.
“Came from the bottom of mankind / My hair is nappy, my dick is big, my nose is round and
wide / you hate me don’t you / you hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture.”
Despite the oppressive influence of white supremacy, Kendrick suggests, “You [white culture]
vandalize my perception, but can’t take style from me.” The verse ultimately concludes, “You
sabotaged my community, makin’ a killin’ / you made me a killer, emancipation of a real nigga.”
The chorus, sung in patois by the Caribbean artist Assassin, highlights with an intense
power of diction the disconnect between the history of black slavery, and the material opulence
which black rappers so frequently trumpet.
I say they treat me like a slave ‘cause me black / We feel a whole heap of pain ‘cause we
black / And a man a say they put me inna chains ‘cause we black / Imagine now, big gold
chains full of rocks / How you no see the whip, left scars ‘pon me back / But now we
have a big whip [car] parked ‘pon the block / All them say we doomed from the start
‘cause we black / remember this, every race start from the black, just remember that.

51
What I find to be the album’s most powerful lyrics come at the end of the song, and they need no
introduction or qualification.
So don’t matter how much I say I like to preach with the Panthers / or tell Georgia State
“Marcus Garvey got all the answers” / or try to celebrate February like it’s my B-Day / or
eat chicken, watermelon, and Kool-Aid on weekdays / or jump high enough to get
Michael Jordan endorsements / or watch BET ‘cause urban support is important / So why
did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street / when gang banging made me kill a
nigga blacker than me? / Hypocrite!
“You Ain’t Gotta Lie (Momma Said)” can also be taken as part of Kendrick’s answer to
the devil’s proposal. He will not lie, nor will he compromise himself despite his status as a
world-renowned entertainer. Finally turning the lens of criticism away from himself, Kendrick
lays into other rappers whose mainstream music he views as an act or a put-on. “And the world
don’t respect you, and the culture don’t accept you / But you think it’s all love / and the girl’s
gonna neglect you once your parody is done.” This leads into “I”, a dance-friendly, feel-good
anthem of self love which serves as a warm and simple come down from the album’s dark and
complicated motifs. The song crescendos with the words “I love myself!”. With all the doubt and
anger expressed by Kendrick about himself, his community, and his nation, these words are an
ideal answer to the difficult questions posed throughout To Pimp a Butterfly.
In the course of writing this thesis, To Pimp a Butterfly has been nominated for 11
Grammy awards in 2015. That is the most nominations ever accrued in one year by a rapper,
edging out the legendary Eminem.84 The musical, lyrical and thematic depth of this album could
perhaps deserve its own thesis. Though it has clearly made an impact on the mainstream
84
Todd Leopold, “Kendrick Lamar, Taylor Swift Lead Grammy Nominations,” CNN, December 8, 2015.

52
American public, only time will tell what long-term implications TPAB will have on rap music,
and the wider hip hop culture. What is clear, however, is that Kendrick successfully alleviated
the “rap industry politics”, and created a mainstream, commercial album which speaks to an
infinitely deep level of Black experience. In doing so he has defied structural factors in the music
industry which have been compromising the authenticity of Black cultural expression for more
than two decades.

53
Conclusion: “One Time For Your Mind”
Rap music is a pillar of popular media culture in the black community, and in America at
large. There is a struggle over ideology extant in rap, and with themes of resistance relegated to
the culture’s underground and absent from the music charts, the victors in this struggle are most
often those who put forth content which panders to “America’s racist, sexist lowest common
denominator.”85 Some camps in the black community, particular black conservatives who are so
often assailed as sellouts, suggest that the real black sellouts are those who help disseminate
cultural products which promote negative racial stereotypes.86 In this way, the rap industry as a
whole has sold out, as today the most commercially marketed and financially successful rap
music promotes the negative stereotypes of the black gangsta, pimp and ho. As Scarface, one of
rap’s most legendary voices, says, “you make us look dumb.”
The integration of pop forms in rap, a calculated business decision to increase profits for
record companies, has forever altered hip hop’s aesthetic landscape, leaving little room for rap’s
original grassroots content which consisted of resistance to mainstream culture, challenges to
dominant ideologies, and positive forms of self identification for black youth. This shift, which
occurred from the mid 1990’s until the early 2000’s, reorganized the symbolic world inhabited
by black youth, leaving an already marginalized population with a cultural expression that is a
shell of its former self.
Kendrick Lamar offers commercially successful, mainstream rap which emphasizes the
diversity of the black experience, and portrays black youth as more than simply “ghetto
primitives”. In terms of popularity, Lamar has joined the ranks of rap’s most visible artists, but
he chooses to use this platform to strike against artists who buckle more easily under the
85
86
Kennedy, Sellout, 67.

54
commercial pressure applied by record labels. He relates his own story, and contextualizes it in
the eternal struggle for black freedom in America. While doing so he points out the
contradictions in the music industry that lead to homogenized rap music in the first place. He
constructively criticizes the black community, and he often chastises the powerful (white) people
and organizations that have kept black people oppressed in America. In his rap music Kendrick
offers a perspective of the black experience that was refreshing to rap’s mainstream, though he
does so inside of the aesthetic of mainstream rap music to achieve marketability. This
perspective is not only an anomaly in 2015, but it is necessary for an infinitely marginalized
population of black youth that continues to negotiate its identity in an increasingly hostile nation.
I believe Greg Tate of Rolling Stone was right when he suggested we may look back at To Pimp
a Butterfly as a harbinger of greater things to come. We may truly look back at 2015 as the year
when radical black politics finally reclaimed its rightful place in rap music, and when a black
musician found himself at the crossroads and blazed a new trail.

Kendrick Lamar 6

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