
In addition, he is speaking out against the promotion of drug use in hip-hop music. The latest drug he’s focusing on is “Molly,” the dangerous drug that rappers are does kendrick lamar do drugs now speaking about to impressionable youth. Eminem credits fatherhood with helping him to get sober once and for all. Other sober rappers include Macklemore, Kendrick Lamar, Ice-T, and Andre 3000. Gucci Mane, the Atlanta institution who gave a teenage Mike Will his big break, did not use that beat for whatever reason.
- Perhaps this year, a celebratory drink called for Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” on repeat.
- “I realized his work schedule wasn’t really adding up,” he said of his father’s time working at KFC.
- Hidden in the tracklisting was a song called Like That with an uncredited verse by Kendrick Lamar…
- This weekend, Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, Demi Lovato, Major Lazer, and Metallica are headlining the 2016 Global Citizen Festival in New York City’s Central Park.
- And when a country tosses its moral compass aside, all hell tends to break loose.
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There’s this intangible idea that the hood rarely produces deep thinkers and great intellects or that when it does they are lifted swiftly to new heights away from the cracks in the pavement that birthed them. The truth is these impoverished spaces are abundant with beauty and intellect, the very nature of the pain they face demands that it be present, lest you get washed away by agony. Since then, both sides have released a number of diss tracks, with the tension continually ramping up.
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- Family structure becomes less stable, and it is often difficult for parents to achieve a livable income post incarceration.
- By making a choose-your-own adventure album, with faith and fate hanging in the balance, Kendrick’s offered us a way out.
- It helped us try new things that we wouldn’t have never tried before.
It is truly Kendrick’s ode to Compton and how the city moulded him. As an artist, the feeling I get when I’m watching a Kendrick video is like being sat in a particularly difficult calculus class. The imagery is so strong and the artistic references so nuanced that it would take several group discussions in the top-performing universities to actually pinpoint the source of each of these, how he interprets them and the ideas they engage with. In the end, you would have something that would be visually reminiscent of Jeremy Deller’s ‘The History Of The World’.
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This is an experience felt far more often by black people, who although less likely to be incarcerated themselves are significantly more likely than their white counterparts to be connected to someone who has. The song’s message is clear, but it’s balanced by playful melodies, Beyoncé’s signature stacked harmonies and a plucking banjo (played by Rhiannon Giddens, an advocate for the reclamation of country music instruments by Black musicians). While Beyoncé is no stranger to chart-topping hits (“TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” is her ninth solo No. 1 single on the Hot 100), she made history as the first Black woman to score a No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart.
“You grow this type of love for them in a weird way. You don’t wanna see nothing happen to him but you know he’s dangerous.” “I’m at the end of the show, and I see this young lady crying, and I’m thinking, she must be really going through something right now.” After bringing her on stage, “I start hearing her murmur with her lips, ‘You saved my life,’” he told MTV. What he didn’t know was that the fan had just written an essay about “u,” exploring the song, its themes, and the author’s personal struggle with depression. The fan’s brother commented on Reddit that the encounter with Lamar was a turning point for his brother, who was inspired to change after the concert.
Like Kendrick’s music, the video, directed by Calmatic, is joyous, deep, personal-but-universal, enigmatic, powerful, and—look, you just need to watch it. It’s packed with imagery that begs for interpretation, with references to scraper bikes, Ice-T’s 1988 album Power, the “scramble board” from Soul Train, Isaac Hayes’ 1971 album Black Moses, and 8,000 other things I’m not cool enough to recognize. Look for months, maybe years, of interpretation, theories, and bad takes on this video.

Like Black Liberation Theology before it — which rejected the image of a white European Jesus and remodeled Christianity under a black power rubric — Hebrew Israelites center black folks within the biblical lineage. But, ironically, being God’s chosen people in this context also means being cursed, which puts African-Americans back in the same position where the old Christian enslavers once relegated us. It snatched the top spot on NPR Music’s list of the best albums of the year by a long shot. It’s clearly made for Sober living home such a time as this — one in which politics and personal accountability are colliding with unprecedented force.
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On multiple occasions, Lamar has pulled fans from the crowd to join him on stage, only to learn that he had unknowingly changed their lives. Lamar uses his music as a vehicle to debate issues of racism, inequality, and violence, and he’s won Grammys for doing so. In less than a decade, Kendrick Lamar went from a stuttering young boy to being awarded by California for giving back to his community every step of the way. This weekend, Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, Demi Lovato, Major Lazer, and Metallica are headlining the 2016 Global Citizen Festival in New York City’s Central Park.

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It also feels symbolic of the sacrifice one makes upon accepting a calling to give one’s life to God. Kendrick follows that intro (“Blood”) with the Mike WiLL Made-It-produced “DNA.,” on which he goes on a lyrical warpath, taking personal inventory of his heritage of human contradiction. The Old Testament is packed with stories of God’s chosen people cyclically falling out of favor with the Lord, only to be defeated by their enemies, thrown into slavery and forced to worship foreign gods as divine retribution. It’s a narrative that bears more in common with the Transatlantic Slave Trade than coincidence. Like the prophets of old, Lamar uses a range of rhetorical devices to convey the urgency of his message. That an album as unlikely as this epic conceptual narrative, steeped in Old Testament theology, has emerged as the year’s centerpiece speaks to the seemingly troubled state in which we find ourselves.