"See a lot of y'all don't understand Kendrick Lamar because you wonder how I could talk about money, hoes, clothes, God and history all in the same sentence. You know what all them things have in common? Only half of the truth...if you tell it. See I spent twenty-three years on this earth searching for answers, till one day I realized I had to come up with my own. I'm not on the outside looking in, I'm not on the inside looking out. I'm in the dead f*****g center, looking around."
-Kendrick Lamar, "Ab-Soul's Outro," Section.80
Rarely if ever do songs that carry a "message," especially a "racially charged message," truly capture the subtle complexities of reality. Instead most music, and really most influential public voices in general, typically contain polarizing hyperbole or at the very least take a clear "side" on the issue at hand.
In "The Blacker the Berry," a grimy, brilliant masterpiece, Kendrick Lamar forces the careful listener to question on what side of the post-Ferguson cultural divide he ultimately stands.
If you listen just carefully enough through syllable after syllable of mesmerizing, virtuosic vitriol, you will realize he stands on both sides simultaneously. Indeed his above words from Section.80 ring prophetically truer than ever. And his consciousness of this aspect of his role as an artist - to grey the black and white lines of distinct truths - is what makes him truly phenomenal.
It is shocking and inspiring and confusing all at the same time to have this type of work end with the simple dichotomy of a "hypocrite."
And yet, isn't that reality? Truth is nuanced. "You" in this song is nuanced. You is white, You is black, You is many things. Don Lemon isn't right, but neither is Azealia Banks...at least neither of them are exactly.
Either way we are left with this harsh reality: Regardless of who I am, "the blacker the berry, the bigger I shoot."
It seems ultimately that this is the dilemma Kendrick Lamar would have us spend our time examining.
When art opens our minds to the complexities, nuances, and horrors of reality, it is in my opinion, at its most powerful.
This is powerful art.
This song is FIRE. In how it is delivered, in how it incites, and in how it burns away our polarizing, boxed ideas about post-Furguson America.
