Kendrick Lamar unleashed his new single “The Blacker the Berry” two days ago, and the song has already been dissected by a Pulitzer-prize winning author.
Michael Chabon, the writer behind The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and Wonder Boys, annotated a portion of Lamar’s racially charged lyrics for the site Rap Genius yesterday (February 10).
Chabon chose to decode the last lines of the song, in which K. Dot raps “So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street?/ When gang banging make me kill a nigga blacker than me?/ Hypocrite!”
Throughout the song, Kendrick begins each verse by referring to himself as the “biggest hypocrite of 2015.” He waits until the last line, to let listeners find out why, a rhetorical move that Chabon likens to Common’s “I Used to Love H.E.R.” Chabon writes:
In this final couplet, Kendrick Lamar employs a rhetorical move akin to—and in its way even more devastating than—Common’s move in the last line of “I Used to Love H.E.R.”: snapping an entire lyric into place with a surprise revelation of something hitherto left unspoken. In “H.E.R.”, Common reveals the identity of the song’s “her”—hip hop itself—forcing the listener to re-evaluate the entire meaning and intent of the song. Here, Kendrick Lamar reveals the nature of the enigmatic hypocrisy that the speaker has previously confessed to three times in the song without elaborating: that he grieved over the murder of Trayvon Martin when he himself has been responsible for the death of a young black man. Common’s “her” is not a woman but hip hop itself; Lamar’s “I” is not (or not only) Kendrick Lamar but his community as a whole. This revelation forces the listener to a deeper and broader understanding of the song’s “you”, and to consider the possibility that “hypocrisy” is, in certain situations, a much more complicated moral position than is generally allowed, and perhaps an inevitable one.
Chabon has annotated 11 songs for Genius, including a variety of his own lyrics from tracks off Mark Ronson’s Uptown Special album.
Check out “The Blacker The Berry” lyrics via Genius. Listen to the audio below:
For more Kendrick Lamar coverage, watch the following DX Daily:
I hate how this “rap genius” site over analyzes his lyrics to try to make it seem like he’s deeper than he actually is. They take the most simplistic, self explanatory lines and write long paragraphs for them like he’s so complex and above everyone’s heads. lol People want Kendrick to be this lyrical genius so bad. He tries very hard to say “deep” things, but he’s no Nas. His lyrics are average at best. I’m not impressed
Hey dickhead, the next time you hear an artist these days spit the same shit Kendrick spits, than come back. So STFU
I agree. Kendrick Lamar just in an era of shitty rappers and it appears that he’s complex. But he’s not at all.
Son….Agreed. Rap Genius dilutes the game. People start analyzing and now all of a sudden a rapper is way deeper than they realistically are, just because a bunch of people agree that this lyric HAD to mean this or that.
I used to think the same thing when we had to analyze classic poetry in my highschool english class. i always thought we over analyzed shit during the class discussions and wondered how the teacher could come to such conclusions from just one line of something written decades ago.
but when you pick up a pen to write a song or a poem or whatever, you have to realize that the subconscious is at work. even if the writer does not make the conscious decision to write something with a specific meaning, things still bleed from the subconscious. as an up and coming artist, i find myself finding different meanings to shit I wrote like a day later that i didnt notice or was consciously aware of at the time of writing but still makes sense and ties in with the overall feeling or idea of what the song or verse was about.
In short, what im saying is that you should give the artist the benefit of the doubt. you might think that it’s being over analyzed but during the process of turning feelings, emotions, ideas into words to communicate to someone, a lot more crosses over than just whats on the surface.
Also, I just want to add that a lot of times we complain about how hip hop is never taken seriously or given the respect it deserves as an art form which is a valid argument. so when someone outside the culture does finally take the time out to treat it with the seriousness and respect it deserves, I cant for the life of me understand why we turn around and claim theyre being “too deep” or treating it like it’s an essay or something.
niggas need to make up their minds and stop playing both sides of the fence to suit their mood swings.
Well Said being that commercial rap is so awful and now this dude comes in and can actually put a sentence together people act like hes chuck D. His stuff is pretty straight forward & not hard to understand and his voice is bothersome. No hate but dude is mad over-hyped, he’s an everyday MC in the underground.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Y’all are never satisfied with anything. Isn’t this what you wanted? A lyrical rapper who actually has something to talk about other than material things getting recognition in the mainstream? Well, Kendrick is giving you what you want and you still shit on him. I just really don’t get it.
Reminds of when Pusha T responded to one of those overly complicated reaches of an explanation of his lyrics and was like it’s not that deep. If he had been thinking on that level he said he’d be like a once in a lifetime genius or something.
They really do a lot of reaching on that site.
Glad he’s finally saying shit though, for real stop rioting over mike brown who was a moron and wouldn’t get off the road, then stupidly tried fighting a young cop and taking his gun. Yet no one blinks an eye when kids or other blacks are gunned down from gang violence, smh no one cares about your selective rage
First off, there is no proof that he “wouldn’t get off the road” or “tried fighting a cop”. That’s just you lying to yourself to justify his actions. Even if he wouldn’t get off the road, that’s not a good enough reason to kill someone.
Second, google the history of the American ghetto. White people are the sole reason for all the problems with poverty and violence black people face in the US. When black people gained their freedom, white people moved all the jobs away from the “black” areas and wouldn’t allow blacks to start their own. Even to this day black people have trouble getting loans from the banks if they want to start their own businesses. Laws were created that said blacks couldn’t move into suburban areas, and lets not forget all the drugs introduced to these black communities in the 80’s or the burning of black businesses that managed to thrive even through all that adversity. All of this BS white people have done to blacks for generations, is what created the current situation a lot of black people have been forced to live in. When you’re stuck in such a hopeless cycle of poverty, of course there’s going to be violence.
White people in the US will acknowledge the result of their and the bad things black people do, but they refuse to acknowledge the oppression itself, which lead up to all of this. Without white people screwing blacks over, none of this would be happening right now. White people want to act like black people comment crimes against each other as if they’re genetically predisposed to doing so. If this were the case there would be no successful black countries. I happen to be from a very wealthy country, and black people don’t have any of the same problems with crime black American’s have had to deal with, because guess what, there’s no system of white supremacy that keeps black people poor there.
So yeah, poor blacks killing poor blacks is just as much a white created issue as white police officers killing innocent black people. It’s not “selective rage”, all of this fits under the same umbrella of white supremacy and racism.
cxvz
“i’ll destroy this planet”-Freiza
who the fuck is Michael Chabon? can he spit? who gives a fuck what he thinks about rap.
all these dudes just want to take what’s ours, leave us with nothing and then cry about it and act all sad on some lame “where are they now” documentary in 25 years.
My man, it’s 2015..EVERYONE wants to be a part of our culture. What else is there?
You really have no idea what you’re taking about, do you?
Exactly brotha! Preach!
Favorite part of the track is in the hook, “Every race starts from the Black, remember that!”.
Yeah it’s my favorite too because it exposes how much BS there is. If I take a block of marble and chisel it into perfection does that mean the unrefined block of marble is equally as good as the perfect sculpture or is the sculpture a better version of the marble?
rapgenius and it’s community is akin to a group of farmers annotating criminal law and asking copyright lawyers for interpretation. it’s a farce and blasphemy to the temple of hiphop. go ask kendrick to interpret his own words, you have the money to hire him.
This c r acka doesn’t understand the lyrics and never will. When will we finally take back what’s ours and drive these cacs out of the front seat of Hip-Hop?
I fuck my black gf to this song. I got blue eyes and blonde pubes.
The Darker The Berry. The Sweeter The Poon. The Darker The Berry. The More Cacasian Cum I Shoot.