There’s Another Way
Examining Kendrick Lamar’s Artistic Choices
TW: r*pe, SA & abuse
I want to talk about artistic choices.
The choices that artists make in the making of their art, in the pursuit of making meaning with their art.
In 2013, Baden and I hopped into his car after class and drove two hours from Elon University to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) to see Kendrick Lamar perform live. Six months earlier, Lamar had released his critically acclaimed album, good kid, m.A.A.d city. This is the album that helped shape the first half of my freshman year at Elon, buying it on iTunes and burning it on a disc, bobbing along to “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe” and yelling the words to “Backseat Freestyle” as I rolled through campus. We did the same on our way to Kendrick’s UNCC show.
Kendrick’s range impressed me the most that night. Rows and rows of students jumped up and down during the popular refrain of “m.A.A.d city,” while I vividly remember a middle-aged couple hugged up together dancing as the Janet Jackson sample began to play on “Poetic Justice.”
I loved how Kendrick’s music made people feel something, how his words felt intricately sewn together, and how he was generous enough to grant us a window into his life, especially his relationships with his family and community. This is evident from album to album, whether it be Kendrick actually featuring his parents on good kid, m.A.A.d city or him on To Pimp a Butterfly reflecting on the survivor’s guilt he felt after his rap career afforded him a way out of his Compton neighborhood.
From his narrative elements to his album features to his live performances, Kendrick Lamar’s choices have always felt intentional in a way that was additive to the art—which is why, when I looked at the tracklist for Kendrick’s new album, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, and saw Kodak Black had a feature, I was immediately disappointed, only to listen to the album and realize Kodak Black’s voice is featured throughout—with Kendrick even likening himself to Kodak on “Savior”:
Like it when they pro-Black, but I’m more Kodak Black
In 2016, Kodak Black was accused of assaulting and raping a teenage girl. After pleading guilty in connection to the sexual conduct charge, he was sentenced to 18 months probation for first-degree assault and battery. The next year, Kodak was accused of punching and kicking a 34-year-old woman at a Miami-Dade strip club, where she was employed; however, no formal charges were made.
Despite these accusations and Kodak Black’s guilty plea, he has been featured on some of this year’s biggest albums, including Future’s I NEVER LIKED YOU, Gunna’s DS4EVER, Latto’s 777, and of course Kendrick’s latest release.
In addition to the abuse allegations against Kodak Black, I struggled with Kendrick Lamar enlisting him for arguably the biggest album of the year because I viewed Kendrick as an artist who thinks very carefully about the decisions he makes in his art, as someone who always seemed to navigate his work with a deep sense of empathy. And while Kendrick may see himself as extending empathy to an artist who grew up like he did and experienced some of the same harms—or positioning Kodak Black as this example of the complexity and toxicity within each of us—that empathy doesn’t need to look like multiple features on a widely available album that will generate more money for an abuser. Out of empathy for the abused, there has to be another way. There’s absolutely another way.
It makes me think about Kanye West bringing two other controversial artists, DaBaby and Marilyn Manson, on stage with him at his Donda listening party at Chicago’s Soldier Field stadium—and then featuring them on Donda’s “Jail pt 2.” DaBaby, cut from multiple music festivals after making homophobic statements at Rolling Loud Miami a month earlier, and Marilyn Manson, facing sexual assault lawsuits from three women and accused by over a dozen women of sexual assault and other types of abuse; Kanye tapped the two problematic figures because people didn’t want to hear from them.
On his Drink Champs interview after Donda’s release, Kanye said, “When I sit next to Marilyn Manson and DaBaby right after both of them got canceled, for five songs, you know, it’s like they can’t cancel us all.”
“Cancel culture,” a label Dr. Meredith D. Clark describes as “reductive and malignant” in her essay, DRAG THEM: A brief etymology of so-called “cancel culture,” is something many prominent figures and their followers cite when accusations of harm are met with critique or a stance of not listening to that artist anymore. Kendrick even references the label on “N95”:
What the fuck is cancel culture, dawg?
Say what I want about you niggas, I’m like Oprah, dawg
According to Clark, “…any examination of so-called ‘cancel culture’ must begin with an analysis of the power relations by which it is defined. Only a perspective that prioritizes the communication histories and practices of disempowered people can adequately decipher the phrase’s use as a tool to delegitimize the dissension that echoes from society’s margins.”
For people on these margins, especially along the lines of race, class, gender and sexuality, their public appeals for justice are often rooted in a belief that wealthy, powerful men like Kendrick Lamar and Dave Chappelle get a free pass to say and do what they want while still maintaining their position in society. Chappelle, who’s been called to task for consistently taking shots at trans people in his comedy sets, stood in front of an applauding crowd of celebrities at L.A.’s Hollywood Bowl in October 2021 and declared:
“If this is what being canceled is like, I love it.”
Although, in Clark’s words, “Politicians, pundits, celebrities, academics, and everyday people alike have narrativized being canceled into a moral panic akin to actual harm,” some celebrities like Kendrick Lamar, Dave Chappelle, and Kanye West have taken a more hostile position against their critics. That’s a theme on Kendrick’s new album, especially on “Worldwide Steppers”—the first song on the album where we hear Kodak Black’s voice.
In the third verse, Kendrick raps, “Niggas killed freedom of speech, everyone sensitive.” This line feels especially jarring when you consider the backlash to the album’s standout track, “Auntie Diaries,” where Kendrick tells of his experience of learning to accept his trans family members while repeatedly using a queerphobic slur, deadnaming Caitlyn Jenner, and mispronouning his trans family members.
For okayplayer, contributing writer KB Brookins mentioned how “Auntie Diaries” speaks out against “bigotry and religious-based queerphobia in the Black community.” Brookins continues, “This seems like a good gesture on the surface, but beneath that [Kendrick Lamar] — and his predominantly cisgender and straight fans — still has a lot of work to do before he can fully consider himself an ally.”
Many others have come forward with similar critiques, including:
Queer people shared how Dave Chappelle’s words were harmful, and they’re doing the same in response to Kendrick Lamar’s “Auntie Diaries,” while fans of both continue to ignore these critiques as if they’re just a matter of people not understanding—or not wanting to understand—what the two are trying to say. However, I believe that, if that’s the case, Chappelle and Kendrick should communicate what they want to say more clearly because whatever message we’re apparently missing is getting lost in their artistic choices.
There is always another way to tell a story. Always another way to make a point. In the last verse of “Auntie Diaries,” Kendrick even raps, “I said them F-bombs, I ain’t know any better.” He shows there’s another way the song can be written without repeatedly falling back on using a queerphobic slur. There’s a way the song can be written without triggering the same trans people he’s attempting to stand up for.
At the start of “Mother I Sober,” Kendrick recites:
I’m sensitive, I feel everything, I feel everybody
One man standin’ on two words, heal everybody
As a longtime fan of Kendrick Lamar, I’ve admired how Kendrick has sought to care for his people and give back to the community that made him. As he’s gotten more popular, that focus has shifted to the world. But as Kendrick said in the intro to “Savior”:
Kendrick made you think about it, but he is not your savior
I’m not asking Kendrick Lamar to heal everybody; I don’t need him to be my savior. I just want him and other artists to be mindful of the choices they make and how their artistic choices can play a role in either caring for people on society’s margins or heaping more harm on them.
I’m also not asking Kendrick Lamar not to tend to his own thoughts and experiences. Art can be personal (“I choose me, I’m sorry”), but, since we are societally connected to one another, it’s important that Kendrick and other artists understand that the personal and political are linked. Instead of running from the culture to follow his heart as Kendrick vows to do on the final track of the album, “Mirror,” I hope he takes this opportunity for accountability head on and learns from it.
I can still hear my homies and I riding down E. Haggard Avenue at Elon rapping along to good kid, m.A.A.d city—and while, in poet Danez Smith’s words, I feel “mostly a grief that an artist I always felt so close to is no longer an [artist] I resonate with,” there’s a part of me that hopes Kendrick Lamar’s music invites all of us to do that again.
