MUSIC + POLITICS: Education through the symphonies of Kendrick Lamar
Two things have been constant in my life since gaining the freedom of my own Spotify account: music and an obsession with politics. It wasn't until I discovered a new fixation, Kendrick Lamar, that I realized those obsessions aren't mutually exclusive. Through the lyrical genius and hypnotizing symphonies of “To Pimp a Butterfly," Kendrick became cemented not only as one of the greats musically, but also as a contemporary civil rights activist and public dissenter. Though I arrived later than most to the method of political resistance through sound, it's been a tool and medium of education since the creation of sound, power, and oppression.
Kendrick’s third studio album, released in 2015, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” is a revitalization of the conscious rap style that mirrors the soulful sounds of 70s protest songs. Through a mix of skits and songs, Kendrick details the triumphs and tragedies of being Black in America, particularly the damage that the neoliberal capitalist system has done to the youth of America. In perfect Kendrick style, the album title is a call back to the stages of life for a caterpillar–caterpillar, to a cocoon, to a butterfly. Detailed in the course of the album, Kendrick hits on key figures and periods of success, the butterfly, which is later retrapped by missteps or failures by its environment, implying that the success of the working class is short-lived on occasions of liberation. The central theme of Kendrick’s album and overall discography is that the exploitation and oppression of Black Americans is not unique, but a violent cycle of systemic abuse and power dynamics that take away the opportunities to means, and misrepresent the trauma of growing up in environments and communities absent of hope.
Chronicles of mass incarceration, economic disenfranchisement, greed, exploitation, and political corruption can all be found in the 16 sounds of “To Pimp a Butterfly.” Not only as a journal of the struggle for equality, but also a signifiert that these struggles of race and class persist even in the shadows of a black man’s success–Kendrick Lamar. The album cover is the perfect emblem of this ideology, and in the time of its release under the Obama administration, the displacement of the ruling elites must involve all layers of the oppressed. Serving also as a reiteration that even with a Black man as the head of nation, the working class are still exploited, the fight for liberation is one of longevity. With the waxing and waning of uprising and political resistance, it is a fight that must be endured with time and collaboration.