Kendrick Lamar: "I'm A Sober Soul But I'm With The Homies Right Now"

West Coast Hip Hop artist Kendrick Lamar has come to the forefront of rap and hip hop at an introspective phase in the history of the genre. Rap is no longer about being a gangster, killing people, or being a “P.I.M.P.” Rap, which has always been an extremely masculine medium, has been transformed in mainstream culture artists like Drake and Kanye West. Today, hip hop music is a vessel for emotions, disappointments, dreams instead of ultra-macho posturing. It is only natural that Kendrick Lamar’s album good kid, m.A.A.d city was released during this kind of emotional renaissance for the genre.

good kid, m.A.A.d has received multiple accolades including album of the year for 2012. Throughout the album, Kendrick sings about being peer pressured toward violence as a teen, experiencing the social pressures of alcohol consumption, and the life that young African American teens are expected to have in urban neighborhoods. With his album, Kendrick Lamar exposes multiple flaws in the idea of the tough guy disguise. In the song “The Art of Peer Pressure”, he details how he usually does not drink or act violently but he is socially forced to do it because he is with his friends and that is what they expect him to do. If he were to decline then he would be looked down upon as something less than a man. In another track titled “Swimming Pools (Drank)” Kendrick sings how alcohol has been a prevalent part of his male family history and how it now impacts his social life. Simply stated, by using hip hop music Kendrick Lamar manages to deconstruct the violent façade (as best exemplified in the song “Backseat Freestyle") that young men create in the urban community in which he grew up.

                                                                 

Kendrick ends memoir album with a few words he received from his mother when he was young: “Come back a man, tell your story to these black and brown kids in Compton. Let 'em know you was just like them, but you still rose from that dark place of violence, becoming a positive person. But when you do make it, give back, with your words of encouragement, and that's the best way to give back. To your city...”

Not a just positive man, but a positive person.