
Damned with Praise: The Meaning of Kendrick Lamar - ElonsMosque
https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2017/04/damned-praise?fsrc=scn/fb/te/bl/ed/themeaningofkendricklamardamnedwithpraise
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krrishd
Super excited to see something hip-hop related at the top of HN, especially
Kendrick.

For anyone looking to understand why he's likely one of the best
lyricists/storytellers of our time, here's some recommended songs from him:

* Sing About Me, I'm Dying Of Thirst

* Momma

* Wesley's Theory

I'd recommend checking out his projects as a whole (Section.80, Good Kid
m.a.a.d City, To Pimp a Butterfly), but those songs distill a lot of what's
best in him.

~~~
ElonsMosque
Agreed, I would also add:

Collect Calls

The Art of Peer Pressure

How Much Dollar Cost (Obamas fabourite song)

Blacker The Berry

FEAR

~~~
krrishd
All good additions, totally agree. So much solid work to choose from.

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bardworx
This was fascinating.

When I was 15 I read Tupac's The Rose That Grew From Concrete, which helped me
understand my neighborhood (I was the only white guy). Kendrick Lamar brought
similar feelings in me. The toughest album to listen to is Section 80; It’s
not polished but it’s powerful.

To find focus in this comment, I suggest that we all look for ways to improve
our own understanding and compassion. If you've “made it”, please consider
doing something for others. Monetary help is great but if just 1 in 100 people
donates their time it might render higher impact. Teach code in a local
school, sort clothing in good will, work in your particular house of worship,
or lend a hand in a soup kitchen.

I apologize if I sound preachy, that is not my intent.

~~~
perfmode
Education is what moves the needle, so there’s something to that.

~~~
neocodesoftware
except when it is educationism? [http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20171219-the-
hidden-judgemen...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20171219-the-hidden-
judgements-holding-people-back)

~~~
perfmode
I’m not talking about the status conferred by systems of education.

I’m talking about knowledge and training in the application of knowledge.

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lokut
I don't understand what people are getting out of this review. It seems like a
shallow interpretation of the album in the context of his previous work, and
just settles to make insightful-sounding claims with weak evidence to support.
Making assumptions about the artist's motivation for the album with respect to
current social environment is not a useful review; speculations don't add to
the discussion. And, superficial statements such as "[h]is hypocrisy is part-
performance, part-confession," are failed attempts at enlightened commentary
that only serve to provide pseudo-sustenance to a post lacking real critical
value. It's hard to point out the unbalance of the themes in this album, while
comparing it to themes proposed in To Pimp a Butterfly, and attempt to claim
that the juxtaposition of emotions in DAMN is really just "a sense of emotion
overpowering the artist." Am I the only one seeing this, or is this article in
need of some deeper analysis?

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perfmode
the Jeff Dean of the rap game...

~~~
arionhardison
I 100% agree, and he is needed more now than ever as rap/hip hop are becoming
diluted by non AA cultures. I remember the first time I heard To Pimp A
Butterfly. I instantly got the feeling that this was made for us (AA). I have
not felt that way since the first time I listened to "Makaveli". If anyone
reading is not familiar with some of K.'s earlier work you should go checkout
Hol Up, ADHD and rigamortis.

~~~
lostgame
>> I remember the first time I heard To Pimp A Butterfly. I instantly got the
feeling that this was made for us (AA).

I think, more importantly, it was also made specifically for white folks who
needed to hear the message.

Sure, everyone I know in the AA community knows Kendrick...but they’re also
already vehemently aware of the issues.

I’m glad TPAB had the reach it did. Not only is it, message-wise, one of the
most important pieces of media in the last 10 years at least, but from a
compositional, production standpoint, it still has yet to be surpassed. Many
will try. I’ll be shocked if any succeed for the next decade.

What TPAB does, for white folk like me, who can’t directly relate to the
message, is prove that we should be acknowledging these issues from the white
community...as some of the most talented African-Americans in the world got
together (Dr. See, Pharrel Williams, Flying Lotus, just to name a few?) to
just project this hyper-clear message to _everyone_ \- the African-American
community is intelligent, brilliant, socio-politically aware AF and are fully
capable of putting forward a message in a far clearer way than I’ve seen most
white folks do in the last decade.

I mean, let’s face it. Can we name _one_ album from all the top 40 white
producers or musicians that has meant _half_ as much in the last ten years?

 _This_ is the most important message that TPAB brings.

For all the damage hip hop did to the AA image in the early 00’s, it’s worst
era by far, TPAB is undoing.

~~~
arionhardison
I was totally lacking this perspective. Thank you. As ignorant as it may sound
I did not think white people would listen to TPAB. Especially not the HN/MAGA
types. I grew up in the south and that formed the opinions that I project on
people (mainly white people), thus I find your opinion on TPAB very
refreshing.

~~~
nugi
Seriously? Take a listen to the songs bumpin from those deep south brodozers.
Its not even a quarter country, and likly more than half aa artists. Sure some
of the rural areas dont scale, but its changing, and has been for longer than
my lifetime. I got turned onto tpab by a white dude who read about it on some
forum for pop misic of all things. Bias goes both ways. Best just to be human.

~~~
arionhardison
I really hope your not black man, you essentially just told me to ignore away
racism which is the most ignorant and white concept I could imagine.

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btown
Paywall can be bypassed by opening link in an incognito window, FYI.

~~~
brndnmtthws
I'd love it if this could be the default in browsers. I want to select
individually which sites should be allowed to store any type of state.

~~~
unreal37
Firefox, Chrome et al exist to serve ads. That's where they get their funding.
That's who pulls the strings. Turning off cookies would kill that model for
revenue.

~~~
Hupriene
Just to clarify and provide some supporting documentation:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing)

Mozilla makes money by providing users to companies that make money from ads.

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gxespino
Always get confused with punctuation outside of quotation marks. Then I
realized I was reading The Economist.

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alexashka
What are people getting out of this article?

For me, it read like a typical album review that has no point besides getting
clicks from people who mistakenly look for insight from entertainment.

~~~
ElonsMosque
Let's take an example I read the other day about recent nobel prize winner in
literature Kazuo Ishiguro.

He thought he was finsihed writing his book and coincidentally listened to a
ballad by Tom waits which left such an impression on him that he changed the
ending of the book that won him the nobel prize.

In his own words "The song is sung in the voice of a rough American hobo type
utterly unaccustomed to wearing his emotions on his sleeve. And there comes a
moment, when the singer declares his heart is breaking, that’s almost
unbearably moving because of the tension between the sentiment itself and the
huge resistance that’s obviously been overcome to utter it. Waits sings the
line with cathartic magnificence, and you feel a lifetime of tough-guy
stoicism crumbling in the face of overwhelming sadness."

This goes to show that insight can come from entertainment.

Also Kendrick has numerous songs with similar emotion evoking moments as the
one described by Ishiguro.

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munificent
Here's the article:

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/06/kazuo-
ishiguro...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/06/kazuo-ishiguro-the-
remains-of-the-day-guardian-book-club)

It's a great anecdote. I knew exactly what point in the book Kazuo was
referring to.

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sysalphUS
The article actually gets some of the finer points of the content in the
album. To Pimp A Butterfly was really refreshing but DAMN hit me way harder. I
must have spent about 3 or 4 days listening to it on repeat. It has a lot of
really deep meaning, complete with some hard hitting contradictions, which the
article mentions. It made me say “damn!” out loud several times.

