Vanzorn

Oops. Just discovered the awesome power of the “Reject” button. Did not realize it would actually delete a comment, wow.

Anyway, inadvertently deleted commenter, I invite you to repost your comment, if you like, and I’m sorry you found my annotation embarrassing. Fortunately, numerous studies have shown that embarrassment is healthy and good for a person. So be strong.

I can criticize white america all the fuck I please, I have never commited a violent act towards my own people. Miss me with that shit.

http://www.complex.com/music/2015/01/kendrick-lamar-ferguson-comments-reaction

This should be split in paragraphs to be honest.

@MISSING That’s good, Kendrick’s not talking about you. It’s just like critiquing police activity, no one has a problem with good cops, it’s the bad cops we’re protesting about. Kendrick’s criticizing those who were outraged about Trayvon’s death, yet continue to partake in gang violence.

Also, this line is a direct connection to the song’s namesake. In the original line Tupac picks up at “…the sweeter the juice, I say the darker the flesh than the deeper the roots”. Kendrick is further emphasizing the hypocrisy behind the murder when the one they kill has even “deeper roots” than themselves.

I also think this hypocrisy is about people who critique the racial police violence yet ignore the ‘black on black’ violence or don’t speak out against it, therefore implicitly allowing it to continue, making the “I' of the song just as guilty as the people who are actually physically committing the murders -the guilty bystander.

@whasu People do criticize black on black violence, people make the assumption that we don’t while they keep listening to Chief Keef, Young Thug, and Fat Trel financially supporting the bullshit.

Great analysis, but I think we should be very careful of the use of “community” in this context. Just as you were very careful to point out that Kendrick may or may not have anything to do with a murder, we should let the singer/character’s claim to murder remain with himself and not be a metaphor for a vague wider “community”. This use of “community” suggests that the lyrics are making a “black on black violence” arguement that nothing else in the song points to. The hypocrisy is when a person is willing, ready and able to murder a “blacker” man and yet he weeps at loss of Tyrone.

The rhetoric that Kendrick and Common use is, IMO, best used in Atmosphere’s Yesterday!

kendrick is not dismantling the “you"s and "i"s he created throughout the song. you are overstating, or at least mischaracterizing, what he is doing with this line in an attempt to dull kendrick’s sharp attack on white america throughout the song. he is, in fact, calling himself a hypocrite, but he has been "i/me” for the whole song and “you” has been you know who for the whole song.

I can’t help but wonder if you made a hasty generalization. The “I” does not refer to his “community as a whole.” When referring to a larger community, Kendrick Lamar used terms like “we” and “our” (see other verses for examples). I’m not going to break down the whole song in this post. In short, Kendrick Lamar is writing from the perspective of a young black male in the hood, including himself.

I would defend Chabon’s use of the word community in fact, as while this song is directly only talking about himself and his personal experience, it is, as said in an above comment, “from the perspective of a young black male in the hood” and I think it is dismissive to not even entertain the possibility that he is using himself as an example for a bigger problem, particularly when he has this line included in the very same song, including two prominent examples of black on black violence, one african, one african-american:

It’s funny how Zulu and Xhosa might go to war
Two tribal armies that want to build and destroy
Remind me of these Compton Crip gangs that live next door
Beefin' with Pirus, only death settle the score

Take a look at any example of socially/politically conscious storytelling: the character(s) in the story are not literally the entirety of a group, it is an individual chosen from it. Just because it is speaking to a larger problem does not mean it is required to directly state its correlation and relevance, nor does any story about one individual have to necessarily be about that one individual.

This is a site built upon speculation. While we may never know with certainty (or we may, time will tell) the intent of the artist, we are here to interpret. To me, this song being used as an individual story that reflects a problem of a community as well rings true given how it meshes with the album and how the final lines mesh with the rest of the song. There are cultural touchstones of african-american culture at large spread throughout the song, from Tupac to Michael Jordan to BET, which automatically widens the scope. However, the interpretation that it is merely Kendrick’s own personal experience he wishes to speak on is a valid opinion as well and the above aspects listed may in fact be there to represent how they influenced him. Kendrick Lamar has definitively cited Tupac as an influence. Both opinions are valid, my opinion is very much in line with Chabon’s statement.

Best bars and rap i have heard in a long time. The lyrical technicality and message mixed with such a ruthless delivery gives this track such weight and proves that true hip hop/ rap still has a life beat. A strong one at that.

I’m not personally sure that this line is as one-sidedly victim-blaming as a lot of people I’ve seen assume but I also consider it not my place to make an authoritative statement on it as a white person. While I guess you’re not stepping out of your lane as much as you could be by actually trying to address how this line relates to the (use of the) concept of “black-on-black” crime and its relation to Kendrick’s previous controversial statements on Michael Brown, that also means the top comment (where did the upvote/downvote brigades come from, BTW?) fails to address the meat of how this line relates to a lot of people, opting instead to spend 16 whole lines explaining the basic idea of a twist ending and/or shift in narrative voice, and then cop out with a vague reference to Kendrick’s use of “hypocrisy” (a CENTRAL concept in the song, given CENTRAL explanation in this line) being “complicated” without actually exploring how he complicates it. so basically, I’m not sure what you hoped to accomplish with this comment, besides taking up a CONSPICUOUS amount of unnecessary space as a sorta-white famous person? to be fair Jewish = white is a simplistic formulation but it most certainly does not = black either. Yiddish Policemen’s Union was p cool tho

Kendrick is examining the hypocrosity dealing with media and his own wrongs. There was national outrage surrounding the entire Trayvon Martin case, but it dealt with people of different races. Kendrick has gotten involved in equally violent situations that go unnoticed because both parties are black. He, and the rest of the nation, felt saddened and outraged at the loss of an innocent Martin, but Kendrick is questioning why he should be concerned or upset with the killing of an innocent young boy when he is responsible for doing the same.

I don’t think the line is meant to be an actual confession of murder. I think the line is meant to imply that had he (or anyone) continued on that route of gangbanging, it was likely to end up that way because murder is obviously prevalent in gang culture. It’s about the pressures of gang life, where you have to kill or be killed; bang or get banged on, etc. Kendrick ended up taking a better route, but not everybody does.

can someone please write a tl;dr version of the original posters comment?

Really nice explanation :)

What an insightful line

The counter to Chabon’s analysis is presented here by Marlon James. I agree with James. Kdot is speaking for himself in this song. He is not shaming anyone else.

“That this song, with its booming beat, the loudest on the record, that seemed to herald it as some global political statement, was in fact Kendrick’s most deeply personal. Almost implosive. That the moment wasn’t about we at all, it just sounded that way.”

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/10/magazine/25-songs-that-tell-us-where-music-is-going.html?&_r=2#/pharrell-j-balvin-untitled

Leave it to White people to try and interpret what someone Black is talking about. Kendrick is not referencing the entire Black community. Stick to what you know and it ain’t being Black.