On several television performances, beginning with a show-stopping turn on one of the final episodes of The Colbert Report, Kendrick debuted never before heard verses. Ironically, or perhaps by design, some of the most inspired, exciting, and downright genius glimpses of Kendrick’s lyrical acumen were NOT displayed on the album itself, but by performances leading up to and following the release of the album. It combined a story so personal with themes so universal to the uniqueness of the black experience that it was able to permeate many generations, viewpoints, and emotions. To Pimp A Butterfly was a masterpiece of funk, jazz, Spoken Word, Hip Hop, and blackness. These stories have helped propel him to the top of Hip Hop’s pantheon of new class MC’s, heralded as a lyricist who wears the mask of master craftsman. The poet, as much a product of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and the Harlem Renaissance as he is the streets of Compton that raised and inspired him, has often cited his desire to write and perform with purpose, responsibility, and an attention to detail that plays across the mind’s eye as short stories and vignettes. Kendrick Lamar, long considered a master storyteller, has worn the mask of each of these men, and many others on his never ending quest to weave thought into the tapestry of mainstream black artistry. A thief has the right to honesty, A pastor has the right of Heaven’s voice.
A boy has the right to dream, A man has the right of choice. African man, creator of masks that tell us to this day of joy and rage in his land, also released his spirits into dance and other motion that designed to explore all realities within the human being.” Once, black life and the ceremonies that punctuated it birth, rites of passage, the praising of natural forces or gods, these and other efforts all found channels of expression in many forms. “Somewhere near the center of this cosmos we occupy, the creative black personality lives and maintains itself, moving through time, unlocking mysteries, producing reflections and legend.
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