Who the hell said Kendrick Lamar was going to bring the revolution?

I never expected Kendrick to lead the revolution. Why? Because I actually listen to his music.

Since Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show at the Super Bowl this past Sunday, my timeline has been filled with obnoxiously misguided takes of people debating Kendrick Lamar’s revolutionary status. I’ll be the first to say that I absolutely love Kendrick. To me, he is one of the greatest artists of the millennium and his music holds such special place in my heart. I’m still not tired of his most recent album, GNX, and its themes of whoopin’ your adversaries ass just because they thought you didn’t have it in you.

But with all the infatuation I have for Kendrick, I have never thought to myself, “oh this guy is going to bring about the revolution!”. Because, well, I actually listen to his music.

His music illustrates vivid depictions of adolescent and young adult life in Compton, CA. With raw storytelling, thoughtful lyrics, and unique deliveries being his backbone. Kendrick’s music has been many things, yet, I don’t think it’s ever been “revolutionary”.

Through his transparency we’ve been able to see that Kendrick is a regular human like most of us. We see this mainly in the ways he continually tells us that he is conflicted about various aspects of his life. For example on his album DAMN. he has a track titled “XXX.”, where he talks about advising a friend whose son died from gun violence to go and return that same violence towards the people who did it; followed immediately by a beat switch and him stating he has to go speak at a convention on gun control. Further, he has denounced his own celebrity multiples times, including most recently on his song titled “Savior” where he cycles through various artists and celebrities names and telling the listeners “but he is not your savior”. Then later continuing on that same track to seemingly criticize protestors, framing them as people who react to events for small windows of time while he claims to be more anti-establishment in nature and praxis- not needing to protest because it’s an everyday thing for him, supposedly.

Of course lightning bolt criticisms of Kendrick were expedited by the fact that one of the dancing performers, who is an activist in the New Orleans area, broke away from the routine in order to show a flag that read “Sudan” and “Gaza”. Ultimately leading people to say that their disappointment in Kendrick lied in the fact he hadn’t spoke about Palestine in the past 16 months (or 37 years of his life), because, Kendrick Lamar has always been known as the ultimate voice on international affairs, I guess.

Apparently, I missed all the songs from Kendrick where he proclaimed his position as the front runner of the revolution. The songs where he stated his deep dialectical understanding of international history as it pertains to capitalism and imperialism.

Instead, over the past 15 years, I have observed Kendrick as one of the best artists who can uniquely share his perspective, and others, on growing up Black and being Black in America. Simply putting his life experiences into poems over great beats.

It is straight up delusional for people who claim to study radical tradition, especially those who praise Malcolm X, to look to an entertainer to usher in the revolution and be the most politically sound voice of all marginalized people. These expectations are completely unfounded. And I think it’s important for us to review the differences between what we would desire the biggest/our favorite artists to do, and what they have actually showed us throughout their careers. An analysis of this would show us clearly that being the front man for “revolution” was never something Kendrick Lamar asked for.

I encourage us all to enjoy the music as best we can and never, ever, ever, stop organizing.