“It’s pulling with the experience of going through change and accepting change; that’s the hardest thing for man, accepting change… That can draw a thin line, you know, between you having your sanity and you losing it. And this is how artists deteriorate, if you don’t catch yourself…
“When we don’t have respect for ourselves, how do we expect them to respect us? It starts from within. Don’t start with just a rally, don’t start from looting — it starts from within.”
~ Kendrick Lamar
The Pulitzer Prize for music is an American tradition dating from the 1940s that each year celebrates “a distinguished musical composition of significant dimension.” Over the decades, some of the best (though often esoteric) modern classical, opera and jazz composers have been awarded the prestigious prize. So, it was somewhat out of the blue this week when this year’s award went to the album DAMN by Kendrick Lamar, a 30-year-old black rapper from Compton, California who combines hip-hop, funk, soul, jazz, and the spoken word to create dense and often intense constructions about American life, particularly from the Black perspective. The achievement is remarkable given the boundaries and structures that make up these kinds of awards (no one is surprised by his many Grammy Awards).
I’ve had the chance over the years to become familiar with his music, as my son listens to him frequently. And I’ve been impressed with his depth of sincerity, fiery creativity, and honest vulnerability underscoring conscientious altruism within a frame of art that doesn’t always prioritize these. But beyond that, I like and respect his angle of insights into some of the issues and personal dynamics I’ve tried to include here on this blog, which he often folds into richly layered, unusual musical compositions. His focus often highlights struggles within what has been called the five primary values — Care/Protection, Fairness/Reciprocity, Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity (mentioned in a blog post here on 7 May 2015, and often addressed in seminars and retreats I’ve lead).
This offering may be a challenge for some readers here. Still, it’s meant to be in the best sense of that, crossing boundaries and moving beyond the familiar to discover something out of the ordinary that informs real learning and expansive understanding. It’s high-quality art, worthy of the patient consideration and true passionate curiosity one should give to any exceptional yet challenging piece of classical, opera, or jazz music, or immersion into an unfamiliar culture with a different language:
Darrell Calkins 
Kendrick Lamar is swirling in his polarized world and pictures all corners in his lyrics with a sane anger to find a way out. https://youtu.be/Hu4Pz9PjolI?t=506
In a polarized world “he who chooses (apparent good from bad) picks worst”.
For every truth there’s a lie.
In a duality world, choosing sides brings a little apaisement followed by a big deception.
In Zen, “do not reject and do not take,” swallow the world..!(told to me by Albert Low, Zen Master)
– Guy
I especially like your take on Lamar’s “sane anger to find a way out.” Under all anger is a sorrow that bubbles up into a powerful sense of something unjust that needs to be addressed. He has a graceful, even kind, spirituality under his relentless creative swirling that makes him a worthwhile, valuable voice to listen to.
“…sometimes I did the same, abusing my power full of resentment, resentment that turned into a deep depression…”
There is such power in these words, as if to say “this harm that you are doing, I know it, I have done it.”.
It’s a familiar sensation, when I can sometimes not react to aggression but rather try to understand it and then look for moments of living something similar. It brings a sense of vulnerable strength, of expansion.
In this current context of us individually and collectively (even as nations) looking for power, in skewed ways, with the subsequent deep depression instead of light satisfaction, Kendrick Lamar’s message seems so very relevant.
Particularly enjoyable about his expansive power is the fact that despite the harshness of the environment he is presenting, the repeated message seems to be “we gon’ be alright”. A quality noticeable in the image chosen here as well.
Mihai, you’ve put your finger on a primary message of this post, and one that is woven through much of this entire blog.
As you suggest, we all have our versions of struggles with resentment, individually and collectively within whatever group or tribe we belong to (political, gender-related, race-related, etc.). One can observe just how pervasive resentment has become as a dominant motivation, for example, in the ceaseless arguments and unbending hostile tone in political dialogues (well, monologues, really) of all kinds.
In many cases, I think we don’t really perceive how our unresolved resentments fuel and often even define much of our lives (and the often ensuing depression whose cause we can’t identify). It’s not just within our obvious battles of discontent but becomes an unrecognized attitude or state of being that we carry into each new moment, each change, each encounter. Like a moving puddle of muck that soils everything and everyone it comes into proximity to. Kendrick Lamar has consistently argued that it is the individual’s responsibility to recognize such inner turmoil and adopt a more creative, humane approach to its resolution, which I agree with completely.
As you point out, it takes a much greater power to override the habitual impulse toward unquestioned self-righteousness in response to presumed injustice, and that only becomes accessible once we soften into a more expansive reassessment of all factors in play and our own role within them. Part of that, yes, inevitably involves learning and eventually understanding the opposing perspective and how it came to be. In politics, that would make for a statesman; in relationships, that would make for a healer; in one’s being, that would generate not only an energy of “we gon’ be alright” but of “I’m here to make it alright.”