Lyricism: Human Cruelty
Kendrick Lamar will never just be an artist. He exposes humans for their cruelness and evil and for that, his legacy lives beyond that of an artist and moves more into that of an activist. When you hear “Mortal Man” by Kendrick Lamar, shut up, listen, and let the song unfold, tenfold.
Mortal Man, dropped on March 15, 2015, starts off with a group of men humming, into a melodic symphonic beat. The beat feeds the soul and relaxes the mind. For people who just listen to music because of how it sounds, this may not be for you. But for those who want to know what music means, deeply, listen up. This song is slow, yet K-dot is still rapping at his normal flow. He starts off the song by saying, “ The ghost of Mandela, hope my flow stays propellin’.” In saying this, he acknowledges himself as an activist through music by saying ‘the ghost of Mandela’. He speaks for the black community and amplifies our struggles. Kendrick’s chorus consists of him asking a question that many people may overlook. He asks, “When $#!t hit the fan, is you still a fan?” By asking this question, he challenges the audience and also puts us in the spotlight. He forces us, as listeners, to consider something deeper than the song. If Kendrick had some tough times, would we still be there for him? Would we continue to listen to him if he made a mistake and was ridiculed? Kendrick uses crafty lyricism to second-guess our loyalty toward him. He also says, “If the government want me dead, plant cocaine in my car.” He borderline exposes the government for being corrupt and recognizes that the knowledge that he has out there is far more than the government likely wants. Later in the song, he says, “I freed you from being a slave in your mind, you’re very welcome.” He insinuates that he’s given us knowledge that just opens our minds to more than what we are used to, and this also challenges what we see as the status quo. He also inadvertently says that he has done activism work through music when closely thought about.
Kendrick causes us to question more than we’ve ever questioned in this song when he asks “How clutch are the people who say they love you and who pretending?” This forces us to think about who’s real and who’s fake in our lives. In trying to connect this song to my personal life I find this part extremely prominent. I find myself constantly asking when $#!t hit the fan, who is gon be my fan, how clutch are the people, and who is pretending? The event in which you have to consider whether a close friend is fake or real is a real phenomenon because you’ll never know until you actually know.
“The Poem”: Compton’s Finest
What sets this song apart from most songs is not only the length of it but the fact that Kendrick decided to give us an interview between him and 90’s rapper Tupac Shakur. Growing up, Kendrick revered Tupac and saw him as an icon. Before this, Kendrick installs a “poem” that sums up life as a black man in America. He states,
I remember you was conflicted
Misusing your influence
Sometimes I did the same
Abusing my power, full of resentment
Resentment that turned into a deep depression
Found myself screaming in the hotel room
I didn’t wanna self-destruct
The evils of Lucy was all around me
So I went running for answers
Until I came home
But that didn’t stop survivor’s guilt
Going back and forth trying to convince myself the stripes I earned
Or maybe how A-1 my foundation was
But while my loved ones was fighting the continuous war back in the city
I was entering a new one
A war that was based on apartheid and discrimination
Made me wanna go back to the city and tell the homies what I learned
The word was respect
Just because you wore a different gang color than mine’s
Doesn’t mean I can’t respect you as a black man
Forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets
If I respect you, we unify and stop the enemy from killing us
But I don’t know, I’m no mortal man
Maybe I’m just another n!gg@
For a good amount of Kendrick Lamar’s life, he lived in Compton, where gang affiliation was extremely prominent. Kendrick’s life was constantly surrounded by Westside Pirus. Kendrick never claimed to be perfect, but he used the power of his fame under the influence of bitterness and resentment. While being absorbed by the power of fame, Kendrick is surrounded by all the evils of the devil and is being encouraged to indulge in them. Fighting back at this, he decided to rather soak in his depression and search for the answers to his problems. In this search, he finds himself back in Compton where he grew up. Despite the feeling of home, he says that this didn’t stop “survivor’s guilt”, which is the guilt of being successful and leaving behind those who you grew up with. He also feels guilt because when he returns, he sees nothing but peril, and feels like the time he spent being successful, doing interviews, and going on tours because of his fame could have been spent trying to fix those broken pieces in his hometown. Yet, since he found himself here, he wants to tell those he knew about what he learned: that just because two people are in two different gangs, they should respect each other as black men. When doing this, they unify as a people and fight back against America’s constant attempts to deconstruct black people. Kendrick finally steps down from his pedestal and states that the reason he may be a prophet is because of him being a celebrity, so he is using his platform to illuminate social justice issues. This introspect sets up the next part of his song, which is an interview with the late Tupac Shakur.
Interview
In this interview, Kendrick speaks with his role model, Tupac Shakur. Kendrick asks Tupac questions based on his “poem” earlier on in the song. In this, he seeks closure for his feelings and pain. Kendrick asks Tupac, “Do you see yourself as somebody that’s rich, or somebody that made the best of they own opportunities?” Tupac reassures him for what he has done, letting him know that they had both come from very poor situations, and that they worked as hard as they could to be as successful as they are.
