On Monday, February 15th, the 58th Grammy Awards proved to be a night to remember, not for the glitz and glam, but for Kendrick Lamar's powerful performance. Lamar played two tracks from his most recent album, "To Pimp A Butterfly," and the artist has been the talk of the town ever since.

Viewers saw, before Lamar even appeared on stage, that it was set up for an unforgettable performance, one that was very clearly methodically thought out and strategically planned.

Lamar's band played their instruments from behind bars, the singer himself dawned a blue prison uniform, and walked on stage shackled in chains, referencing a specific line in the opening song, The Blacker the Berry:

"I mean, it's evident that I'm irrelevant to society. That's what you're telling me, penitentiary would only hire me."

Lamar opened with a song that details his awakening of racial consciousness, and the realization that some people hate him simply because of his race –– something that while unacceptable and tragic has made him into someone who does not apologize for who he is, in fact he wants society to know that he's proud:

"You hate me don't you? You hate my people, your plan is to terminate my culture. You're –– evil, I want you to recognize that I'm a proud monkey."

While evidently placing some much deserved blame on the white population for not accepting and embracing the Black community, his ending lines make a surprising statement, saying that while others are to blame, the Black community itself also needs to work on supporting one another:

"So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street, when gang banging make me kill a ni*g* blacker than me? Hypocrite!"

The narrator in Lamar's rap is saying that he feels like a hypocrite for not helping, but further hurting his community. This statement is backed by a recent interview that Lamar gave to Billboard:

"What happened to [Michael Brown] should've never happened. Never. But 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."

While ending the performance to this song, his ensemble, who had also entered onto the stage in restraints, eventually, after struggling, breaks free from their shackles and bursts into dance.

This emancipation of his dancers leads into the next song that Lamar performs, Alright, which was up for song of the year.

Unlike The Blacker the Berry where Lamar chronicles the struggles of the Black community to gain freedom from bias and racism, something that it is still presently trying to do, Alright, has a more celebratory out look, one that is meant to inspire hope –– the chorus itself is made up mainly of four words:

"We gon' be alright."

The reason why this performance was so ground-breaking and powerful is because, contrary to what some news sources believe, this performance was not crafted with the intention to inspire hatred and violence in its viewers, but instead it was meant to reopen the dialogue to a conversation on race that American society desperately needs to have.