When Alright was released or even heard on the album "To Pimp a Butterfly," Black people everywhere were excited that we actually had an album and a song to declare as ours. But then Kendrick Lamar declared that song as a song universally for everyone. Alright is an anthem about black people being alright because we are being shot down by police officers and our people are being killed. It is a song to let us as a race come together and let each know that we are going to be alright and then suddenly Kendrick started singing it for everyone, not just blacks and not just for us.
There was a crowd at Coachella (of different ethnicities) screaming the song at the top of their lungs. So, when did this “anthem” become just another song? Was it when Kendrick made it a single to begin with? Was it when it started to become another song on the radio that everyone was singing because it was ‘catchy?’ But, why blame it on society, wouldn’t Kendrick be in the wrong here too? He decided to make this song a single knowing that it was going to become just another single on the radio. Then again, is it Kendrick’s fault? How would he know that it was going to go viral? The song is, like I said, a song for Black people. A song screaming for our ethnicity and saying that we are going to be alright. Songs like that rarely make it to the radio, let alone have people singing them.
That is exactly where this song just becomes another song on the radio. People don’t know what the song means. They do not know what the song stands for and stands for what we are going through and that is where it is just another song. No one is screaming about what we are going through they are singing about how catchy the damn song is. Then again, you could ask, was Kendrick the right person to make an album about being woke? Kendrick is a person who is famous and well-known in a lot of places by a lot of people for his songs Bitch Don't Kill My Vibe and Poetic Justice. His music was bound to be misinterpreted and taken in a wrong sense.
When I first heard "To Pimp a Butterfly," I thought it was the most logical, lyrical album of the decade; that has quickly fallen off, it seems. J. Cole made an album "2014 Forest Hills Drive" and his audience is more African-American than Kendrick, so it seems that his would resonate with a different audience. I have not heard a J. Cole song that has become overpopulated and sang by people who did not know what the song was about or who were singing it because it was a popular song. But, that is where they differ. J. Cole is not a popular radio artist, he has songs on the radio, but he does not have many and they are not on the radio for long. That is where things differ with Kendrick. Kendrick went from an activist to a passive artist.
I am not hating on Kendrick, but at the end of the day, it is what it is. I respect him as an artist, but this album went from zero to one hundred real quick.
