This past week, Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar went home with five Grammy nominations during the 2016 awards. Classically, most people will recognize the “overall” Grammy winner to be the person who receives the Album of the Year award, which unfortunately, went to Taylor Swift’s album "1989." Despite Kendrick not winning this particular award, he conducted a performance that was highly important and monumental, which myself and others saw to be the most significant part of the 58th Grammys.
Kendrick Lamar’s "To Pimp a Butterfly" album was released earlier in 2015 and has been deemed as a historically groundbreaking work. Through the album’s acclaim, the song "Alight" has served as an unofficial anthem in the Black Lives Matter movement, and its content has been endorsed by the White House as an artistic masterpiece. Being an album that refuses to shy away from subjects like systemic racism and black empowerment, Lamar masterfully conducted a performance surrounding these subjects at a widely publicized event.
Lamar uses imagery that implicates mass incarcerations as well as protesting references. The first portion of his live performance shows himself and four others approaching the microphone center stage, all wearing inmate apparel and in handcuffs. Portions of the band are behind Lamar in jail cell stage props. Lamar begins by rapping the first verse of his track "Blacker the Berry," transitioning to him saying the phrase "As we proceed, to give you what you need" (a direct mention of Biggie Smalls). He and the four others remove their handcuffs as he moves to the right of the stage. From this, Lamar begins his song "Alright" with his backdrop being a large fire, and his performance continues onward.
It is, in fact, a performance that is unapologetically black, and something that should be commended. It is not uncommon that award shows have today, and in the past, failed to recognized hip-hop as a shaping genre for American music for a number of factors. In fact, the genre hip-hop was not recognized until "1989." The last album in the hip-hop genre to win Album of the Year was 11 years ago, and awarded to Outkast for their 2004 "Speakerboxxx/Love Below" album. Though Lamar did not win Album of the Year, his performance is not something to be overlooked.
