“WE GON’ BE ALRIGHT!”

The echoes of Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” from his 2015 album, "To Pimp a Butterfly" are reverberating loudly on my eardrums.

Last week, the Compton rapper received a Pulitzer Prize in the music category for his powerful contribution to the world that is his latest album, "DAMN." This marks a huge milestone in the history of hip-hop because no other artist in the genre has ever been honored with the prize.

Yes, that includes all of his influences that he succeeds: Tupac, Biggie, Nas, Jay Z, and Eminem.

2011 and 2012 saw K-Dot’s ascension with his mixtape “Section.80” and his debut album “good kid, m.A.A.d. city.” The two, particularly the latter, were concerned with the struggles of coming up in the cruel streets of his hometown. “GKMC” takes the listener on a journey in the backseat of Kendrick’s mother’s van.

The magic of this album is its storytelling ability to put you right in the middle of the action whether you are from the hood or not. The lyrics paint the imagery while the beats and melodies play tug of war with your adrenaline when bullets pierce through skin, when sirens pulse through bones, or when smoke permeates through lungs. We feel his desire to create and protect love in a place where love often means loss and pain. The encouragement of Kendrick’s friends, family, and God throughout the album pave the path out of Compton to a position where he is able to spread his influence to the world.

The anecdotes from the mad city become our own, and Kendrick goes on to discuss the racial divide in the country and the tempting evils of fame and fortune that he momentarily succumbs to in his jazz-inspired second album, "To Pimp a Butterfly."

The album is a gasp for life in the thin air of discrimination, self-deprecation, and subsequent depression. Audiences feel the struggle just to say what is on the mind when Kendrick repeatedly tries to express a coherent thought at the end of several songs, each time adding a few extra words before being cut off before the breath is even finished exhaling. But these struggles are remedied by the uplifting message of self-love present in songs such as “i.”

The culmination of the album is a release of the message he’d been trying to deliver that comes halfway through the 12-minute long “Mortal Man.” The second half of the track reveals that this message was being expressed in an interview between Kendrick and (a recording of) Tupac. The discussion dives further into the album’s themes of racism and discrimination in the country and fighting others in one’s own community because of a lack of respect; themes that are cut off suddenly after a crescendo of instruments layered over Kendrick’s poem about the “pimped butterfly.”

That sudden halt not only fits with the motif of abrupt endings in “TPAB,” but it also means that Kendrick had a lot more to say on that discussion beyond that one album or point in his life. That is where 2017’s "DAMN." comes into play.

The now-Pulitzer-winning album is the bold and biting return of a newly healed Kendrick to combat discrimination against the black community in America. If our boy had any doubts about his mission in his previous albums, they have been drowned in the same water that he emerges from as a new man with clarity of purpose, background, and worth as a black man.

The album begins and ends with Kendrick’s statement, “So I was taking a walk the other day…” Everything that comes in between that repeated line is inviting the listener to join him on that walk which exposes the cruelty of our racist society. But it does not leave us hopeless. If anything, Kendrick’s confidence and strength raging against the confines of Black America gives us an example to follow. For that, we celebrate this album so passionately.

My hope is that Kendrick knows that Heaven and Earth are shaking with his vibrations, and he has people out here praying for him, thankful for him. We'll be singing about you forever, K-Dot.