‘Dyin of Thirst’: The Exorcism of Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers
zuri arman
Growing up, Kendrick Lamar was undoubtedly my favorite rapper. It started with good kid, m.A.A.d city, where he so aptly captured the essence of black boyish angst while navigating labyrinths and making decisions with potentially dire consequences that could seal our fate before our prefrontal cortex could even finish forming. “We made a right, then made a left, then made a right/Then made a left, we was just circlin’ life.” I wasn’t in the streets, and I can’t even pretend that I was, but I can remember moments where I could’ve easily succumbed to the pressures of being a black boy in an anti-black world filled with traps and land mines. But like Kendrick on good kid, I had my mother on one shoulder and, as a preacher’s grandson, God on the other. I gave myself whiplash flipping between these two highly influential and forming forces.
As I went off to college and life became a jumble of variables, Kendrick remained a constant. One of my best friends, Sakhari, and I first bonded over our adoration of him and this is one of reasons we became roommates in our first year. I also soon learned that apparently K Dot and I shared a facial semblance according to my peers. But I’ll leave that for others to decide. As college went on, however, I drifted from Kendrick alongside my Christian faith waning and my continued interest in black feminism waxing.
In my first college seminar titled “Politics of Black Masculinity” I was introduced to the work of bell hooks by my professor and mentor, Dr. Yearwood. After reading books like We Real Cool, I had no choice but to reassess my relationship to my gender and to other genders, including the women in my life. I looked in the mirror and said something like “you coarser and you closer to the rhythm that’s inside/And I warped you in the interest of design/It’s just because I love you.” Self-criticism is an act of self-love done because the person considers themselves worthy of difficult conversations and growing pains. In that growth from the age of 18, my reverence for Kendrick faded as my refurbished ears couldn’t unhear the subtle misogyny in his poetic delivery. If our body is a vessel, music is food for the soul. Over time, Kendrick couldn’t fill the existential hunger that pained my soul.
Now, I’m 25 and find myself returning to the things and people I enjoyed as a teenager, including spirituality and Kendrick Lamar. But this time, each is with a critical lens because I have a stake in their development. Lamar is now a Pulitzer Prize-winning artist with a voice that’s influenced an entire generation. He and his mournful questioning that get at an essential angst within our culture is so crucial. And as he knows and has grappled with across his discography, religion is essential to how niggas understand ourselves in the world. On good kid, To Pimp a Butterfly, and DAMN., he works through his own troubled, complicated relationship to religion as it relates the well-being of black people. He’s also critical of us because he wants better for us as a people.
Safiya Bukhari, a feminist Black nationalist, member of the Black Liberation Army alongside Assata Shakur, and devout Muslim, had similar concerns as Lamar. In The War Before, she writes, “We must not be afraid of allowing the old self, rife with the negativisms of this society, to die so that a new, more revolutionary and progressive self can be born. Then and only then do we stand a chance of destroying this oppressive society. It is with this thought in mind that we use the weapon of criticism and self-criticism to correct the way we deal with one another.” I’ve written elsewhere that black music is about touch and exchange between the black listener and the black artist. Kung Fu Kenny, a black artist with black intentions, is undoubtedly asking us to converse with him in call and response. With myself being a student of both religious mythology and black feminism, I briefly pose a careful response to Mr. Lamar. This is a meditation — perhaps even a prayer — for a man that ain’t nobody else prayin’ for.
In her groundbreaking text, Becoming Human, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson introduced the term “black mater.” Black mater is the property of non-representability. It is unseeable and only perceivable because of its effects on things we can see. Like dark matter, black mater gives shape and meaning to an otherwise formless, meaningless world but is feared for its unknowability and inability to be represented, similar to our understandings of God. Its daunting power to change reality, itself, creates immense anxiety in those who crave total colonial control of the World and they take this anxiety out on those of us who are black, particularly black women; it is a fundamental but deadly misrecognition. Mater means “mother,” and in these moments of violence induced by white anxiety, black mater is conflated with black mother. So, the attempted metaphysical mining of black mater for its power leads to the violation and silencing of black women in reality. This process began at the onset of slavery and continues today as our narrative of History in its aftermath continues to be passively written. Black people, particularly black women, continue to be routinely violated. This disavowal — such as the murder of Breonna Taylor at the hands of police over two years ago — powers the World.
But what does this have to do with Kendrick Lamar? Across his discography, women are frequently figured in various capacities and relationships with Lamar. They are his mother, his girl, a concerned woman who prays for him, or the object of his desire. Frequently, an interaction with a woman kickstarts his complex musical narratives. good kid’s first song, “Sherane a.k.a Master Splinter’s Daughter” begins with a prayer followed by a mellow delivery of bars about a conversation with a woman he met at a party who he wants to sleep with. They exchange information and throughout his reflection on this encounter, this woman is portrayed as a femme fatal, of sorts. Within the song, Kendrick understands her to be the source of his downfall. The song ends with a voicemail from his mother asking for him to return her car so she can go to her unspecified appointment. In the background we hear a man fussing about how she’s “killin’ [his] motherfuckin vibe.” Zakiyyah Jackson writes that the black female voice alludes to the absent omnipresence of black mater and, again, stimulates anxiety. With his silencing of her for his comfort, we witness the metaphysical mining of black mater.
Similarly, DAMN. begins with a series of questions, “Is it wickedness? Is it weakness? You decide. Are we gonna live or die?” He then details another story where he offers help to a woman who appears to have lost something. This ends in his death. Again, Kendrick seems to imply that encounters with women will be the death of him. This follows a similar logic to the story of Adam and Eve, with Eve being blamed for the downfall of all humanity. From this story the patriarchal narrative our current existence is said to unfold. Though he is explicitly critical of religion, particularly Christianity, Lamar, unfortunately, continues this tradition of misogyny. The examples I provide are just one type and aren’t glaringly obvious, making them even more difficult to spot. But they have material implications in how we relate to one another. These are logics that we carry with us in our everyday interactions. Music unfolds from and reflects our reality even as it comments on it, carrying our baggage with it.
Kendrick offers us his ethos, “Speak on self; reflection of self first. That’s where the initial change will start from.” In a similar but explicitly political vein, Safiya Bukhari demands, “We must exorcise those characteristics of ourselves and traits of the oppressor nation in order to carry out that most important revolution — the internal revolution. This is the revolution that creates a new being capable of taking us to freedom and liberation. As we are creating this new being, we must simultaneously be struggling to defeat racism, capitalism, and imperialism — and liberate the Black Nation.” The plan is clear: we must start within. With the release of Kendrick’s next album on the horizon, I’m ready to hear his reflections on what often seems to be the end of World. Kendrick is always experimental, so I’m interested in what his laboratory can produce. Perhaps he will do away with the constraints of narrative. Maybe and hopefully, he will refigure black women in his artistry and re-engage black mater. This is all conjecture but, undoubtedly, he will leave us with something to continue to think about.
