It has been a year since Kendrick Lamar took the stage of the Kia forum in Inglewood for “The Pop Out: Ken and Friends”, the first of a very advertised victory turns of victory that have reached the expense of their deflated rival, Drake. His rap battle began more than a decade ago, and the two heavyweights exchanged subtle lyric blows until the gloves came out in the winter of 2023. In the next spring, they exchanged a wave of scathing tracks, each submerged in the personal life of the other.
The fight was competitive until K-Dot landed the hay manufacturer.
It was not the performance of the “Not Like Us” table that declared the winner.
No recording artist has More Billboard Hot 100 entries What Drake In fact, it has more appearances on the list than Michael Jackson, Elvis and the combined beatles. When it comes to talent and commercial success, Drake is undoubtedly among the greats.
The reason why Lamar was able to knock him out was because Drake's authenticity could not receive a blow. That is not just my score card. That is what culture felt.
Lamar made “not like us” Five times during that June show last year and dropped the music video that accompanies him on July 4. When Vice President Kamala Harris was playing at her first rally as the alleged nominee Democrat in Atlanta, each sporting event in the United States was playing that song. Yes, the double meaning “a-minor” was catchy, and it is always good to have Mustard in the rhythm.
But what elevates us “we” is the same that bases the artist who wrote it: a defense without apologies of culture and the people from which art originates. As the saying goes: “Everyone wants to sing our blues. Nobody wants to live our blues.” For Lamar, the Battle of Decadellegia rap comes from its lifelong disdain for the gangsters cosplay and the empty monetization of black culture. As the discs advance between the two, it was clear that Drake was still trying to win a rap battle, while Lamar was inspiring a conversation beyond his beef, rap music and even the entertainment industry.
In the heart of the Surgical Evisceration of Lamar of Drake's art brand is a question that all creatives should be asked at some time: why am I doing this?
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Few moments of inflection in the history of the United States have shaped our society as the convergence of war, technological advance, outdated prejudice and artistic expression during the summer of 1969. From the landing of the moon Apollo and Woodstock to the disturbances and disturbances of the stone of the stone of the stone The Harlem Cultural FestivalThere was no disciple or demographic that was not directly affected in that section.
It was during the summer of 1969 when the great Nina Simone gave a concert at the Morehouse College campus in Atlanta after the most famous student of the school, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., had been killed the previous year. Simone joined other artists there to offer encouragement students. That summer also presented the song “To Be Young, Goted and Black” and performed it during the Harlem Cultural Festival. His contemporaries Donny Hathaway and Aretha Franklin soon recorded their own versions of the song, not because of their success in the list, but for their purpose.
“The duty of an artist, as regards me, is to reflect the times,” Simone said after his performance from Morehouse. “How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? That for me is the definition of an artist.”
In fact, after Bob Dylan asked “how many years can some people exist before they are allowed to be free?” In his 1962 protest song, “Blowin 'in the Wind”, Sam Cooke was inspired to declare “has spent a lot of time, but I know that the change will arrive” in 1963.
The bombardment of the Baptist Church on 16th Street in Birmingham pushed Simone to write his first protest song in 1964: “Mississippi Goddam”. In the summer of 1969, he was known for his work in the movement of civil rights as for his music. Simone still wrote songs about love, anguish, that kind of thing. However, the reason why his legacy still advances today (Irish singer Hozier appointed his third EP after it in 2018) is that Simone was also willing to use his art to reflect the times.
I am not sure if you have looked around the country recently, but the times we live change.
And as was the case in the summer of 1969, the summer of 2025 finds the United States in a convergence of war (Ukraine-Russia/Israel-Gaza-Iran) and technological advancement (especially artificial intelligence) and ancient prejudices (indiscriminate ice networks). However, in this updated version of America, the The White House has taken over the Kennedy Centerhas Cort national donations for arts subsidieshas threatened the news transmission licenses forks holding a guillotine on the head of Big Bird.
Due to the unprecedented hostility of President Trump towards President Trump's cultural and academic institutions, there is a matter of to what extent technology and media executives will allow today's artists to reflect the times when we live.
“I think it is difficult today to have an idea of the totality of what people feel because there is a lot to consume,” said documentary and author Nelson George. “The Chuck D Who is 25 years old, at this time, I do not listen to it. The Tracy Chapman of this era. Do we really have no voices that say something or do not have access to those people? All those songs from other moments in history, I am surprised that there has not yet a hymn for this time.”
Comedian Roy Wood Jr. said that he feels that in his line of work, the “resistance humor or educational humor” works best on television because “television is a reflection of who we are, where I feel that movies are what we want to be or be”.
The host of “Have I Get News” of CNN also said due to the political climate in which we are, instead of challenging ourselves to learn or grow as a culture, television executives are “canceling many of the programs that really focus on serious social problems because there is a setback against such issues.”
Big Sean, whose 2013 project with Lamar is linked as the starting point of the beef of Drake, said he had meant the “pop out” of Lamar that appears in Junetethenth, the federal holidays that mark the end of slavery in the United States.
“I feel that being black is amazing … we work as people to get there, to feel like that,” he told me. “That's why I am so grateful for the people who said I am black and that I am proud.”
And that James Brown Vibe is the type of art that Big Sean said that he is currently working, of the guy who elevates and gives hope to listeners.
Lamar's Juneteenth show was broadcast live in Prime and became the most watched production of Amazon Music. For Ben Watkins, creator of the Prime “Cross” television series, the success of Lamar's performance, along with his Super Bowl show and his current SZA tour, is proof that there is hunger for an authentic black artistic expression in this current political environment.
While armed the television program, Watkins said, he told everyone involved: “I'm going to make a black man arrogance, I'm going to show DC to the fullest and I will talk about some of the controversies and contradictions of a black police.” The reaction? “That sounds great to us.”
“Cross” premiered the week after the 2024 elections and for 100 days it was among the 10 most views of Prime Video.
The Grammy winner, Ledisi, said she was not planning to write a political anthem when she began to compose “Blkwmn” for her last album. However, his tribute to the resolution of black women was accepted as a hymn after its launch in February.
“I wasn't thinking about any of that, just creating,” he told me. “When you are really creating … you only intend to release anything. I'm glad you have resonated with the times.”
Even before the song took off, Ledisi found himself unexpectedly in the middle of social networks attacks for daring to sing the national anthem in this year's super bowl. That is why when he sang a couple of lines of one of Lamar's hymns during a recent tour stop in Chicago, I could not help feeling more a word of encouragement for herself and for the predominantly black audience that a nod to a commercially successful track. That week, Trump announced plans to resurrect the names of the Confederation in public lands. Only a few hours before Ledisi took the stage, the “No Reyes” protesters arrived, closely followed by the Local Police.
His songs resonated aloud throughout the North Loop, his passion that forced those purchases and dinners near the river to realize. The concrete walls and the thick glass designed to rebuke Chicago winter could not avoid the screams of the people. Later that night, Ledisi, whose Nina Simone tribute album was nominated for a Grammy in 2021, looked up on the balcony, smiled and visibly exhaled.
“We are fine,” he sang to a complete house in Chicago Theater. “We're ok”.
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Few moments of inflection in the history of the United States have shaped our society as the convergence of war, technological advancement and outdated prejudice during the summer of 1865.
The second round of the industrial revolution was on the horizon, the Confederation was in its last legs, and the first June celebration was born. However, while the civil war was over, racism managed to emerge from the unharmed remains. In fact, a confederate journalist named Edward A. Pollard began working in a revisionist history book that painted the south as noble and slavery as unimportant to his way of life. Pollard's false news, “the lost cause: a new southern history of the Confederate War,” was completed before President Andrew Johnson had even officially declared the war officially.
And to this day there are elected officials of former Confederate states that repeat falsehoods about the war that originated in Pollard, slavery. Today there is State vacations in honor of men who fought against this country Because for some whites it still feels better to believe than Pollard's lies about the confederation than to accept the truth about the United States.
Historically, this is where the creatives have entered, using the artistic expression to fill the gaps in our understanding of each other. Sometimes art is profitable. Sometimes it reaches number 1 in the New York Times Bestsellers list or a billboard table. Most of the time, it is underestimated. However, art that reflects an authentic experience lived is always necessary. It is both the spark that can turn on a fire and the refrigerant that prevents us from overheating. During the last century, every time it seems that the world was falling apart, be it war, famine or disease, it was always the artists who kept us laughing, waiting and believing.
A year ago, in June, Kendrick Lamar took the forum stage for what was initially seen as a celebration of victory. And it was … although he did not do it for himself. Kdot did it for “us.”
@Lzgranderson
