An interview with the pre-eminent rapper, celebrated and mourned for the quality of his music and his tragic early death, nearly 20 years ago, in a drive-by shooting, is quoted (with Lamar himself voicing the questions) in the 12-minute closing track “Mortal Man”, an extraordinary stream-of-consciousness essay about the obstacles facing black creative figures. There’s the cover photo, showing a group of black men squashing a judge on the White House Lawn the evocation of Harper Lee in the album’s title the reference to “King Kunta”, the slave celebrated in Alex Haley’s Roots the satirical presentation in “Hood Politics” of the “DemoCrips and ReBloodlicans” and the forthright lyrics discussing racial stereotypes, for example on “Blacker the Berry”: “My hair is nappy/ My dick is big/ My nose is round and wide/ You hate me, don’t you?”. The album is steeped in the history and culture of racial politics to an impressive and comprehensive degree, some of it raw and scatalogical, some of it subtly allusive. If a generous, freewheeling musicality is the album’s first impression, the second is of a serious, frank engagement with the pre-eminent political issue of the violence and injustice facing black Americans.
Lamar appears to be presenting himself, alongside Tupac, as a spokesman for black music Others cite his breadth and inclusiveness, both of the sampling, often of crackling, period tracks, and the cosmopolitan ease with which Lamar slips between the musical idioms of G-Funk, P-Funk, jazz (on “For Free”), gospel and R&B (for example in Ronald Isley’s verse on “How Much a Dollar Cost”) and decades of hip hop, especially his passionate engagement with Tupac Shakur.
Some, including Obama, love his head-on take on political injustice.