Kendrick Lamar

  • The Fire Every Time

    “Will the world my pains deride forever?” At Lit Hub, Precious Rasheeda Muhammad traces the lineage of black protest writing from W.E.B. De Bois to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to Kendrick Lamar: how the layers of subtext in each iteration work to…

  • This Week in Posivibes: Songs for Survival

    In addition to his song “Spiritual,” which deals with the issue of police brutality, Jay Z has released a playlist of songs to get us through the crushing violence lately exposed by social media. “Songs for Survival” includes music by Beyoncé, Curtis Mayfield, James Brown,…

  • Swinging Modern Sounds #73: Prince Rogers Nelson, Guitar Player: A Symposium

    Swinging Modern Sounds #73: Prince Rogers Nelson, Guitar Player: A Symposium

    I started thinking about additional, more slantwise ways we might talk about his legacy. What if I organized a bunch of guitar players?

  • A Language Only We Can Hear

    Kendrick Lamar’s debut album “Good Kid, M.A.D.D. City” contains the basic, essential elements of a novel: a protagonist faced with an antagonistic outer world, plot and its arc—from opening scene to crisis to climax on down to denouement, a narrative…

  • The Read Along: Omar Musa

    The Read Along: Omar Musa

    In the second installment of The Read Along, Omar Musa shares how airplane delays can lead to productive reading sessions and how easy it is to get sucked into Internet wormholes about geodesic domes.

  • Dr. Dre and N.W.A., Reunited

    No lie. In what was the closest the living world will ever get to a full-fledged N.W.A. reunion, Dr. Dre joined Ice Cube, DJ Yella, and MC Ren at Coachella to perform “Still D.R.E.” Kendrick Lamar accompanied them as well, Vulture reports. Watch…

  • This Week in Posivibes: Anna Wise

    Anna Wise, the Grammy winner formerly of Sonnymoon who has collaborated with Kendrick Lamar, released a new video that sums up pretty beautifully a core reason for the continued importance of feminist discussion today: after all the work that has…

  • Trump Rally Halted by Hip-Hop

    The nominee’s scheduled event at Chicago on Friday night was cancelled due to the overwhelming attendance of protesters chanting lyrics to Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright.” Trump may still be steamrolling his way into other cities and we don’t condone any violence that…

  • This Week in Posivibes: untitled unmastered

    Kendrick Lamar has released a new album, untitled unmastered. The album was a surprise, although the artist performed some of its songs last year on The Colbert Report and this past January on The Tonight Show. The album is available via iTunes (along with just about every…

  • The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Angela Flournoy

    The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Angela Flournoy

    My ambition is personal. I don’t think I need to succeed so that the race can succeed.

  • Drake Shares “Summer Sixteen”

    Drake shared the song “Summer Sixteen” on the latest episode of OVO Sound Radio, Pitchfork reports. Among other things, the track calls out President Obama in reference to the Commander-In-Chief publicly declaring his preference for Kendrick Lamar, saying, “To do what…

  • Obama Answers the Big Question

    Kendrick or Drake? YouTube vlogger Adande Thorne asked President Obama the big question, and Obama went with Kendrick Lamar. “Got to go with Kendrick,” President Obama responded, as reported Consequence of Sound. The President continued to say, “I think Drake…