To Pimp a Mockingbird: A Lesson Plan
Literacy, you know firsthand, is a tool, is a motivator, is the beat of education.
...moreBecome a Rumpus Member
Join NOW!Literacy, you know firsthand, is a tool, is a motivator, is the beat of education.
...moreRion Amilcar Scott discusses his story collection Insurrections, father relationships, hip-hop, knowing when to abandon a project, and choosing not to workshop certain stories.
...moreKendrick 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 connected through scenes, and character development and expression through dialogue. It follows the structure of […]
...moreKendrick 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 is an outstanding entertainer, but Kendrick—his lyrics, his last album was outstanding. Best album of […]
...moreThe Internet has been (rightfully) full of David Bowie tributes in the last week, including a series of pieces about the icon’s influence on hip-hop music. Noisey traced Bowie’s public admiration for hip-hop, beginning with the 1993 clip of Bowie asking MTV why the network wasn’t featuring black artists that went viral following his death, […]
...moreLegendary producer Tony Visconti talks to Allyson McCabe about working with David Bowie, his own touring musical super-group Holy Holy, and his thoughts on the music industry today.
...moreGeorge Clinton spoke to VICE about his work with WOKE, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, and how “funk is always gonna survive.” Read the full interview here.
...moreKendrick Lamar is collaborating with a symphony orchestra for the first time in preparation for his October 20th performance at The Kennedy Center, according to the Washington Post. The performance will feature songs off of the rapper’s sophomore record, To Pimp a Butterfly, and will be a one-off show—meaning tickets will go quick. Read more about the details […]
...moreOver at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Casey Michael Henry considers Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly a new bid to revive a “Black Postmodernism”: Not only does the album fulfill many specific qualities of postmodernism, and postmodernism specifically shaped by black experience, but also does so within a form traditionally consigned to canonical, usually […]
...more