ego, immunity, & desire
kendrick lamar, among other things
There are two things I recently learned about Kendrick Lamar:
I’m thinking particularly of Lebron while I listen to GNX (ironically, I only listened to the album after learning about the new Drake lawsuit. Read for your own entertainment). Lebron has most recently been in the headlines for having been the father of the NBA’s first father-son duo playing together on the court—despite the fact that his son Bronny hardly got recruited to the league in the first place. All this to say: Lebron nepo’d his son into basketball.
Take it back to Kendrick. Here’s a snippet of his song “man at the garden”—
“Remember me, I kept my promise
Yeah, we deserve it all
A better life for my daughter
Made my son take it further than his father
Yeah, he deserves it all—”
It makes sense that he’s Lebron’s favorite rapper. Lebron from Akron and Kendrick from Compton—two Black men with immeasurable talent and humble beginnings. They put their heads down, became the best in their field, and said fuck the rest. I’m doing this for all those kids like me. I’m doing this for the kid who I hope will not have to grow up like me. I’m doing this—in the words of Kendrick, “Writin’ words, tryna elevate these children.”
There’s something inspiring about watching someone hone their innate talent and find that there’s gold on the other side of the mine they’re digging. That’s why most of us find ourselves attaching ourselves to hobbies, art, work, and even building our best character to be that symbol to other people around us. Regardless of who it’s for—whether it’s to wake up in the morning financially secure, gain the respect of our colleagues, or just to find a good solid reason to tether our feet to the earth—I have found so many hidey holes of people looking to find what they really want to dig their feet into. Even the jack of all trades goes to get a master’s degree.
But what happens when you get there? As someone with a wary eye on parasocial relationships, I find myself finding forgiveness for Kendrick. I was outraged when he released Mr. Morale because of a song on there wherein Kendrick used the f-slur on repeat and misgendered his relative who had transitioned, supposedly to showcase a side of prejudice that his relative faced. I didn’t see the point in putting voice to that again. Kendrick, as a straight cis man, had no right to reclaim someone else’s story, and the tired trope of someone’s transition being “hard” on the people around them is not a story I ever want to see pasted on any bestselling album. It’s exploitative, and it centers the straight surrounding people as the supposed victims, when the story of transition should be told by trans people alone.
When the Kendrick-Drake beef came out, I was laughing along with everyone else. Hell yeah, I bopped to “They Not Like Us.” It was a good track. But I kept feeling this nagging feeling about how morally I didn’t like Kendrick. He’d never addressed that song or his f-slur keysmash, nor had he done any sort of platforming of that relative he misgendered. I rationalized it like this: my single stream doesn’t count for that much. Right?
And then I come back to “man at the garden.” He constantly repeats the line, “I deserve it all.” He’s talking about the Super Bowl. He’s talking about his Grammy nominations. He’s also talking about how “Y’all stay politically correct, I’ma do what I did.” (from his intro, “wacced out murals”).
It’s true. In some ways, he does deserve it all. He dodged gang violence, stayed out of prison, and made it big. He danced with his family on a diss track. His ego makes sense. His ego might be deserved. I’ll never know what he’s been through in his childhood—in another song, he talks about getting kicked out by his father.
I’ll tell you one thing I do know: I, too, started writing poetry after a creative writing class. One of my classmates, Khaya Osbourne (now a comedian in Chicago!) held a one-hour poetry workshop and I went off on the page writing a poem about the pressure of perfectionism.
A year later, I’d be hospitalized because that perfectionism turned into OCD. I wrote poems in the hospital, and those journal entries became my first book. I kept writing. I studied it in college. This jack of no trades got her master’s. Now I’m writing to you, and you’re reading it (thank you!).
It’s pretty easy to say that I’ve developed a bit of a soft spot for a rapper who writes good bars and grew from a poetry workshop—even if we are at odds on some issues. I’m still on a mission to never buy his merch or attend one of his concerts (the big bucks!), but I’ll be listening to him in the meantime.
Unfortunately, no one is morally perfect. I literally have a personality disorder that makes it hard for me to keep friends (extreme emotional swings and explosive feelings of anger are literally part of the diagnosis). I apologize, and I try to be gentle with myself. Who I am is a product of what I’ve been through, and I’m still working those things out in my life. Kendrick grew up with two people screaming rival gangs in his ear, and he had to ignore those to get to where he is. He’s built to reject criticism. And I know I am, too.
There are a few truths that I know are absolutely true. The first: the big bad buy wins. A lot. I’m thinking Israel. I’m thinking Big Tech. I’m thinking Donald Trump. And try as I might, I can only do what I can from the bottom. But other truth is this: there are still ways that we win and organize in small, meaningful ways. The BDS movement has successfully rallied, and Puma recently dropped their sponsorship of the Israeli soccer team. Our socialist fascist of California Gavinor Newsom is going to withhold the EV tax credit from Tesla buyers to spite Elon Musk. And as for Trump—well, his toupee flies off all the time.
I can’t hold Kendrick or Lebron or my entire Instagram following to believe exactly what I believe or do exactly what I do. And sometimes, I think THANK GOD FOR THAT. I’m one crazy little girl! But I believe what I believe is going to “elevate the children,” in the words of an indubitably talented artist. And I’m going to do my damn best to talk my talk, walk my walk, and see if it’ll turn into a marathon borne of tradition.
No, I will not be doing a Turkey Trot this year. Mind your business.