- Courtesy of Kendrick Lamar
On Monday afternoon Kendrick Lamar released a new song called “The Blacker the Berry,” and most of the ensuing coverage has referenced Sunday night’s Grammy Awards. The connection makes sense on a basic-news-cycle level considering the Compton MC won two awards for his decent, but not outstanding, 2014 single “i.” The power of Lamar’s new song underlines the insignificance of a perfectly manufactured TV event centered on glamorous people collecting shiny trinkets.
“I’m the biggest hypocrite of 2015,” Lamar raps at the top of three different verses. He closes the song with the lines, “So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street? / When gang bangin’ make me kill a nigga blacker than me?” These lines reference Billboard‘s recent cover story on Lamar, but more specifically the criticisms he faced because of a specific quote about his response to the death of Michael Brown:
