A socio-political exploration of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly
Adam Passingham University of Amsterdam
Comparative Cultural Analysis
Contents
Page
Introduction 3
Chapter one: Tupac to the future 5
1.1 Reading the Author 8
1.2 Ascribing and inscribing authenticity 15
1.3 Spectrality of influence 21
1.4 Conclusion: Resurrecting authenticity 24
Chapter two: America - the woman, the race, the ideology 25
2.1 Hip-Hop men and objectified women 27
2.2 Becoming Jim Crow and Uncle Sam 31
2.3 The subaltern character 39
2.4 Conclusion: Continuing the Discourse 41
Chapter three: Uncle Sam, Lucy and Racial Capitalism 44
3.1 Lamar, Uncle Sam and The Devil 44
3.2 Economic Determinism and Racial Capitalism 48
3.3 The Binary of Black and White 50
3.4 Commodity and the Spectacle 51
3.5 Simulating Identity 55
3.6 Conclusion: Hip-Hop and the Social Location 57
Conclusion 60
Introduction
good kid, m.A.A.d city (GKMC), Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 album, depicted his struggle to
overcome, as well as cases where he succumbed to, the vices of the mad city, his
hometown: Compton. Love summarises the problem at the heart of the album: “In short, Lamar seemingly acknowledges that no matter how good he is, the system is not set up for him to survive.” By writing a Hip-Hop album about his journey through the violence, misogyny, peer pressure and alcoholism of the Compton streets, Lamar made good his escape: the commercial success and critical acclaim that met GKMC propelled him out of the mad city and into the spotlight of mainstream Hip-Hop. It is from this platform that Lamar wrote and released the object of this paper: the 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly (TPaB). Lamar’s music is part of the billion-dollar industry that Hip-Hop has become since its inception in the urban neighbourhoods of the Bronx in the 1970s, amid “extreme political conservatism and economic downfall” (Rebollo-Gil and Moras; Watson). The rags-to-riches nature of Hip-Hop success permeates much of the genres output, with an overt emphasis on ‘keeping it real’ and a reverential treatment of the ‘hood (the urban neighbourhoods of America with a high black population), recognised as the authentic local space of what is now a global Hip-Hop phenomenon (Xie, Osumare and Ibrahim; Osumare). The inscription of the ‘hood within Hip-Hop as an inherent marker of cultural authenticity exposes a duality at the heart of contemporary perceptions of the genre. It is at once concerned with the
experience of poverty and oppression by African-American communities in American society, anchored to the ‘hood as the site of these injustices, whilst at the same time it has achieved incredible economic success within recent years, imbuing the music with an overt
materialism and culture of excess. This culture is far removed from the derelict landscapes that fuelled the politically charged Hip-Hop activism evident throughout the back-catalogue of Public Enemy, N.W.A, and Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, exemplified on their iconic track “The Message”: “It’s like a jungle sometimes / It makes me wonder / how I keep from going under”. Black music played a pivotal role during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 60s and was: “the ideal artistic medium to foreground the largest mass social movement to emerge from the African-American experience” (Neal 29). Considering the economic success and global reach that Hip-Hop has developed, can the genre continue to function as an authentic mode of communication capable of addressing the localised poverty and oppression of the ‘hood, or is the disparity between the lives of successful Hip-Hop artists and the everyday struggles of black African-American communities too great? TPaB as an album presents this duality with a well-articulated narrative that starts by considering the fame and fortune that Lamar found after the release of GKMC, and over the course of 16 tracks intersects issues of race, gender, exploitation, and authenticity, moving from the spotlight of fame and back to the streets of the mad city. This thesis focuses on very specific aspects of the rich tapestry of socially-charged and politically-aware music that it offers. It is but one thread of TPaB, with credit due to Lamar for authoring such a complex narrative. Whilst there is little doubt that the entirety of TPaB has much to offer the
burgeoning field of Hip-Hop studies, the aim of this thesis is to address specifically the way that Lamar presents socio-political issues from his position as a platinum selling artist. Throughout the album, a plethora of characters are authored, voiced and represented by Lamar, and it is an analysis of these characters (what they mean, what they represent, and how they are represented) that is used in response to the following research question:
“Kendrick Lamar employs a variety of characters throughout To Pimp a Butterfly to address socio-political issues of race, gender, and exploitation from the position of the black body and within the medium of Hip-Hop. How do these characters function to address these issues, and what can the message they derive within To Pimp a Butterfly offer a generation of Hip-Hoppers coming of age in “post-racial” America?”
A range of theoretical perspectives will be used to address the representations of four of the characters featured on TPaB across three chapters. First, the interview with Tupac Shakur at the end of the final track “Mortal Man” is used to address issues of authenticity within Hip-Hop. The works of Barthes and Foucault on the nature of the author here elucidate the relationship between Lamar as the author of TPaB and the voice of the
deceased Hip-Hop icon Tupac Shakur, taken from a radio interview in 1994 and retroactively positioned in response to Lamar’s questions. Authenticity is central to the continued
relationship between Hip-Hop and the ‘hood, and this chapter examines how authenticity can be ascribed and inscribed, as well as considering the relevance of the author in relation to such authenticity. Chapter two examines the character “America” represented on the second track of TPaB: “For Free? – Interlude”. “America” is a black female character created by Lamar, to whom he delivers a rebuttal of American society’s expectations of the black male subject. Crenshaw’s notion of intersectionality is used to consider the amalgamation of race, gender, and exploitation present not only within “For Free? – Interlude” but
throughout TPaB. Further, Spivak’s writing regarding the subaltern is used to scrutinise the act of constructing a character such as “America”. Positioning a constructed character within the discourse of the track and attempting to represent their concerns potentially harms the perceived identity of the represented. Cases of overt misogyny can be found
throughout Hip-Hop, and this chapter asks how the representation of “America” fits within this less than savoury aspect of the genre. Lastly, chapter three breaks the mould of ‘one-track-one-character’ to examine Uncle Sam and Lucy, two characters that are present throughout TPaB. These characters are considered manifestations internal to Lamar, and are representative of the socio-political systems that support the contemporary American society within which he lives. The Marxian concept of economic determinism is considered alongside Robinson’s articulation of racial capitalism and black Marxism as alternatives to the grand narrative of the superstructures that Uncle Sam and Lucy represent. The nature of these characters as internal, rather than external, is key to understanding the way in which their representation enables a constructive political discourse to flourish; one that can engage the latent social and political potential within the Hip-Hop audience.
Throughout this thesis the nature of characters is central to the analysis. Many
perspectives, frameworks, and theories will be considered tangentially, but it is all toward a better understanding of how, why, and to what effect these different characters are
employed.
Administrative notes
Throughout the paper you will notice that I refer to the character “America” with quotation marks, but not the other characters. This is simply to make clear when I am discussing “America” the character and America the nation. A link to To Pimp a Butterlfy on Spotify can be found in the works cited page under Kendrick Lamar. All lyrics cited have been taken from Spotify with help from the Genius Lyric forums, found in the works cited page under Genius Lyrics.
Chapter one
Tupac to the future: Kendrick Lamar and the implications of resurrecting your own Lazarus
“Mortal Man” is the final song on Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 concept album To Pimp a
Butterfly. This chapter will focus on the last few minutes of the track, within which Lamar
uses an interview with Tupac originally recorded for Swedish radio in 1994. Lamar has situated Tupac’s original responses to appear as answers to his own set of questions – a transcript of the section in question can be found in Appendix 1. To Pimp a Butterfly can be considered an introspective work by Lamar, throughout which he creates a lyrical narrative dealing with his own reaction to fame, the state of racial affairs in a post-racial America, and issues of leadership amongst other themes. With the above short summary of the album I hope to give focus to the chapter, which will perform a close reading of the Tupac interview. The focus of this chapter is the precise nature of authorship, authenticity and originality, beginning with the application of Barthes’ and Foucault’s theories regarding the nature of the author, of the work, and the process of writing. Lamar’s representation of the Tupac interview in the manner of a conversation raises questions of authenticity and the role of the author which these theories help to enlighten. Once a discussion of authorship and originality has taken place, I will explore questions of agency with Peeren’s text The Spectral
Metaphor: I question whether Tupac being deceased truly removes the agency from his
utterances, or whether a form of spectral agency is present. My aim is to discuss the precise implications of Lamar’s decision to use Tupac’s voice for the interview, as opposed to conducting an interview with a contemporary voice or simply answering his own questions.
1.1 Reading the Author
My analysis will draw heavily from both Barthes’ and Foucault’s texts on authorship, and as such I want to clarify my application of the term ‘author’. Barthes and Foucault primarily discuss the author in the context of literature, with a certain bias towards the process of writing as a matter of putting pen to paper and disseminating meaning through text. In contrast, my object is a musical work comprising meaning not only through its text
equivalent (the lyrics) but through melody, instrumentation, and what I initially perceive as elements of collage and pastiche (to be discussed later in this paper).
First, to focus on the arguments of Barthes and Foucault I broadly consider Lamar and Tupac as authors, in so far as my object consists of elements of their creative output. I recognise here, as did Foucault, that this generalisation risks obfuscating the nuances of different forms of authorship:
Up to this point I have unjustifiably limited my subject. Certainly the author function in painting, music, and other arts should have been discussed; but even supposing that we remain within the world of discourse, as I want to do, I seem to have given the word “author” much too narrow a meaning. I have discussed the author only in the limited sense of a person to whom the production of a text, a book, or a work can be legitimately attributed. (Foucault 216)
This analysis of TPaB thus expands Foucault’s ‘narrow’ definition. His broader notion of the author as the figure to which the production of a text is legitimately attributed is a more precise tool for this paper, although should my analysis develop to complicate this application of ‘author’ as a description, I will be sure to make the differences clear.
To better understand the interaction between Lamar and Tupac, it is pertinent to first understand the implications of author as a label. I have already used ‘Kendrick Lamar’ and ‘Tupac Shakur’ as proper names to signify them as authors, and to employ Foucault’s understanding of proper names, the use brings its own complications: “… one cannot turn a proper name into a pure and simple reference” (209). Foucault suggests that there is an important separation between the ‘author name’ and the ‘proper name’. The idea of an intrinsic meaning within a given text cannot be substituted with a proper name, since it cannot be defined by just one signification: take Tupac as an example, this proper name carries with it a plethora of meaning. ‘Tupac Shakur’ was the creator of All Eyez on Me, he was an actor, musician, poet and a civil rights activist. Further, this Tupac has arguably been canonised within these spheres as a figure of cultural importance, exemplified in the
reaction to his death which “… fuelled record sales of [his] CDs” and was “… followed by memorials in New York City, Los Angeles, and several cities in between” (Kitwana 15-6). This is but one instance of the name ‘Tupac Shakur’ – certain readers could bring with them myriad different understandings of this name, even conflagrating my use of it with another individual by that name, such as Túpac Amaru II, the 18th-century Peruvian revolutionary who was executed after leading an indigenous uprising against Spanish rule, after whom it is claimed ‘my’ Tupac Shakur was named (Walker). The voice Lamar uses on “Mortal Man” can be considered as pre-contextualised by the amalgamation of definite descriptions attached to its name. Since it is demonstrably Tupac who is speaking, Lamar is unable to detach the meaning of Tupac as a proper name from his position within the author function. Therefore, Tupac arguably assumes the role of author-god, his inclusion bringing a single theological meaning to Lamar’s work. Unless the proper name Tupac can be removed from the role of author-god within the text “Mortal Man”, the work will inevitably demand interpretation
and critique that involves the context of the author. As Barthes argues: “To give an author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing” (5). Lamar’s resurrection of Tupac’s voice complicates the analysis of “Mortal Man”, reducing it to the act of deciphering authorial intent. Further, it has the potential to ‘close the writing’, perhaps fitting since the track appears at the very end of
TPaB. Lamar’s presence as author of TPaB and the presence of Tupac as author-god thus
create a conflict of authorial intent; a present-day conflict between one author who is very much alive and one who is deceased.
Tupac did not directly contribute to his inclusion in the text, and yet he still achieves the status of author-god. This point is worth highlighting, since it informs my discussion of spectrality later. For now, I return to Lamar and the author function. The discussion
between him and Tupac focuses on race - specifically the identity of black youth in America, as illustrated in the following concurrent quotes from “Mortal Man”:
Aight well, how long you think it take before niggas be like,
We fighting a war, I’m fighting a war I can’t win and I wanna lay it all down.
Lamar In this country a black man only have like 5 years we can exhibit maximum strength And that’s right now while you a teenager
While you still strong or while you still wanna lift weights, While you still wanna shoot back.
'Cause once you turn 30 it’s like they take the heart and soul out of a man Out of a black man in this country.
Tupac
This is a work that is attempting to include a historical discourse surrounding race in a contemporary discussion: it is making the past converse with the present and vice versa. In order to contribute to a racial discourse rather than dominate it, “Mortal Man” employs two mechanisms that subvert the author-god. First, Barthes “single, “theological” meaning” (4) that is attributed to the author-god is subverted by the temporal shift it has undertaken. It has been wrenched from the past and abruptly confronted with contemporary questions that it cannot hear, concurrently re-contextualising its meaning. Second, Tupac does in fact die at the end of the work, shortly after Lamar reads him a poem:
What’s your perspective on that? Pac?
Pac? PAC?!
Lamar
This second subversion is perhaps greater than the first - Tupac’s disappearance at the end of the work marks his absence, his authorial death. The illusion of trans-temporal discourse has been shattered and Barthes future of writing has been realised: “the birth of the reader [has been] ransomed by the death of the Author” (6). The creation of absence allows the reader to interpret and disseminate meaning, enabling an inclusive discourse that recognises the limitations of the author-god. The implication is that the discussion surrounding the identity of black youth in America doesn’t end with the thoughts of this
multi-platinum selling rapper.
The transtemporal discourse present on “Mortal Man” could be described as collage - in this case the mixture of Lamar’s contemporary voice and Tupac’s historical interview.
However, whilst the work can be compared to collage in the way that it’s sections are bound together, it does not juxtapose in the same way; the questions that are added seek to draw new meaning from the historic responses, rather than just highlighting any contrast when placed together. More apt is the notion of detournement as the mechanism through which “Mortal Man” situates a voice from the past amongst contemporary questions. Greil Marcus defines detournement as “… the diversion of an element of culture or everyday life […] to a new and displacing purpose” (6). ‘Diversion’ and ‘displacing’ are the keywords missing from the definition of collage that suit this analysis. Detournement allows for the “superior construction of a milieu” (Gilman 196), one that seeks to complicate the meaning it offers. This technique is the method by which Lamar re-contextualised Tupac’s voice. When considered as an example of detournement, one is made aware of Lamar’s
re-contextualization of Tupac’s utterance. It is an example of Barthes’ text: “… a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture” (4). It is comprised of many different works: a pastiche of authors, intent and context. The interplay between Tupac and Lamar as authorial voices, temporally separated from each other, serves to enrich this polysemy rather than reduce or restrict its meaning in the manner of the author-god. Some of these influences can be understood as detournement, the notion that Lamar has
intentionally cited the past to create a work of synergy; however there will inevitably be influences outside of the scope of detournement that are implicit, similar to the earlier discussion of proper names. The difference between explicit and implicit influences raises questions about originality and authenticity. The explicit use of Tupac’s voice is presented as
an original, although the reader can deduce that it is only a copy: it is not an original utterance being transmitted and received instantaneously. The interview is first a copy as a recording of an interview that was subsequently broadcast on Swedish radio, and can be considered a further copy in its inclusion on “Mortal Man”. Further, the copy on “Mortal Man” has been edited to appear as an original conversation on the record. Does this affect any perceived authenticity of the work, and should it be treated as creativity, plagiarism or something else entirely?
To analyse the originality and authenticity of “Mortal Man” as a work, it is important to define what exactly a ‘work’ is. Foucault discusses the idea of the “work [oeuvre]” (207) and asks: “If an individual were not an author, could we say that what he wrote, said, left behind in his papers, or what has been collected of his remarks, could be called a “work”?” (207). Here I recognise the seemingly arbitrary definition of a ‘work’ - if Tupac’s utterances can be described as a simple collection of his remarks, is it appropriate to ascribe authorial intent to them and to consider them a work? The same can be asked of Lamar’s use. Within “Mortal Man” I would argue that Tupac’s contribution is an appropriation, one that Lamar has employed to develop some aspect of the object that can be considered his ‘work’, and that this removes agency from Tupac and disrupts Tupac’s original authorial intent. Further, to consider Lamar’s use of Tupac’s voice as an appropriation, by default imbues the original interview with a sovereign value. Lamar is stealing Tupac’s voice to contribute to his own agenda and this suggests that his use is simply a copy, an idea that contrasts with our definition of detournement: when considered an appropriation, it’s use is perhaps closer to plagiarism than it is to a citation used to contribute to creativity. The legitimacy and
The idea of originality or novelty holding a greater, reverential value over its copies is mentioned by Kristeller: “… we are, of course, inclined to give a higher rating to those works and artists which show a higher degree of originality.” (109). Further, Kristeller writes: “Even a verbatim quotation of one author by another may show the subtle transformation of an insight from one context to another” (110). The questions that Lamar poses to Tupac result in exactly this transformation and re-contextualization, and however close they may be to the questions in the original interview, the nature of language as a system of intricate, interconnected signs allows a myriad of interpretation that is once removed (at the very least) from the source. So not only must one be aware of an intentional integration of Tupac’s utterance, via detournement, to displace and complicate its purpose, one must also be aware of the nature of the object as a copy, which inevitably results in a transformation from the original, in this case not necessarily intentional. Thus, the idea of the sovereign original is complicated by its inevitable trans-temporal transformation and the
re-contextualisation that this act ensures. To accuse Lamar of plagiarism is to focus only on the notion of the author and their works in terms of property; here it is demonstrated that his appropriation of Tupac’s voice is not simply an attempt to pass off another’s views as his own, but to present them in a contemporary setting that creates and encourages the evolution of a discourse.
Were Lamar to have used an interview that he physically took part in, with someone who is currently alive (their status of being as ‘alive’ is only essential for the duration of the
interview, so perhaps ‘someone who was alive at the time’ is more fitting), analysis of the resulting object would still need to be aware of the transformation of insight between the original and the copy that the reader is exposed to. In the case of “Mortal Man” the
by their exposure to a copy of a copy: Tupac’s original utterance was read by Lamar as a copy, who in turn produced a copy on his work. Fortunately, Tupac’s authorial death prevents the potential obfuscation of meaning from having an immediate impact – the reader is still free to interpret and use the text based on their own direct interaction with the object, diffusion or not. The question stands though: why choose Tupac for the work and not anyone else? I believe the answer lies at the end of a discussion of authenticity. 1.2 Ascribing and inscribing authenticity
Tupac Shakur holds cultural capital as a musician within the genre of Hip-hop and as a figure within the civil rights movement. His career has been canonised and he remains influential to this day. His legacy provides him with authenticity. He is also a direct figure of inspiration for Lamar (Shepherd). By appropriating his voice Lamar attempts to inscribe this authenticity within his own work, inviting the connotations already attached to the ‘proper-name’ author Tupac. Moore states that: “Authenticity is a matter of interpretatio n which is made and fought for from within a cultural and, thus, historical position. It is ascribed, not inscribed.” (210). I can thus consider Lamar as a reader of Tupac, one that has ascribed authenticity to Tupac’s utterances as evidenced by his decision to appropriate Tupac’s voice. By choosing to develop a discourse with Tupac’s interview as the focal point, Lamar not only signifies his own attribution of authenticity to Tupac, he also complicates any discussion regarding the authenticity of “Mortal Man” as a text overall. If authenticity cannot be inscribed (as per Moore’s attestation) then it is for future model readers to ascribe, and when discussing “Mortal Man” the question of authenticity must consider not only the nature of Tupac’s original utterance but also of Lamar’s re-contextualization of the original and of his own contribution in the form of the questions that he poses. As an author, Lamar
has made it clear that his own creative output is intrinsically part of Barthes’ “thousand sources of culture” by including one of the voices that contributed to his own “… tissue of citations” (4). If I set aside the notion that there are myriad other cultural influences that contribute to Lamar’s understanding, I can argue that by making it explicit that Tupac is one of his sources he is demonstrating an awareness of the implications of presenting himself as a source of authority. Two main issues would have arisen had Lamar simply presented his own view. Firstly, he could have been accused of assuming the role of the author-god, which would imply that his utterances held a single, authoritative meaning. As per my earlier point regarding the subversion of the author-god, this would perhaps restrict any reading of “Mortal Man” to a determination of his authorial intent and risk limiting the potential for further discourse. Secondly, “Mortal Man” would need to wait for authenticity to be ascribed to it. Academically speaking, Lamar is employing Tupac as a citation. Through this act, it could be argued that Lamar is attempting to inscribe authority within his work without needing to wait for the reader to potentially do it for him. He chose to position Tupac’s utterances with his own contemporary questions, which authenticated his own work and revived the historical relevance of Tupac in a modern-day discussion.
By appropriating Tupac’s voice through detournement Lamar has subverted the author-god, juxtaposed a contemporary racial discourse with the past, and inscribed authority into his own work. He has achieved a shortcut to authenticity and cultural authority through these devices (although Lamar’s own cultural status earned by the acclaim for his previous album good kid, m.A.A.d City also contributed to this (Metacritic); I do not believe that any aspiring Hip-Hopper would necessarily achieve the same result). These are my conclusions so far, but there is a tension between two of them – if the author-god has truly been
to approach “Mortal Man” as a reader and extract one’s own meaning from the work alone? To answer this, I’m going to explore the function of “Mortal Man” as a work within the wider culture industry using Adorno’s analysis
In Adorno’s early analysis there is a tension surrounding the capacity for what can broadly be termed ‘popular music’ (according to him arguably any form of popular music since the birth of Jazz in the first half of the twentieth century) to hold up to stringent analysis and be considered authentic, in comparison to the other “sphere of music” that he recognises as “serious music” (T. W. Adorno, On popular music). Adorno was a proponent of the atonal modern classical music being produced by musicians such as Schoenberg. To this music, he ascribed a truth that was to be found in its inaccessibility: the complex compositions required an understanding beyond the level of the casual listener to be properly engaged with. This complexity demanded active listening, and thus had the ability to engage an audience with the disharmony and inequality that Adorno perceived in their society. Underpinning Adorno’s analysis is not an elitist class divide – whilst it is tempting to
conclude that he was against popular music, he was focused more on the capitalist function of the culture industry to release music that acted as a hegemony, encouraging
contentment over societal critique. His analysis can be considered flawed where it did not anticipate the potential for popular music to subvert the culture industry. To Pimp a
Butterfly as an album certainly has much to say in the way of societal critique, exemplified
on “Mortal Man” with the discussion regarding black identity. However, To Pimp a Butterfly and “Mortal Man” can still be considered products of the culture industry – they have an exchange value that has the potential to reduce them to commodities. Without this exchange value, there is arguably little opportunity for them to find a platform through which to find exposure on an international scale. Lamar needed to produce a work that
could be marketed through the culture industry to gain the largest possible audience within a capitalist society. The use of Tupac within “Mortal Man” utilises a latent potential within Adorno’s thoughts on value judgements: “The familiarity of a piece is a surrogate for the quality ascribed to it. To like it is almost the same thing as to recognise it.” (217) If my attempts to demonstrate the relevance of Tupac as a musician and cultural figure are valid, and it is accepted that he did indeed leave behind a legacy, then it is safe to say that he is recognisable, at the very least within the canon of Hip-hop. Therefore, I can adapt Adorno’s argument to suggest that the recognition of Tupac can contribute to the quality and value of “Mortal Man”. This conclusion acts in two ways: first, it suggests that Lamar’s use of Tupac inscribes quality to “Mortal Man” through familiarity (familiarity with a voice that already holds cultural capital), and that this contributes to its marketability within the culture industry, allowing successful distribution to a wide audience. This idea is reflected by Mieke Bal when she writes:
Only those who are invested with cultural authority can be expository agents. For only such subjects are able to routinely address an audience that is numerous and anonymous to the agent, an audience which tends to go along with the assumed general meaning of the gesture of expositing: to believe, to appreciate, and to enjoy. (10)
Second, it affirms the reservations that Adorno held of the culture industry as a hegemony. Without allowing his work to be pimped, Lamar may not have reached such an audience. He must still conform to the requirements imposed by the hegemony. To answer my questions at the end of the previous paragraph, authenticity (and the recognition and quality that it implies) is still necessary for “Mortal Man” to function and successfully disseminate within
the culture industry. One may not be able to approach the work and extract meaning from it if it was never successfully exposed. That Lamar may have felt he needed to include such an explicit historical reference in his work suggests that the tension between popular music as commodity and as a form of societal critique is very much alive, and indicates a necessity in modern popular music to demonstrate an awareness of its history in order to produ ce music as art that can be considered authentic. Without this explicit link between past and present, Lamar risks becoming a craftsman as opposed to an artist. The inclusion of Tupac
demonstrates an attempt by Lamar to inscribe a historical sense of authenticity and authority within his work.
The inscription of authenticity applies to the social matters explored and presented on “Mortal Man” as well as throughout TPaB. Lamar makes explicit his source of authenticity as well as questioning this source; at times coming close to outright disagreeing with it. When Lamar asks what Tupac thinks is the future of the present generation he uses this quote from the interview as an answer:
I think that niggas is tired-a grabbin' shit out the stores And next time it’s a riot there’s gonna be bloodshed for real I don’t think America can know that
I think American think we was just playing and it’s gonna be some more playing But it ain’t gonna be no playing.
It’s gonna be murder, you know what I’m saying,
It’s gonna be like Nat Turner, 1831, up in this muthafucka. You know what I’m saying, it’s gonna happen
Here Tupac is predicting a riot, an uprising, a revolution, and he isn’t far from the reality – there were 102 reported shootings of unarmed black people by American police took place in 2015, the year that To Pimp a Butterfly was released (US Census). An astute summary of the present day reality is achieved through a historical source. Further, note the language employed by both Lamar and Tupac. It is colloquial ‘hood speak, a language comfortable outside of the realm of academia that is familiar to the audience and consumers of Hip-Hop. Lamar responds to this:
That’s crazy man. In my opinion only hope that we kinda have left Is music and vibrations
Lotta people don’t understand how important it is.
Lamar Here Lamar is disagreeing with the source that he has explicitly chosen. This disagreement further subverts the author-god by denying the single meaning, instead choosing to develop the discourse. This self-reflexivity on “Mortal Man” is exemplified throughout To Pimp a Butterfly. However, it could also be considered a limiting factor, one that binds Lamar’s output to what can be considered historically appropriate. Arguably Lamar’s inclusion of Tupac was dictated by the hegemony of the culture industry and the necessity to use an individual with cultural authority as per Bal’s text. In this sense the presence of the consumer-driven society of the spectacle, here manifest as the culture industry, remains influential. This residual influence is spectral in nature – it cannot be grasped outside of the abstract, but it is a force nonetheless. The agency of Tupac’s posthumous contribution can be articulated as spectral agency.
1.3 Spectrality of influence
Within her introduction to The Spectral Metaphor, Peeren includes thoughts from Derrida regarding the nature of inheritance:
If the readability of a legacy were given, natural, transparent, univocal, if it did not call for and at the same time defy interpretation, we would never have anything to inherit from it. We would be affected by it as by a cause – natural or genetic. One always inherits from a secret – which says ‘read me, will you ever be able to do so?’ (qtd. in Peeren 18)
The nature of Derrida’s inheritance is found within “Mortal Man” as Lamar makes explicit his position as an artist influenced by Tupac:
That’s crazy, because me being one of your offspring of the legacy you left behind I can truly tell you that there’s nothing but turmoil goin’ on
So I wanted to ask you what you think is the future for me and my generation today? Kendrick Lamar Here Lamar is looking to the past to find answers for the future, and it is what grounds the work as trans-temporal in nature. Further, Lamar asks these questions of the past, which “call[s] for and at the same time [defies] interpretation” (Derrida qtd. in Peeren 18). This act is another demonstration of self-reflexivity. It is a secret from which Lamar is inheriting, the secret in this case being any perceived meaning in Tupac’s utterances. Lamar’s subversion of the author-god demonstrates the fallacy of seeking a single, sovereign meaning, and here it can also be argued that “Mortal Man” demonstrates the power that Tupac continues to wield through Peeren’s idea of spectral agency. As a ghostly presence, Tupac is attributed with a power that “… enables [him] to get away with superficiality, removes accountability
and engenders a sense of invulnerability.” (Peeren 17). As discussed earlier, Tupac certainly holds a position of power since he can be considered in the position of the auth or-god even posthumously. The metaphor of spectrality here allows an understanding of the lasting influence and power exhibited by historical figures such as Tupac. Coupled with Derrida’s notion of the secret within inheritance, I observe that there is a fundamental need to interrogate the past such as is demonstrated throughout the interview on “Mortal Man”. To seek the meaning of the author-god without some semblance of scepticism would result in it only affecting the reader in the manner of a cause. By questioning his own inheritance, Lamar makes explicit the inevitability of historical influence on his own agency,
demonstrated by the overt inclusion of Tupac as a manifestation of such influence; and at the same time, he releases the discourse from its historical constraints. Tupac may no longer respond, but this does not mean that the discourse must finish.
Lastly, I will briefly touch on Spivak’s text Can the Subaltern Speak?, to be used further in chapter two, in conjunction with Peeren’s text in which the subaltern can be considered spectral in nature. Spivak debates the issues faced by the subaltern to speak within a western-centric academia steeped in a vocabulary of white hegemony that is only capable of othering its subjects. The subaltern cannot participate on an equal footing in this discourse since it is explicitly treated as the marked category; thus, the subaltern finds a voice outside of the western pedagogy. In the case of Lamar, as with many black youths and Hip-hop generationers, this is expression through music. When Chuck D described Hip-hop and rap music as the “Black CNN” (qtd. in Kitwana 149), he was articulating the idea that black youth culture had successfully used the commercialisation of Hip-hop as a platform to disseminate a coherent identity on a national level. Through the twentieth century, black voices could be heard on platforms whose parameters were defined to an extent within a
national discussion perpetuated by the mainstream media. This media framing acted to restrict their voice, which was still considered ‘other’ to the national identity of America. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mike Tyson are both prominent figures within the black
community, but their ability to engage in a national discourse was limited to the homology of civil rights and professional sports respectively, fields in which their contribution could be considered appropriate and acceptable to the society of the time, albeit in the case of the civil rights movement an attempt to break out of the hegemony. Whilst through the process of commercialisation hip-hop was arguably also assimilated into the national narrative, the mainstream and underground dichotomy remain co-dependant: the underground Hip-hop movement can thrive and perpetuate itself with the cultural capital generated from the commercial success of mainstream Hip-hop, which in turn feeds off the proliferation of emerging talent influenced and encouraged by it. This leads to a Hip-hop culture that has grown to represent the voices of the underground in the mainstream and on the national level. As such, contemporary Hip-hop, and by extension “Mortal Man”, can be considered a successful attempt to create a national discourse that provides a voice and vocabulary for the dissemination of the voice of black youth culture. Consider here Foucault’s attestation that: “… behind all these questions, we would hear hardly anything but the stirring of an indifference: what difference does it make who is speaking?”. When considering the subaltern and the spectrality of black identity within the narrative of white America, I believe that it does indeed matter who is speaking. Lamar speaks on “Mortal Man”, and the connotations of his own cultural sources, of his influences and of his identity as a black man and Hip-hop generationer is important to hear.
1.4 Conclusion: Resurrecting authenticity
To conclude, I would like to briefly explore the Bible story of Jesus and Lazarus as a metaphor in comparison with the story of Lamar and Tupac. In the Bible story, Jesus resurrected Lazarus with divine intervention. Here there is the notion that God worked through Jesus and allowed him to resurrect Lazarus. Lazarus could live on, later becoming a symbol of his power that was considered dangerous by the hegemony of the time. In the case of “Mortal Man”, Lamar is resurrecting Tupac without his permission as author-god, effectively denying him the divine status attributed to Jesus. This is perhaps a reversal of the Bible story, which sees Lamar in the position of Lazarus even though he is also the
‘ressurector’. Lamar respects Tupac’s legacy and influence as Lazarus respected the divine power of Jesus, but Lamar functions not only as ressurector but as a figure who continues to value the importance of Tupac as a cultural icon. By subverting the divinity of Tupac as an author-god through questions and the use of his voice without permission, whilst at the same time conceding to the need to inscribe cultural authority within his exposition, Lamar has created in “Mortal Man” a discourse that is truly trans-temporal in nature. It remains to be seen whether the present-day hegemony of American nationalist discourse will continue this metaphor and consider “Mortal Man” a dangerous symbol of spectral power.
Chapter two
America – the woman, the race, the ideology
Introduction
Having considered Tupac’s voice on “Mortal Man”, I now turn to two characters employed by Lamar on TPaB in the song “For Free? – Interlude” (“FF?I”). Positioned early in the album, at track 2, it introduces us to a black woman named “America” and to Uncle Sam, here portrayed in the common image of the personification of the United States as an elderly white man in patriotic garb. A lingering shot at the beginning of the video establishes the characters “America” and Uncle Sam, alongside Lamar, as seen in figure 1.
Fig. 1. Opening scene ‘For Free? – Interlude’ official music video. KendrickLamarVEVO. Author’s screenshot.
Uncle Sam will be considered further in chapter three, but his presence is noted here as it looms over the focal point of “FF?I” – a discourse between Lamar and “America”. “FF?I” stages the socio-political issues that intersect race, class, and gender in relation to the
nation state by positioning a female character, “America”, at the receiving end of a long-form verse in which Lamar responds to her expression of dissatisfaction. The manifestation of “America” as a black woman is a use of character far removed from the inclusion of Tupac Shakur discussed previously. Since this character is authored by Lamar (rather than
appropriated, as was arguably the case with Tupac) the observed effect is much different; because the character is a construction there is no authenticity to be ascribed, and as such it is an imagined representation of a gendered, racial and class-positioned body.
Lamar is authoring a subject (albeit an imagined, constructed subject), and an analysis of “America” as a character with Spivak’s work on the subaltern will be used to explore the consequences of such a representation. I ask if “America” is positioned as a suba ltern, and if it is possible for a constructive and emancipatory, rather than destructive and repressive, representation of black women to be achieved in an object constructed ostensibly about them rather than by them. Intersectionality will aid this analysis with the understanding that black women suffer from both gendered and racial discrimination, as opposed to white women or black men who each experience some degree of privilege based on their race and gender respectively. Crenshaw’s text “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A
Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics” underlines the understanding of intersectionality in this chapter, and specifically
critiques the “single-axis framework” approach to dealing with issues of discrimination within legal, political, and theoretical structures. The overall discourse of “FF?I” intersects issues of race, gender and class, and so my conclusion poses this intersection as potentially a ‘multi-axis framework’.
chapter for analysis alongside the content of the song. 2.1 The problem of Hip-Hop men and objectified women
“FF?I” sees Lamar respond to the concerns of the black female character “America” through a framework that overtly addresses racial oppression within American history. However, “America’s” concern doesn’t immediately allude to such a framework. Strutting across the balcony of what appears to be her luxury home, shown in figure 2, “America” begins by proclaiming:
“Fuck you, motherfucker, you a ho-ass nigga
I don't know why you trying to go big, nigga you ain't shit Walking around like you God's gift to Earth, nigga you ain't shit You ain't even buy me no outfit for the fourth”
Fig. 2. America’s home. ‘For Free? – Interlude’ official music video. KendrickLamarVEVO. Author’s screenshot.
“America” is more concerned with commodities, alluding to an economic rather than racial framework. Lamar’s construction of the character “America” serves to voice his
understanding of what can ostensibly be considered the position of the black female subject. What emerges is a perception of this subject as overtly concerned with a material display of status: “You ain’t even buy me no outfit for the fourth”. “America” seemingly cannot contemplate celebrating Independence Day (the fourth) without an overt display of consumerism and materialistic consumption (“I need that Brazilian, wavy, twenty eight inch, you playin'”), and neither can she apparently afford such displays through her own agency. Instead, she chooses to drop Lamar, who protests that he cannot afford such a lifestyle:
“You won't know, you gonna lose on a good bitch My other nigga is on, you off”
America The tension between Lamar, the black male subject, and “America”, the constructed black female subject, is positioned around the former’s perceived inability to provide financially for the latter’s material want. The allusion to “the fourth” intersects this with the idea that this excludes the subject from being considered American, certainly in the sense that a successful American can provide an ‘outfit for the fourth’. Since Lamar cannot (or will not) buy an outfit for “America” or get her a “Brazillian, wavy, twenty-eight inch”, her “other nigga is on…” and Lamar is “off”. Thus, this construction of “America” expects to be
provided for by a male figure capable of competing financially within a system of American capitalism. This reveals a space between the construction of specifically African-American masculine identity and the construction of overall masculine identity within America, and the ability of the former to achieve success in a society that considers the white body as normative, a space identified in the following texts.
corporate world is such that it's difficult to even meet middle-class, straight black men in the workplace; they seem to threaten the white men who dominate.” (Ards). Kitwana suggests that it is the ‘corporate world’ discussed by Ards that is responsible for a tension between genders within the African-American community. Black women feel unable to meet Black men that they consider equal: “In short, societal norms equate manhood with financial success but simultaneously leave very little room – given the inadequate education,
housing, employment, and health care within Black urban communities – for the majority of Black men to achieve it.” (Kitwana 87). That it is the corporate world which is responsible for this divide suggests that the construction of normative societal values required for success within the capitalist economy of America are incompatible with the construction of
masculinity within African-America culture, since this masculinity is perceived as threatening to the dominant class of white men. The depiction of Uncle Sam as a white man in patriotic garb, looming above “America” and Lamar in the opening scene, is Lamar’s representation of the dominant class on “FF?I”. This depiction of Uncle Sam as the figurehead of white-male-dominated corporate structures is the site of intersection for the issues contributing to “America’s” dissatisfaction with Lamar, the black male subject. It is a realisation of the question posed by Crenshaw: “If […] history and context determine the utility of identity politics […]” does that mean “[…] that any discourse about identity has to acknowledge how our identities are constructed through the intersection of multiple dimensions?” (1299). “FF?I” is the ideal site for the “intersection of multiple dimensions”, exemplified with
Lamar’s recurrent hook: “This dick ain’t free” and his final line: “Oh America, you bad bitch, I picked cotton and made you rich / Now my dick ain’t free.” “America” the “bitch”
represents the female, Lamar the cotton picker is the racial, and Uncle Sam the economic dimension of “FF?I”, and it is upon the intersecting margins of these dimensions that an
antiessentialist discussion regarding the construction of identity can take place.
The significance of interaction between the characters can be further understood with an awareness of these dimensions: it is Uncle Sam to whom “America” turns at the conclusion of Lamar’s verse: “Imma get my Uncle Sam to fuck you up!” Lamar has then constructed “America” as a black female character that demonstrably sides with Uncle Sam, a symbolic construction of American patriotism and popular culture. In contrast, the inclusion of Tupac in “Mortal Man” authenticated TPaB with the voice of an iconic figure of black, not
specifically American, identity. That Lamar constructs “America” as a character that chooses to turn to the very patriotic American ideology of Uncle Sam suggests that African heritage has here been abandoned or lost. “America’s” identity is obscured by the grand narrative of an American nation that perceives white as normal and marginalises the identity of other races, in this case those of African-American descent, as other, but not equally so. The contention is that the black female is of no threat to the normative American working environment, only the black male, an inequality. To this end, “America” is positioned as a black woman representing America the nation, which suggests that it is the gradual assimilation of black identity within the dominant American cultural narrative (specifically the assimilation of the black female subject, not the threatening-to-white-masculine-norm black male subject) that is the root cause of the suggested disjunction between genders in African-American communities. It is no coincidence that the overwhelming majority of prejudiced terms used to describe black women within Hip-Hop are in the vein of overt sexuality and materialism (slut, hoe, gold digger, etc. (Miller): these terms target the
materialism that is perceived as the ideology of western capitalism, one that is incompatible with the notion of authentic black cultural heritage, and as described above one that
gendered, amalgamating the critique of capitalism with negative perceptions of femininity. Further, Lamar’s representation of “America” is one that seeks to attribute the issues of gendered racism within corporate America as the cause of this constructed character’s dissatisfaction.
2.2 Becoming Jim Crow and Uncle Sam
Following the suggestion that gendered racism within normative American society is perceived as the cause of tension between Lamar and “America”, Lamar critiques the cultural archive of American history that underlines this racism throughout his verse on “FF?I”. I take the concept of the cultural archive from Said’s “Culture and Imperialism” where he writes: “The great cultural archive, I argue, is where the intellectual and aesthetic investments in overseas dominion are made” (xxi). Said’s writing focuses on the form of the novel and how it is both informed by and constructive of a culture of imperialism. Whilst the broader projects of imperialism ostensibly ended along with the dismantling of colonial structures after World War Two (Said 7) the resulting history of imperialism continues to permeate the present day. The idea of the cultural archive can be adapted from one specifically concerned with imperialism and applied here to the music video for “FF?I”, which sees Lamar pursuing “America” around her mansion home, delivering his defence of her opening diatribe.
The opening and repeated hook of Lamar’s verse is the line: “This Dick aint free”, supported with references to the history of the black body as other within American society, one rooted within America’s history with the slave trade. The crux of Lamar’s argument posits what Kitwana identified, mentioned above, as the inequality faced by the black male subject to work and succeed within the white-normative society of the American workplace: “I need
forty acres and a mule / Not a forty ounce and a pit bull / Bullshit [...]”. “[…] forty acres and a mule” references the land offered to the freedmen at the end of the American Civil War (Oubre), an offer that never fully materialised. Within “FF?I” its inclusion is representative of promises broken by an American government that favoured wage labour over land
ownership, a wage labour that saw former slaves with little choice in the aftermath of the American Civil war than to return to the land of their former slave masters to work. A Marxian critique of this process highlights how when slaves only achieve emancipation from slavery, they become proletarian:
The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general. (Marx and Engels) As the discourse within “FF?I” emphasises, former slaves did not achieve equality within America in the immediate aftermath of the civil war, and it is suggested that this inequality continues to this day. The contrast to Lamar’s need of “forty acres and a mule” is that he does not need “forty ounces and a pit bull”, symbolic of a stereotypical understanding of drug dealers. He asks for the tools (property, forty acres, the promise to the freedmen) with which to compete within the American work force on an equal footing, arguably
perpetuating the Marxian concern for the proletariat: his request certainly moves towards an ideology of capitalism. The issues of racial discrimination and oppression are intersected with this reality of America’s economic ideology of capitalism, and through the position of “America”, these issues obscure a purely gendered critique. Racial and capitalistic
oppression are expressed through a discourse between a male and female subject, irreversibly combining the nuances of each issue within a gendered discourse. Lamar
seemingly cannot address each issue in isolation, they are intertwined. His positioning of “America” is then problematic since it seemingly serves only to further complicate this intersection, however it may be the case that because an intersection of these issues has already taken place it is therefore impossible to consider them in isolation. “FF?I” then demands a multi-axis framework to approach the multiple dimensions of historical and cultural influence that construct heterogenous identities. To categorise the issues within “FF?I” as racial, gendered, or economic is insufficient, the site of intersection must also be considered.
To explore this further, we can look at the other characters Lamar employs on “FF?I”, albeit characters that are employed by a performative assumption rather than external
representations of characters as is the case with “America”. The mansion home around which Lamar follows “America” is littered with statues and artefacts that are part of a cultural archive leftover from America’s slave history and the Jim Crow statutes regarding segregation, as shown in figure 3.
Fig. 3. Statues ‘For Free? – Interlude’ official music video. KendrickLamarVEVO. Author’s screenshot.
Statues such as these are static reminders of a history of racial segregation and oppression in America. Further, they mark the black body as a site that has attracted a certain type of gaze, as put forth by Xie et al:
The black body has been the subject of the gaze since the antebellum slave auction block in the US south, and perceived black culture has been the subject of attempted mimicry from the beginning of American theatre. Naked, severely beleaguered African men and women, paraded as chattel to be scrutinized, inspected, and metaphorically dissected for economic gain, were the subjects of the initiatory and cruelest gaze.
These statues, as well as the overt references to the broken promise to the freedmen, constitute a critique of America’s ‘cultural archive’ as defined by Edward Said and explored by Wekker in a similar context to this analysis. Wekker develops a concept of ‘white
innocence’ and explores the notion that a given society can claim to be “color-blind and antiracist”, whilst at the same time maintaining a policy of “hospitality and tolerance toward the racialized/ethnicized other” (1). The key point here is the process by which the
racial/ethnic ‘other’ is defined: whilst analysing Zwarte Piet (an object of Dutch culture rooted within a history of colonisation and imperialism), Wekker voices an imagined Dutch national in the state of white innocence and identifies a double-bind faced by minority ethnic groups: “If you do not go along with the dominant consensus that Zwarte Piet is harmless and innocent, you cannot be one of us.” In subscript, and in a lower key: “Yet, even if you do accept him, you are still not one of us”.” (147)
Here the price of cultural integration is at the very least a passive endorsement of
stereotypes and tropes rooted in the history of colonisation (manifest in Zwarte Piet). It is a passive acceptance of a history of violence and domination against the colonised that denies the need for white guilt by excluding the violence and domination of that history, whilst simultaneously sustaining the categorisation of non-whites as ‘other’, a categorisation that
privileges the white subject. This is a result of Said’s ‘cultural archive’ defined within
“Culture and Imperialism”. This archive is explicitly racial – western history is viewed from a position whereby it is inflected with the results of years of colonialism, imperialist rule and the slave trade. The notion that the west was quintessentially superior to the rest is
inevitably inscribed within its cultural history. Whether this belief is still dominant in western society today is irrelevant, the fact is that its history is saturated with cultural inflections mired in a state of superiority. Within western culture the white body exists in a default state of innocence and any discussion of race, specifically one concerning inequality, purports the notion of race as something belonging to the marked category. Even ostensibly benevolent performances of ‘hospitality and tolerance’ serve to further highlight the
disparity between the normalised white body and the othered non-white body: in the state of white innocence one can be ‘tolerant’ of non-whites, but they are not allowed to be tolerant back.
A comparison between the figures within the “FF?I” music video and Zwarte Piet can be drawn, however the danger of such a comparison is that it ultimately collapses two vastly different histories of racism. However, there is room for a nuanced appropriation of
Wekker’s argument. The danger of the tropes and connotations represented within archaic stereotypes such as Zwarte Piet and the statues in “FF?I” is not limited to the perpetuation of the potentially harmful historical ideologies that they represent. Rather, as discussed by Gilroy, the danger is that these representations are perceived as innocent relics, the removal of which would constitute a loss to western culture: “The invitation to revise and reassess often triggers a chain of defensive argumentation that seeks firstly to minimise the extent of the empire, then to deny or justify its brutal character, and finally, to present the British themselves as the ultimate tragic victims of their extraordinary imperial success.”
(94)
The colonialist history of the western world is here described as one that perpetu ates an ideological essentialism (Kenshur’s exploration of ideological essentialism underpins my use of the term in this thesis, see 35-43, as well as Jarach’s preliminary thesis), one of
superiority over the colonised. This essentialism maintains privilege through the institutionalisation of power, and is seen within “FFI?” in the form of the Jim Crow era statues and artefacts. These artefacts act as static reminders of colonial history and serve to perpetuate the “double bind” recognised by Wekker. One can endorse or refute these representations, but regardless of which, the body of the othered subject within a dominant cultural identity will never be considered “one of us”.
Lamar performatively becomes these relics of America’s slave history, as shown in figures 4 and 5.
Fig. 4 & 5. Performative assumption ‘For Free? – Interlude’ official music video. KendrickLamarVEVO. Author’s screenshot.
Here Wekker’s “double bind” is realised: Lamar is bound within colonial history as a body that is forced to performatively assume the identity of the othered subject. Despite the effects of guilt and melancholia that are expressed by the people of historically imperialist nations as described by Wekker and Gilroy, the result is that:
around and rejects the newcomers, blacks and other immigrants, extending a less than hearty welcome to them, and in a baffling turn of displacement blames them for the loss of a homogenous identity and the disappointments of a multicultural society, meanwhile firmly prescribing how they should behave. (Wekker 160) Faced with this rejection, Lamar inhabits the imagery of institutionalised racism. This inhabiting is a proactive appropriation of the tools of the ideological essentialism of white hegemony. It serves to diffuse the effects of othering through a performative act, one that allows positive agency in the face of institutionalised power. In the absence of a common ground for multicultural integration, Lamar instead highlights the structures that perpetuate the colonial power dynamic through performative appropriation. He gives a voice (his voice) to the othered subject. It is through this framing of colonial history that the lyrical discourse of “FFI?” is derived.
Further, this performativity serves to animate the static figures representative of America’s cultural archive. This animation ensures that the history of the slave trade, of racial
segregation and oppression within America, are at the forefront of the discourse. They can no longer be considered innocent relics since the connotations contained within them are highlighted this way. A similar process occurs when Lamar performatively becomes Uncle Sam, seen in figure 6.
Lamar visually juxtaposes these performative appropriations of characters with the
discourse he is delivering. I perceive two notable interpretations of this action: first, it could be suggested that Lamar uses these characters to suggest that it is Uncle Sam and the American cultural archive that are directly responsible for the dissatisfaction expressed by the character “America”. Second, it could be that Lamar believes the influence of the
cultural archive and of Uncle Sam that manifest throughout American society are also
Fig. 6. Lamar as Uncle Sam 1. ‘For Free? – Interlude’ official music video. KendrickLamarVEVO. Author’s screenshot.
manifest within him, and he is aware of this when delivering his verse to “America”. Either interpretation demonstrates the intersection of race, gender and economics that are seemingly inevitable when attempting to achieve a critique of the nation, of the black body or of the female subject.
Just as Lamar can subvert those who hold power by performatively inhabiting the imagery of institutionalised racism, Crenshaw suggests that inhabiting identity categories can provide space in which to subvert their construction: “Subordinated people can and do participate [in the process of categorising] sometimes even subverting the naming process in empowering ways” (1297). Whilst the construction of identity categories is an exercise of power, the subversive appropriation of categories by those that they subordinate is a powerful one, for example the re-articulation of ‘queer’ (Rand). Whilst this appropriation continues to be effective there is little need to abolish identity categories, they can be subverted and re-appropriated by those that they subordinate.
2.3 The subaltern as character
Whilst Lamar’s representation of the American cultural archive and Uncle Sam can be considered performatively subversive, can the same be said of the representation of
“America”? Ultimately, it is the black female subject that receives Lamar’s verbal tirade as a response to her concerns, a subject constructed by Lamar and forced into the intersection of these issues. Whilst Lamar addresses “America’s” concerns through performative representation and an understanding of intersectionality, the treatment of this character contrasts with the reverence that he displays towards Tupac on “Mortal Man”. When dealing with Tupac there was a covert power structure derived from Tupac’s pre-existing cultural capital and authenticity. When Lamar proposed an alternative to Tupac’s discourse of violent revolution, it was a suggestion and a respectful one at that:
I think American think we was just playing and it’s gonna be some more playing But it ain’t gonna be no playing.
It’s gonna be murder, you know what I’m saying,
It’s gonna be like Nat Turner, 1831, up in this muthafucka. You know what I’m saying, it’s gonna happen
Tupac
That’s crazy man. In my opinion only hope that we kinda have left Is music and vibrations
Lotta people don’t understand how important it is. Sometimes I be like, get behind a mic
Or where it comes from. Trip me out sometimes
Lamar
The key words here are “In my opinion…”. Throughout his diatribe on “FF?I” there is no such respectful disagreement or presentation of thought as ‘opinion’. The hook to the song is not ‘In my opinion this dick ain’t free’. Instead the phrase is repeated with a vivacity that borders on aggression and frustration: “This Dick ain’t free” is delivered with a staccato that accentuates the feverish insistence of Lamar’s proclamation.
“America” is simply a mouthpiece used by Lamar, isolated within a white colonialist hegemony as a subaltern stripped of agency. Whilst Lamar has opened a discourse capable of addressing the spectral influence of Uncle Sam, it is at the expense of “America” the subaltern, an act of violence recognised by Spivak:
Reporting on, or better still, participating in, antisexist work among women of color or women in class oppression in the First World or the Third World is undeniably on the agenda. […] Yet the assumption and construction of a consciousness or subject sustains such work and will, in the long run, cohere with the work of imperialist subject-constitution, mingling epistemic violence with the advancement of learning and civilization. And the subaltern woman will be as mute as ever. (90)
In contrast to the idea that systems of categorisation can be effectively subverted by the re-appropriation of any given category of identity (suggested by Crenshaw), Spivak contends that if things continue as they are, even with ostensibly benevolent intent, the sub altern will remain mute. The problem is with the “… construction of a consciousness or subject…”, such as Lamar’s construction of “America”. A constructed subject has no voice other than that
which it is assigned. The constructed subject has no agency with which to re-appropriate or subvert the given categories of identity: for subversion to take place, the subordinated must have agency and a space within which their own authentic voice can be heard. Further, the discourse of “FF?I” is situated within a postcolonial history and thus is bound within the paradigm of patriarchal, white sovereignty, an example of what Spivak warned against as it will “cohere with the work of imperialist subject-constitution” (90). This binding is
articulated by Sardar in his foreword to Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin White Masks”:
The black man speaks with a European language. He becomes proportionately whiter
in direct ratio to his mastery of […] any western language, nowadays most
particularly English. So, almost immediately, the black man is presented with a problem: how to posit a “black self” in a language and discourse in which blackness itself is at best a figure of absence, or worse a total reversion? (Sardar VX)
2.4 Conclusion: Continuing the Discourse
Ultimately, Lamar’s performative assumption of the colonialised figure places him at the heart of white-America-as-nation’s representation of the other, to the effect that his writing is combative of its pedagogy and the stereotypes that radiate from this representational epicentre of history. To achieve this end, he positions “America” as the catalyst through which the harmful and reductionist narratives of ‘other’ in American society are manifest; exemplified by the direction of his discourse towards his constructed re-presentation:
This dick ain't free, I mean, baby
You really think we could make a baby named Mercedes without a
Mercedes Benz and twenty four inch rims, five percent tint, and air conditioning vents
