Degausser

1y

@op

This was a great read, tbh.

I get what you're saying, but I think Kendrick wanted to be a part of "social change" but involuntarily became a leader put on a pedestal with different standards he felt pressured to meet, further feeding into his insecurities and vices he rationalized because of the anointed titled.

I don't interpret it as him having to choose from two extremes, but rather him choosing to focus on his own world that deteriorated as a result of trying to please others (be a "savior").

So while it may sound like abandonment, it's more of a call for self-reliance. Instead of looking outward and trying to "save" everyone, he decided to look inward and save himself. And that's what the whole album essentially is, it's about growth, self-reflection, therapy, etc.

In the end, he can only hope that everyone can do the same. Is true social change parroting those you follow or is it some ideal that you personally believe in and is genuine? If everyone worked on themselves and found personal happiness then true social change would be more likely.

"When will you let me go?
I trust you'll find independence"

tldr: basically, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

Scratchin Mamba

1y

Well that's the thing, this individualist mindset is exactly what will stand in the way of any type of social change. None of the gains that the people have fought for were won by individuals detaching themselves from others.

Is taking care of yourself important? Absolutely it is. You need to be in a good place mentally and physically to do your part for whatever cause you wanna fight for. But let's not be under the illusion that self-care itself is taking a stand. Or that the only way for people to be taken care of is for it to be done by themselves. Community care is overlooked all too often, but it was essential to any movement that ever accomplished anything.

Laced

1y

It is taking a stand when you're raised in a culture where it's seen as taboo. Here in America black men are shamed for showing any type of emotion other than anger. A lot of black families don't believe in therapy. Kendrick is still being a leader here by helping to break these stigmas and shine a light on traumas that are often swept under the rug in the culture. You're absolutely right about community being a big and missing piece in social change, but a lot of people just aren't there yet and a lot of communities are broken because of what I explained above. They don't know how to self-care

Scratchin Mamba

1y

I'm not denying that self-care is important, and as I said even in OP it's good that he explores topics through introspection as on Father time. It still contained some sort of social commentary despite mostly focusing on his own experiences, which Kendrick has always been good at.

But when it's being positioned in opposition to caring about or with your community, it is not taking a stand. It takes away from his otherwise interesting social commentary by posing a false dichotomy.

Laced

1y

It's really not that black and white, though. With that amount of pressure on him in that position at that time plus what he was dealing with internally, he realized that he could fold if he did not prioritize his own health. You're asking him to embrace the fold and lean on a broken community that might let him fall completely and not help him back up. Not out of fault of their own, but because of what I explained above. It's not a easy position to be in and what he chose was especially self preservation which I don't fault him for as it's an essential and healthy life skill

Scratchin Mamba

3y

Scroll down for tldr

First I’ll say that I really like the album a lot regardless of my critique. I still think Kendrick is arguably the greatest rapper of all time, but that doesn’t mean his social commentary always hits the mark, and that’s what I’m gonna focus on here. I don’t think he has some nefarious agenda or anything either, I believe he always had the best intentions, but had unfair expectations of what he could accomplish with the message in his art to achieve social change, which eventually led him down this path of a highly individualist COPE of his own perceived failure in bettering society.

There are some songs on the album where through deeply reflecting on his own personal experiences he actually did come to some great insights and points of social commentary, songs like Father Time, Mother I Sober and Auntie Diaries are great examples of that. Without explicitly naming those terms, he discusses things like patriarchy, colonialism, sexual violence etc. in a thoughtful and accessible way. But it’s when he zooms out of his own personal experiences and looks at SOCIETY from a distance and his own role in (not) bettering society where he gets lost in the ideological illusions of idealism, individualism and a great man theory of history. I promise I’m not tryna over intellectualize s*** and I will try to explain what I mean with as much clarity as I can.

After my first couple of listens of the album I realized Kendrick probably has one of the most interesting character arcs outlined in his discography. The shift from Section.80 to this album isn’t lost on anybody, including Kendrick himself. The change from “we gon be alright” to “I chose me I’m sorry” is a pretty dramatic shift, but it’s in my opinion an unnecessary shift that ultimately stems from how he misunderstood the problems that he addressed in his music throughout his career.

I think if you want to pinpoint where exactly this shift happened the most, there are two important moments, firstly the period in between TPAB and DAMN. and the 2020 BLM protests. Kendrick told us many times on this album that he is NOT our savior, but he had to convince himself of that before he told us that, in Mortal Man where he finishes the poem throughout TPAB, he said:

“A war that was based on apartheid and discrimination
Made me wanna go back to the city and tell the homies what I learned
The word was respect
Just because you wore a different gang color than mine's
Doesn't mean I can't respect you as a black man
Forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets
If I respect you, we unify and stop the enemy from killing us
But I don't know, I'm no mortal man
Maybe I'm just another nigga”

From his perceived failure he found out that he was not a savior and in fact just another nigga. That reality check took a lot of the hope out of him, and I do sympathize with it, but it was because of an unfounded expectation based on a false conception of how social change is achieved. Namely through the propagation of certain ideas, and that a positive message spreading to individuals could bring about a positive change in society, if only it was that simple… This is what I mean with idealism. In reality it’s not the ideas of the people that need to be changed in order to prevent violence in impoverished communities, it’s the material conditions that need to change in order to take away the conditions that lead to that violence.

But Kendrick thought he could make a change by spreading his idea of unity, being confronted with that failure was hard for him to take, and I think that’s why DAMN. had such a depressing tone throughout the album, especially with songs like YAH, FEEL and LUST. He also started to find the responsibility he felt to change the world overwhelming, but he wasn’t quite abandoning the responsibility altogether. “I feel like the whole world want me to pray for em, but who the f*** praying for me? ” is still not quite the same as “I chose me I’m sorry ”

I think that was partly because of the 2020 BLM protests and how he got criticized for not doing enough, especially by Noname. That last verse on Mirror where he went “I chose me I’m sorry” in the hook was directed at her:

“'Cause all of it's toxic
Girl, I'm not relevant to givin' on profit
Personal gain off my pain, it's nonsense
Darlin', my demons is off the leash for a moshpit
Baby, I just had a baby, you know she need me
Workin' on myself, the counselin' is not easy
Don't you point a finger, just to point a finger
'Cause critical thinkin' is a deal-breaker
Faith in one man is a ship sinking
Do yourself a favor and get a mirror that mirror grievance
Then point it at me so the reflection can mirror freedom
She told me that she need me the most, I didn't believe her
She even called me names on the post, the world can see it
Jokes and gaslightin'
Mad at me 'cause she didn't get my vote, she say I'm triflin'
Disregardin' the way that I cope with my own vices
Maybe it's time to break it off
Run away from the culture to follow my heart”

I actually mostly agree with what he’s saying here because I think the way noname went at Kendrick was completely out of pocket and that it was based on a false idea of Kendrick being a “savior”. But he gotta realize that he himself played a role in that as well. I would have liked to see him reflect more on his own responsibility in that, instead of just pointing the finger at those who may have unfairly deemed him to be some kind of failure without addressing how that happened. This is the problem with how he conceived of social change by a misconception that great men throughout history are the ones who spur social change, which explains his idolization of 2pac, to whom he pretty obviously saw himself as the next great man with the task of changing society for the better, or in other words, as a savior.

The part that I take issue with is that he acts as if he had to choose between either being a savior, or just only being concerned with his own problems, as he said in Mirror: “Sorry I didn't save the world, my friend, I was too busy building mine again”. But here Kendrick presents us a false dichotomy, either be a savior, or just concern yourself with your own problems, since you cannot save the world anyway, there is a different option that Kendrick is omitting, you don’t have to choose between either extremes, but I think that’s because he was previously so invested in the other extreme. So I understand where he’s coming from, but I don’t think this is the right position to take, but who knows where his head will be at in a couple of years. I look forward to finding that out with his next album and until then I’ll be bumping Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

TLDR: I can definitely sympathize with Kendrick’s feeling of disappointment in not achieving what he genuinely wanted to achieve with the message in his music, but it was ultimately based on his misconception of the problems that he wanted to solve because of his understanding of history mostly being determined by great men (or as he says, “saviors”) propagating ideas that changed material conditions. When confronted with his own inevitable failure as one of those great men, he instead went to the other extreme and distanced himself from being concerned with the world's problems altogether and embraced a highly individualistic mindset in just worrying about “building his own world” instead, but those are of course not the only choices.

Block Muteson

1y

Dude said "maybe look in the mirror before criticizing the LAPD"

IllestMotherAlive

3y

She’s still wrong, because all this social change don’t mean s*** when the system is designed to counteract all of it. These rappers were all bright eye and bushy tailed like her until the discover the real. That no matter what you’re a cog in a system designed to fail and no amount of social change is going to do anything as long as the 1% can do whatever. People thinking that celebrities, politicians and all of these artists are going to be the savior are ignorant. At the end of the day a lot of people should sit back and go relisten to Kanye’s interview on breakfast club in 2013 when Charlemagne blasted him for talking about money and wanting to create a product to pursue real change. Because like he said, once you’re a billionaire nobody can fire you. You have product and you have power. At the end of the day, these billionaires have more social change in this world than any March, any politician, and any system because at the end of the day they Use their power to lobby from whatever laws they want. You ain’t find it funny we having all of these pro life laws getting passed immediately after a pandemic that killed millions? Can’t let that capitalistic system die, especially since a lot of people woke up and chose not to be people working a s*** end job for chump change. But if there’s continued overpopulation, these companies won’t have to worry about looking for employees in the future.

xxxkiraxxx

5mo

Classic thread

MrMudManMood

3mo

One of my favorite ever on this site, thanks for writing this @op

HANI

3mo

Interesting timing for necroposting lol

perry

3mo

Funny how you're doing exactly what OP was a critique of - mistaking individual self-improvement for actual social change. Since you're so interested in personal accountability, what organizing have YOU done in your community? How many mutual aid networks have you joined? What movements have you supported beyond looking in the mirror? Or are you too busy defending millionaire celebrities' retreat into individualism instead of understanding how real social progress happens?
The whole point is that 'looking in the mirror' alone doesn't change systemic issues. But it's telling that you think individual therapy is a substitute for collective action - you're literally demonstrating why Kendrick's message was wrong

Valentine

3mo

I deleted my comment out of respect for op, but it’s not a competition. I’m tired of you p**** niggas on this website man. I’m over it lol

Currently, I have built 3 affordable housing units for impoverished teachers and am currently working on 3 more in my small town where my grandma/grandpa recently passed. Aside from that, there will be a research facility/university that you’ll hear about in maybe…3-5 years operating out of a country in Africa that will aid in bringing 25,000 jobs and housing to the region and education to the countries population. Here, I’m part of the investment and family foundation and was invited to attend an event with the President of my country. I posted a picture in here during the beefs. And this is all while operating in the US.

Young nigga, barely 27. But anyways, I was just tryna motivate niggas. I’m not sorry I didn’t say it properly or offer proof of my own. Salute. I’m off this site