good kid, m.A.A.d city, and hip-hop without labels

I.

"People don't have a problem with conscious rap; they have a problem with conscious beats. If you make some ignorant beats, you can say all the smart shit you want." -- Chris Rock, 2005

In 2005, Chris Rock's did a list of the 25 greatest hip hop albums for a big hip-hop issue of Rolling Stone. His list reads like a stand-up routine of music one-liners. Rock knows his hip hop and he knows how to poke fun at how the genre has been received and critiqued over the past two to three decades. He puts The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill at Number 23 and argues that she is able to sell a conscious message because the music is just that appealing to all audiences-- even audiences of "ignorant" music. I agree with him on that, and I think, as a joke, this little kernel of wisdom (ignorant beats!) is hilarious.

But as much as I agree with Rock as rap critic, his quip is still off the mark. Somewhere in Jeff Chang's monumental Can't Stop, Won't Stop, Chang made the point that I still think of as a lightbulb moment for me today: conscious rap is a marketing label. Just as the gangsta rap label defined for its audiences what they could expect from the musical content, conscious rap serves the same purpose. In an article about Talib Kweli for The Progressive in 2005, Chang continues the argument: "'Party' or 'gangsta rap' is marketed to mass audiences-- crucially through black and brown urban audiences first. But 'conscious rap' is seen as a rap sub-market and is often pushed first to educated, middle-class, multicultural--often white--audiences." 

Of course, the problem with the mainstream/conscious distinction is the same trouble caused by any false dichotomy, and is one that I have written about previously here. It causes audiences to misrepresent and stereotype artists, often before they hear their music. A more dangerous effect -- and this is something I think flies under the radar on college campuses, for example -- is that audiences, perhaps not even realizing it, start thinking in vague terms of "black rap" and "white rap". I'm not sure what is worse: white suburban kids in the early 90s head-nodding to Eazy-E or white college kids today thinking of the rap their friends listen to as "smarter" than the rap they hear on the radio or at Kappa parties across the quad.

What should be obvious to anyone who has an interest in rap's history is that hip-hop has always been a mode of expression and critique of the surrounding environment. Back before rap hit the airwaves, they used it in the Bronx to bring rival gangs together for truces. Twenty or thirty years later, even when violent and misogynistic rap began (unfortunately) to rule the radio market, many of the most popular artists can push social commentary just as hard. Wu-Tang's "Tearz" -- in my Top 5 for songs with the most raw and touching portrayals of the horrors of violence -- comes directly after Method Man's vulgar and gratuitous depictions of stupid torture on Enter the 36 Chambers. Even Lil Wayne, who now seems hellbent on rapping exclusively about female genitalia, gave us all something to think about post-Katrina on "Tie My Hands" from The Carter III (2007). I have already written at length about Jay-Z and Kanye in this fashion, and Kweli held this point back in '05: "I'll play Jay-Z's 'Reasonable Doubt' for someone and they'll be surprised. I'll say, 'Well, you assumed Jay-Z is a gangsta rapper". 

II.

"If I told you I killed a n**** at sixteen

would you believe me?

Or see me to be

innocent Kendrick

you seen in the street

with a basketball

and some Now'n'Laters to eat?
... Would you say my intelligence now is great relief
and it's safe to say that our next generation maybe can sleep
with dreams of being a lawyer or doctor
instead of a boy with a chopper?"

Kendrick Lamar, "m.A.A.d city" (2012)

Kendrick Lamar's new album good kid, m.A.A.d city (Top Dawg, 2012) has already received deafening praise. It got a 9.5 on Pitchfork. Complex has dedicated this whole week to the man and the making of the album. But something that I haven't seen anyone writing about is the potential for this album to completely explode any and all genre distinctions in popular hip hop. There's substances and ignorant shit. There's crime. There's murder. There's also spiritual renewal. Yet the album is so deeply personal and evocative in its narrative that none of these subject matters manage to yield a label or category. The trials and decisions made by the protagonist take center stage. 

On the first third of the album, Lamar chooses for his material the stuff of (straight) boys in the hood. He chases girls, hotboxes in cars, and joyrides with his friends in a van he stole from his mama. The first evidence we get of an unsettling trajectory for this one day (read: life) comes, I think, in "The Art of Peer Pressure". Lamar writes about how his behavior changes when he's "with the homies". When his friends realize there's someone home in the house they are robbing, Lamar acts fast. Having learned from the subdued yet angular story-telling of Andre 3000, Lamar continues:

"I hit the back window in search of any Nintendo, DVDs, plasma screen TVs in the trunk/ We made a right, then made a left, then made a right, then made a left/ We were just circlin' life/ My mama called: "Hello what you doin?"/"Kickin' it"/ Shoulda told her I'm probably bout to catch my first offense/ With the homies."

Needless to say, Lamar and his homies escape the law, but the stage is set for the increased pressures he will face throughout the rest of his adolescence. This part of the album is remarkable for how detached the narrator is from his content. He neither brags nor laments. If the telltale sign of mainstream rap is braggadocio (and of conscious rap, preaching), Lamar frees himself from the spectrum with grace.

The tension mounts until we arrive at the title track and "Swimming Pool". Lamar's day joyriding around Compton with his friends in his mama's van veers toward its chaotic and frenzied apex, when a friend is killed in a shoot-out. What started as a narration of immature teenage boy pursuits has careened toward gunshots, then a fallen brother, and, finally, the cries of his friend over his body. This last part of the sequence was always absent in the shoot-out skits that were a dime-a-dozen in the early 90s. We never heard Biggie's voice like we do Lamar's: "Say something! Say something! Damn, those n**** killed my brother!" 

Where can a concept album go from here? Lesser, lazier artists might turn their rap toward the audience, speaking directly about the tolls of gun violence. But Lamar continues with his first-person account narration, and allows striking imagery and metaphor to replace what could have otherwise been surface-level didacticism. Who would have expected that ALL of the protagonist's crew end up meeting a woman who leads them in over a minute of somber baptismal call-and-response. How moving is it to consider the millions of boys in Compton, Chicago, and so many other centers of blight and violence, reciting this same prayer for personal salvation along with Lamar and his homies. 

good kid, m.A.A.d city ends with Lamar teaming up with Dr. Dre to deliver an ode to their city. This as well as various bonus tracks drive home the message that you don't have to be a gunslinger to rep Compton. But, just as importantly, you don't have to be a preacher to show how scary it can be to grow up there. Despite its redemptive ending, good kid, m.A.A.d city is not a moral indictment of past sins. It is polyphonic, driven by the voice of Kendrick as youthful experimenter, as scared teenager, as hesitant thug, as, finally, a young man who has learned from his past. 

A reviewer would be remiss to not include the presence of Lamar's parents on this album. They are everywhere, floating like ghosts between the tracks, but nowhere are they more potent and stirring than at the album's end. His mother speaks: "I hope you come back." His father: "Real is responsibility. Real is taking care of your motherfuckin' family. Real is God." 

So let's not call this conscious rap. Let's just call it real.