The 56th Annual Grammy Awards...

      

I don’t usually watch award shows. They are a bastion of white, upper-class nepotism and are usually corny and boring. But yesterday, I ventured to watch the 51^st Annual Grammy Awards. Mainly because of the tension between seven-time nominees Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and seven-time nominee Kendrick Lamar. Nowhere was this tension been more apparent than in the category of Best Hip Hop Album. Macklemore and Lewis’ The Heist was up against Lamar’s good kid. m.A.A.d city. Much hoopla was made earlier about whether or not Macklemore’s music was too pop to be in the Hip Hop category in the first place and as this excellent article by Insanul Ahmed shows the Grammys have always been out of touch with hip-hop as a cultural movement. So, of course the committee would find a white guy rapping more palatable and more deserving of praise. When Macklemore ended up winning Best Hip Hop Album  he made sure to shoot Lamar a message via Instragram to state that the Compton rapper was robbed. Interestingly enough, Mack claimed he was going to say something along those lines in his acceptance speech, but the music cut him off and he “froze.” Likely story.

            But I want to concentrate on Lamar for this reaction piece and to delve deeper into why an album like good kid couldn’t win against The Heist. Lamar’s 2012 project is an elegiac concept album. It gives the listener a glimpse into everyday life in Compton. Lamar takes you along as he rides around the city with his friends. He witnesses the dangers of life in the city, such as gang violence and police profiling, but also has more mundane adventures involving romantic exploits and talking shit with the homies. The story culminates with the death of a friend’s brother, which induces a catharsis in Lamar and gives his life renewed meaning. Many call the album cinematic, and I agree. It is easy for the listener to visualize the scenes that Lamar weaves together. It is also an uncomfortably honest album and while it is intimate it makes the listeners very aware of their own distance from the violence happening ‘on-screen.’ I can’t listen to a song like “Money Trees” and not be aware of my own class-privilege. And yet, for the specificity of Lamar’s life circumstances, his genius has always been the ability to pull out universal truths. We have all “died of thirst”, been found spiritually wanting, regardless of whether we have ever experienced gun violence. And that is the beauty of Lamar’s craft.

            Which brings me to why it could never win against The Heist, because an album about Black death and Black mourning is just not as appealing to white folx as an album about thrift shops, “dancing like the ceiling can’t hold us”(whatever the fuck that means) and vague concepts like hope. White folx don’t want to face the reality of what it means to be Black and poor in this country, because they don’t want to face their own guilt. And Macklemore is the picture of white liberal innocence.

            Furthermore, Lamar, unlike that predecessor of his, Tupac, is a master of subtlety. I sometimes fear that his messages get lost in the mix. This was pretty evident during Lamar’s performance of “mAAd city” with rock group Imagine Dragons. You see Lamar rapping lyrics about seeing, “a light skinned n*gga with his brains blown out” as a child and then you see Taylor Swift obliviously doing her best Black girl interpretation in the front row. Don’t get me wrong, Lamar killed the performance. But I just get the feeling that most white middle-class consumers don’t get it and don’t want to get it. They wanna get buck and have all the swagger, but they don’t wanna think about the struggle in which that swagger was forged.

            Now, let me close this piece out by saying that Lamar has a lot of problems himself. He is homophobic and misogynistic. A lot of emcees these days think they’re gonna write one song ‘for the ladies’ and then go back to calling women hoes and bitches and it’s supposed to be all good, like they get it. Well, “Poetic Justice” is a catchy song, but it doesn’t excuse the misogyny found on good kid as well as Section 80, Lamar’s previous project.

            But based on pure talent and storytelling ability alone, that award last night should have been Lamar’s. I mean, I didn’t even mention that Lamar raps, sings and does vocal impersonations and modulations on good kid. And I think the inability of the academy to ‘get it’ is indicative of a larger trend of pathological whiteness that consistently refuses to understand Black humanity. But one thing is for sure, good kid. m.A.A.d city is a classic that will be remembered for a long time. Which is more than we can say for Macklepop, what’s-his-face-producer-guy and the Scheist.

… and  you don’t stop….