Kendrick Lamar at the 2016 Grammy Awards

Kendrick Lamar delivers a speech for Best Rap Album, winning for "To Pimp a Butterfly," at the 58th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Monday, Feb. 15, 2016. (Matt Sayles/AP)

(Matt Sayles/AP)

In the summer of 2013, the day after I moved to Oregon, I signed a lease for an apartment and left my wife to start unpacking as I drove to Happy Valley for the Pickathon Festival. On the drive out, I passed farms with fresh berries for sale, beautiful greenery and a Confederate flag, hanging in the wind for all to see.

There it was, racist and undeniable, within miles of "Portlandia" and a nation away from the southern states where it was still flying. Wasn't Oregon a blue state? Wasn't I driving to a hippie folk festival? I was shocked then. I am not shocked now.

I got an email over the weekend about our recent Kanye West stories. No subject. It didn't need one. "This is news?" the reader wrote. "About some n----- rapping?" Every time the Oregonian covers hip-hop music, a rich and beautiful American art form invented to share the pain and joys and narratives of inner-city black lives over 30 years ago, readers comment with hatred. Here, from Monday night alone, enjoy a few choice notes about Kendrick Lamar, the most important musician currently working in American music and new winner of five glimmering Grammy awards:

"'Best' rap album? That, my friends, is a world class oxymoron," Yardbird tells us.

"Not since Kanye West, has an individual with so little talent, been so worshiped and idolized by so many. Even a superstar like Adelle has been sucked into this clown's, 'Music,'" DonRon adds. Adele is spelled with one "L": she is also a blues singer who owes everything to the African-American creativity that birthed hip-hop.

Portland is a city that celebrates jazz and blues, musical forms that are just as fundamental to (and representative of) the African-American experience. In their times, they too were persecuted and disrespected. Yet somehow the Waterfront Blues Festival fills each summer with middle-aged white people, folks who might have a Confederate flag in their yard and the free time to send a music writer an email about a n----- rapping. Maybe there's no double-standard, and those listeners like hip-hop just fine, too. I hope so.

But I have my doubts, and they keep being confirmed. I could type all week and not convince you, hip-hop hater, that Kendrick Lamar is a vital artist. I tried last year, with Beyonce, an R&B singer for whom hip-hop is a foundation, and who sings with the full gospel heritage of the black church: "Pop fluff that won't last," "What you wrote is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever read." No n-words, so that was a plus.

How many years does hip-hop have to exist before you respect it? How many multitudes must it contain? Should it speak truth to power (Public Enemy), turn ghetto realities into cinematic villainy (Clipse), bow in deference to white music (Kanye West, who has sampled more classic rock than most people's record collections contain), be more poetic than Walt Whitman (Nas), expand the possibilities of jazz (Gang Starr, A Tribe Called Quest, etc.)? Does it have to be Eminem, an MC as hardcore as anyone whose singles were played on rock radio a decade and a half ago because he passed a melanin test? Does it have to be Macklemore, whose "Thrift Shop" is hipster enough to swallow?

If you dismiss hip-hop culture, if you paint it all with the same ignorant brush, if you say "hip-hop masterpiece" is an oxymoron, if Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West are just too black: you are a racist and you are wrong, and this will be the last time I write for you.

-- David Greenwald

dgreenwald@oregonian.com

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@davidegreenwald

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