Photo by Ari Marcopoulos

It is said that depression is anger turned inward. And if that’s true, then the entirety of Black America suffers from a depression. The collective emotional toll of the violence and abuse of the last nearly 500 years shows up in a lot of ways. Sometimes outward, sometime inward. But always present. So much so that it takes an unusual amount of skill emotionally, spiritually, and mentally, just to show up as a normal adult, to survive growing up without destroying ourselves or anyone else. But then again to be angry at the world around us IS to destroy ourselves. For when we are even perceived as a threat, the response is swift, violent, and institutionally excused. If we are angry, then we are checked, but to remain silent is to eat our own flesh from the inside out. It is a maddening proposition. The only way to not go batshit crazy or unable to function is to become deeply powerful at living.

Kendrick Lamar is deeply powerful. He is deeply powerful because he can flow and flow is, in many ways, the magic ingredient that turns despair into hope, pain into action. As long as you can flow, you can do something. Just listen to the transition from the rueful mirror monologue of "u" to the exhilarating rapid fire of "Alright" on the new album To Pimp a Butterfly which dropped unexpectedly on Monday. Notice what it feels like to be riding that momentum, carried along by waves of harmony, nearly but not quite crashing, so soon after digging so deeply into the earth of your own despair. You will understand a little bit about why black people make music.

-=-=-=-Kendrick makes the kind of music that can lead you to fight for your own survival. He is not a savior or a leader, as some have attempted to cast him. He is a man who can flow.

I don’t know Kendrick Lamar. This is important to say because in most articles about rappers the author tries to act like they know the guy. Like they’re homies. It must have something to do with the fact that hip-hop in its essence is a genre about localities. Communities. It’s about familiarity. "You already know what it is," the aphorism goes.

If I was a white guy, I would probably like this aspect of hip-hop the most. The idea that I can become an honorary member of blackness just by listening. Hip-hop makes that easy. The songs are readily available. The hood is explained to the uninitiated. No longer would I have to feel that the Blackness of Black People represents mystery or the unexplained. And if I was the kind of white guy who thought about the fact that Black people have experienced a sustained and relentless brutality in the name of protecting people like me, then I would seek reassurance from every black face I saw, every black voice that I heard, that we were cool. I would look to hip-hop to absolve me. To help me breathe. I would need to know "what it is" the way I need to make sure my dog, strong, sharp-toothed, and potentially dangerous, still looked to me as its trusted and unassailable human.

With Kendrick you don’t already know what it is. You can’t unless you’ve lived it. What he tells is honest and therefore entirely devoid of tropes. On the track "Momma", he lists all the things he knows about growing up poor and black in Compton and then admits that he doesn’t know shit. If he can admit that, it makes me wonder why so many music writers can’t.