It’s a shocking line. Echoing divisive comments Lamar made to Billboard recently (“What happened to [Michael Brown] should've never happened. Never. But when we don't have respect for ourselves, how do we expect them to respect us?”), it at first comes across like an attempt to invalidate complaints about police aggression in Ferguson and elsewhere by raising the issue of “black-on-black crime.” Which is an empty attempt to change the subject, Ta-Nehisi Coates and others have argued:

People tend to kill the people they live around. Black people are among the most hyper-segregated group in the country. The fact that black killers tend to kill other black people is not refutation of American racism, but the ultimate statement of American racism

Does Lamar get this? Some listeners worry not. Shortly after the track hit the Internet, BuzzFeed's Joel D. Anderson tweeted that "the last line of the new Kendrick joint is the same jazz Darren Wilson supporters were spitting at protesters," referencing the man who shot Michael Brown. Today, Stereo Williams writes at The Daily Beast that it's a "great song" that's "derailed by a misguided intention … If there is a hypocrisy, doesn’t it fall on those who would use gang violence to silence public outrage against oppression while ignoring the fact that the gang violence is also a product of that same racist oppression?”

There are other interpretations, though. Complex's Justin Charity hears Lamar as "wondering whether police brutality and gang violence aren't overlapping tragedies." And at Genius.com, Michael Chabon (yes, that Michael Chabon) suggests that the final couplet makes listeners “consider the possibility that ‘hypocrisy’ is, in certain situations, a much more complicated moral position than is generally allowed, and perhaps an inevitable one.” This reading lines up with the rest of Lamar’s output, from that “dead fucking center” lyric I mentioned to the narratives on 2012's Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, where he continually insists that he’s the good kid of the album title even as he's dragged into a world of drugs and crime. Ambiguity and internal conflict are as much his muses as inner-city life is.

But those muses don’t have to be separate, and the most interesting interpretation of “The Blacker the Berry” comes from fusing them. Lamar has long rapped about loving yourself in a culture that degrades you, but he's exploring that theme more and more lately, it seems. His recent single “I” was a jaunty self-affirmation that struck some listeners as corny and others—Grammy voters—as charming. Though the song's Isley Brothers sample makes it seem breezy, Lamar has said in interviews that the track's supposed to be a tool to use against one's own self-hatred; it's not an expression of contentment, but of struggle.

“The Blacker the Berry” is a grimmer take on the same idea. The narrator of the song wants to show off black pride as fiercely as he can, and yet the memory of his past actions are getting in the way. Listen to the whole song (“you made me a killer” he snarls at the end of the first verse) or to the rest of his catalogue, and it seems pretty clear Lamar would say that those actions in large part were caused by a racist system. But that doesn’t change the fact that they happened, and that they come to mind when he talks about black lives mattering. The Lamar of "The Blacker the Berry" may not be a hypocrite, but the world has made him to feel like one.

Even if I'm not getting Lamar's intention's exactly right, it seems safe to assume that he's not trying to lecture anybody. After all, “The Blacker the Berry” ends with a question: Why? The rest of the lyrics do provide an answer, and it’s a painful one.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.