what the f*** does he do tho

im talking about kendrick lol.

what do any of us do

Good post Thomas

Theoretically if we all find out the way to be our best selves, the world gets better

Does any community have a leader rn?

Thinking of any marginalized community, or any community of people for that matter, is there really one beacon of light for any given community?

Part of me feels like that’s some of what Kendrick was trying to convey that there’s no possibility of there being a single figure representing of an entire community.

how do you think we can "strip" power away from the people who have created the system we live in?

What do you think he should've done from the beginning

But that's the problem, unfortunately systemic and structural issues can't be changed by the self-improvement of indivduals.

saying we all have flaws is correct but also redundant

I don't take the murder part literally either just saying he keeps putting ALL the blame on individuals for societal ills

if he wanted to say we all have flaws, he could've done that in a more interesting way than going full joker on some "we all kill people" imo lol

Yo why r&b b****es don’t feature on each other’s songs?

So what options do we got? Scrap the whole system? That's not happening any time soon unfortunately

I've been thinking since yesterday because Scratchin mentioned this thread topic but,do we live in a time where having a savior is NOT possible?

Kendrick was always just a nigga with a certain outlook on the world - that’s all anyone is. I believe he wanted to change the world but realized how hard that is, and I think that you are right about DAMN. being the grieving of that process, but I think you’re wrong about how pessimistic Mr. Morale is as a follow up to that mourning

This is arguably Kendrick’s most personal album but it’s dealing with issues he has touched on in the past - most notably on Mortal Man, where he does realize he’s just a regular person, and i (still maybe his best song ever). those songs signal the scope of Kendrick’s music changing from trying to change black culture and his community at large to looking inward at his family and his own faults and realizing that’s where the real, tangible change can really start.

this is the album where he fully addresses toxic masculinity, his own daddy issues (“that’s on me!”), his own coming-to-terms with issues in the black community like transphobia, aversion to therapy, and childhood abuse, and instead of pushing these issues to audiences and asking them to discuss, he realizes that maybe it was foolish to ask others to think about those before he himself did. I don’t think “i choose me” is meant to be negative or even selfish - it’s almost like a reboot, like Kendrick is starting over by focusing on himself, and maybe can begin to reach out from there. There were hints of this on i but I think Kendrick finally took his own advice - the passage on the album where Whitney tells him/his child that he broke a generational curse is so important and I feel like it d went unnoticed by a lot of people - THAT’S what this is all for.

this is why Noname’s post will always be wrong and stupid bc it was always obvious that Cole and Kendrick’s relative silence during the 2020 protests were spurred by the fact that they probably just simply didn’t know what to do anymore - after a decade of advocating on behalf of the black community and rapping about ending cycles of brutality and violence, the deaths that year were so disheartening bc it felt like nothing they were doing mattered - no matter how much you advocate, niggas will still die. They were rethinking their approach to literally being who they were, and that’s f***ing ok. They’re people, not the spokespeople for the entire black community, and maybe took on more than they could chew - they were young. it was an unfair thing to say and while cole’s response was stupid I can’t fault him for it.

Damn why they gotta be b****es

Also SZA and Summer just linked up if i remember correctly

Was it him or his fans tho? He was always just a storyteller. His fans the one who made it seem like he was a revolutionary activist

get the strap

instead of pushing these issues to audiences and asking them to discuss, he realizes that maybe it was foolish to ask others to think about those before he himself did.

this is actually a great interpretation,damn

However unlikely it might be, that's what should be our end goal, in the meantime get some reforms in.

Yeah we might not have our stateless, classless and moneyless society tomorrow, but maybe we could at east make it to where people don't have to spend 70% of their income on rent

I’m with Kendrick. He should his god damn self. He ain’t y’all savior and ppl foolish to look at him as a savior just because he had visions of Martin Luther staring at him or because he made alright. Yes Kendrick has a platform and uses it but he can’t save nobody. I never listened to his or anyone’s music and said “this person is my savior from all the bad in the world”. I disagree with him placing that title on himself as well. The people anointed him such and he’s saying that ain’t me or no artist you listen to.

How

Sza n summer linking is fire

N lol I was quoting Kendrick’s song

and get thousands of black people killed and imprisoned for life? that will just lead to more Black trauma. a few individuals or even a large militant group can't win a civil war with the U.S Army

That’s cool and all op but i actually mostly disagree with what he’s saying here because I think the way Kendrick went at noname was completely out of pocket and that it was based on a false idea of noname being a “savior”. But she gotta realize that she herself played a role in that as well. I would have liked to see her reflect more on her own responsibility in that, instead of just pointing the finger at those who may have unfairly deemed her to be some kind of failure without addressing how that happened. This is the problem with how she conceived of social change by a misconception that great women throughout history are the ones who spur social change, which explains her idolization of Bettey White to whom she pretty obviously saw herself as the next great woman with the task of changing society for the better, or in other words, as a savior.
The part that I take issue with is that she acts as if she had to choose between either being a savior, or just only being concerned with her own problems, as she said in Mirror: “Sorry I didn't save the world, my friend, I was too busy building mine again”. But here noname presents us with a false dichotomy, either be a savior, or just concern yourself with your own problems, since you cannot save the world anyway, there is a different option that noname is omitting, you don’t have to choose between either extremes, but I think that’s because she was previously so invested in the other extreme. So I understand where she’s coming from, but I don’t think this is the right position to take, but who knows where her head will be at in a couple of years, I look forward to finding that out with her next album and until then I’ll be bumping Mrs. Morale & The Big Steppers
TLDR: I can definitely sympathize with noname feeling of disappointment in not achieving what she genuinely wanted to achieve with the message in her music, but it was ultimately based on this misconception of the problems that she wanted to solve because of his understanding of history mostly being determined by great men (or as she says, “saviors”) propagating ideas that changed material conditions. When confronted with his own inevitable failure as one of those great women, she instead went to the other extreme and distanced himself from being concerned with the world's problems altogether and embraced a highly individualistic mindset in just worrying about “building his own world” instead, but those are of course not the only choices.

drop woke music and f*** white b****es on tour while his ancestors watch him and praise him for getting retribution

Do not take him seriously