I’m bad with nostalgia, and listening to this piece, I can feel so distinctly what it was to be a teenager in the South, romping around town with my best friend Lizz. Vincent before, but this song includes all my favorite non-rap lyrics of 2015. But what sticks with me most is the feeling that a young man has just done the most difficult thing possible - opened up and asked for connection. What does it mean to be a young black man when your mom tells you you’re a king and history tells you you’re dispensable? I love everything about “Summertime” - the fuzzy production, his baritone curving over lyrics both complicated and simple. But deeper truths thread through Staples’ confessions. On its surface, “Summertime” is a love song, a yearning to make a relationship last. “Feelings known to get you killed,” Vince Staples rap/sings in “Summertime.” Still he risks it, delivering 2015’s most personal rap song. How easy to just lean in, let all the bad of the world fall away.ĭon’t let the Drake-era fool you: Rap rarely deals in the personal. “For Sale?” sounds just as the devil does in desperation - hypnotic, cunning, relentless. “For Sale” is the Devil trying - in a hook even sweeter-sounding than its predecessor - to pull his attention the other way. “Alright” is God whispering into Lamar’s ear. I’m including both songs because those angelic backing voices continue into “For Sale,” becoming more hypnotic as the interlude progresses. Here, Lamar sees all the bad of the world laid out - "Lookin at the world like, 'Where do we go?" and yet he grabs the future for himself anyway. Much of “To Pimp a Butterfly” is angry and hurt. They - and Kendrick - were reclaiming their lives. It’s telling that Black Lives Matter protesters in Cleveland chose “Alright,” rather than an angrier track to chant as they marched through Ohio. The screams and drunken blubbering of “u” fade up into a most hopeful, catchy hook. “To Pimp a Butterfly”’s standout track comes just after its most brutal.
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