Musickendrick and Tupac: The same glory, different ways as the rapper chose the pen to weapons to celebrate his best version, in ‘gnx’por writing

CNGmost recent album of the career of Kendrick Lamarcomes to Brazil with a tour in an exclusive presentation in São Paulo. However, there are some things I would like here to recap about your career, especially the predecessor of CNG, Mr. Morale & The Big Stepperskey to understand the new phase of K-dot.

Kendrick They come from a dense album to a more radio. And has followed this tune since his second career work, Good Kid, Maad City (2012). A record for those who like to dive deep into sound and lyrical complexities and another to expand the public. But it is wrong to think that there are points without knot in his career or that his hits contain not complexity. We are talking here of one of the most creative, consistent and relevant artists of the millennium.

In my work as a producer and mentor of artists who are seeking originality in their works, I constantly support myself in the work of Kendrickwhether to conceive an MPB album, jazz or urban music, as there is a skill there of universal application to build narratives very well tied within deep concepts. The more complex is that the more your work grows, the greater your narrative arc and the possibility of its self -referential; either to contradict or reaffirm ideas.

Not to extend much so in this complex narrative arch, I will just make an overview of the album that precedes CNGits most recent release, because I believe that there are certain ruptures that have been established and that count about a new Kendrickas we will see.

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers It is the album that marks its five -year creative fasting without releasing anything and is also the search for healing, accentuated by reflections from a self -insulation during the pandemic. Undoubtedly the most vulnerable record of Kendrickbecause in it we are invited to go deep, at the origin of their trauma, caused by a hostile and violent environment that will directly impact their masculinity. An album to reveal and remove the masks that wears society.

In an extremely well -urgent therapy session, we discover intimate details that make Kendrick far from the figure of the Savior who was projected on it, during the protests of the Black Lives Matterin 2021, chanting your music “Alright”As a hymn. Kendrick denies and says “he’s not your savior“(“ He is not his Savior ”) in“Savior”As well as asks not to have him in“COUNT ME OUT“. An antihero who first introduces himself as someone who suffers from a certain sexual compulsion, needing to cure it before he destroys his family. The album cover expresses it all. As I said, there is no point without knot: Kendrickwith his family, he is in a refuge whose internal walls are worn out; on his back, he holds his daughter, Uziin the lap; your wife, WhitneyNina your other son, Enochsitting in a double bed. At the waist of Kendricka revolver. In the head, a crown of thorns made of diamonds. This same intensity of codes and symbols permeate the whole album. A record as hard as facing the deepest trauma, rooted in an episode of an abuse suffered by his mother, witnessed by him at the age of five, and which is reported to us in “Mother I”.

All this preamble is fundamental to understand how Kendrick In the track “Glory”, CNGHe chose to reveal his weapon to the world through an open letter to his companion and confidant: the pen. In the track, we hear the intimate conversation between the writer and she, personified and interpreted by the singer SZA.

This love relationship was also established for almost 30 years, in 1996, when TUPAC SHAKUR launched the track “Me and my girlfriend”(“ Me and my girlfriend ”, in free translation), where he counts his relationship with his girlfriend, but here objectified in the figure of a gun. The track was most likely inspired by another track,“I Gave You Power”(“ I gave you power ”), from In thein which we also hear the embodiment of a weapon, counting first person his perspective on crime. There is a verse in “Glory” where Kendrick Quotes the NAS music and adds other gifts from the gun: “I Gave You Life”(“ I gave you life ”),”I Gave You Power“(“ I gave you power ”),“I Gave You Hustle”(“ I gave you the strength to fight ”).

Kendrick could have gone to crime, an environment that permeated his childhood and adolescence, as narrated on the album Good Kid, Maad Citybut chose to go another way, not associating with any gang, not taking weapons. Unlike Tupachis greatest inspiration possibly, which had his tragic end, murdered in the same year of 1996, ironically prophesied in the phrase “TELL ME WHY THIS BLOODY END, ME AND MY GIRLFRIEND”(“ Tell me why this bloody end. Me and my girlfriend ”).

I hear “Glory”, Kendrickas the establishment of a man who chooses to lower the symbolic weapons of a manly masculinity, encouraged by the life trajectory in a violent environment and also a continuity of the movement made, since the day he began to write to try to organize the feelings that crossed and that is sharp, documented, emotionally explicit and worked on album Mr. Moralewhere the epicenter of this narrative is brought to us on the album with the following passage:

You did it, I’m Proud of You
You Broke a General Curse

You got it, I’m proud of you
You broke a generational curse

When choosing to show the world your true weapon, the word, Kendrickbreaks a generational curse, not chosen or cultivated by its idols, inspirations and founders of the hip hop movement, for these, as well as the culture they represent, are the opposite of this: a point of salvation in the face of a racist, oppressive and obsessing system. And this is the curse we must extinguish.

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