The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America - Softcover

Moore, Marcus J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1982107596 ISBN 13: 9781982107598

Verlag: Atria Books, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

This “smart, confident, and necessary” (Shea Serrano, New York Times bestselling author) first cultural biography of rap superstar and “master of storytelling” (The New Yorker) Kendrick Lamar explores his meteoric rise to fame and his profound impact on a racially fraught America­—perfect for fans of Zack O’Malley Greenburg’s Empire State of Mind.

Kendrick Lamar is at the top of his game.

The thirteen-time Grammy Award­-winning rapper is just in his early thirties, but he’s already won the Pulitzer Prize for Music, produced and curated the soundtrack of the megahit film Black Panther, and has been named one of Time’s 100 Influential People. But what’s even more striking about the Compton-born lyricist and performer is how he’s established himself as a formidable adversary of oppression and force for change. Through his confessional poetics, his politically charged anthems, and his radical performances, Lamar has become a beacon of light for countless people.

Written by veteran journalist and music critic Marcus J. Moore, this is much more than the first biography of Kendrick Lamar. “It’s an analytical deep dive into the life of that good kid whose m.A.A.d city raised him, and how it sparked a fire within Kendrick Lamar to change history” (Kathy Iandoli, author of Baby Girl) for the better.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Marcus J. Moore is an award-winning music journalist, senior editor, curator, and pop culture commentator, whose writing can be found in Pitchfork, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, The Nation, NPR, The Atlantic, BBC Music, and MTV, among others. He’s created nationally syndicated playlists for Google, discussed new music live on FM radio, contributed to national podcasts, and guest-hosted live shows on Red Bull Radio. In 2009, Moore launched his own site—DMV Spectrum—which covered music and entertainment in Washington, DC; Maryland; and Virginia. He was originally from the Washington, DC, area, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. The Butterfly Effect is his first book.

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This “smart, confident, and necessary” (Shea Serrano, New York Times bestselling author) first cultural biography of rap superstar and “master of storytelling” (The New Yorker) Kendrick Lamar explores his meteoric rise to fame and his profound impact on a racially fraught America­―perfect for fans of Zack O’Malley Greenburg’s Empire State of Mind.

Kendrick Lamar is at the top of his game.

The thirteen-time Grammy Award­-winning rapper is just in his early thirties, but he’s already won the Pulitzer Prize for Music, produced and curated the soundtrack of the megahit film Black Panther, and has been named one of Time’s 100 Influential People. But what’s even more striking about the Compton-born lyricist and performer is how he’s established himself as a formidable adversary of oppression and force for change. Through his confessional poetics, his politically charged anthems, and his radical performances, Lamar has become a beacon of light for countless people.

Written by veteran journalist and music critic Marcus J. Moore, this is much more than the first biography of Kendrick Lamar. “It’s an analytical deep dive into the life of that good kid whose m.A.A.d city raised him, and how it sparked a fire within Kendrick Lamar to change history” (Kathy Iandoli, author of Baby Girl) for the better.

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Chapter 1: How “You Got Robbed” 1 How “You Got Robbed”
There are musicians, and then there’s Kendrick Lamar Duckworth. A welterweight, and just five feet, five inches tall, he looks more like a Baptist youth minister than the greatest rapper of his generation. But he is the greatest rapper, and he worked damn hard to make it so. Kendrick wasn’t some sort of prodigy; he didn’t descend from his bassinet with a microphone and a composition book. Instead, he simply found something he loved and stuck with it. Through creative writing, he could say things on paper that he couldn’t say out loud. He was shy, an only child until the age of seven. He grew up in Compton, California, in the early to mid-1990s, not even a decade after the city’s police brutality and gang culture were immortalized by the rap group N.W.A in 1988. Young black and brown children had to navigate that land before they could fully comprehend street politics. They had to learn the differences between the Piru and Crips gangs on the fly, in a city where wrong decisions could mean the difference between life and death. Kendrick spent time alone, cultivating his art in hopes of becoming great. For a naturally quiet being like Kendrick, writing poetry gave him the space to reveal his innermost thoughts without judgment from others. Prowess came in silence.

Kendrick ascended to the top of the music industry by being himself and staying true to what drove him artistically. He’s been called esoteric and downright weird, but really he’s just an old soul with a profound reverence for hip-hop, R&B, and funk—black music—and he moves throughout life with Compton in his mind and heart. Maybe that’s why he’s so beloved, because he stresses the importance of home no matter where he goes.

Yet at the beginning of the 2010s, Kendrick was just another upstart lyricist trying to find his place in music. In July 2011, Kendrick released his first official album, the kaleidoscopic Section.80, to an unknowing public just a month before hip-hop megastars Jay-Z and Kanye West dropped their long-awaited joint record, Watch the Throne, to widespread acclaim. Where that album unpacked the pleasures of hedonism and the glory of black decadence, Kendrick’s record was something different. It had everything: brassy jazz, mid-tempo soul, and headbanging street anthems. In it, one could hear Kendrick’s love of J Dilla—the experimental hip-hop producer from Detroit, whose mix of hard drums and unique sampling techniques made him an icon in alternative rap—as well as Pusha T, the resilient Virginia Beach rapper whose explicit lyrics cut straight to the heart. Kendrick was the cerebral introvert with theatrical flair, the quiet kid who patiently absorbed the fullness of his environment and spun what he saw into heartfelt streams of pain, struggle, and perseverance. Section.80 was deemed an achievement in an era of hip-hop in which lyricists could build sizable followings online without having to come up through local open mic circuits. And while it wasn’t Kendrick’s first project (he had released five mixtapes before then—2004’s Hub City Threat: Minor of the Year, 2005’s Training Day, 2007’s No Sleep Til NYC with rapper Jay Rock, 2009’s C4, and 2010’s Overly Dedicated), Section.80 put the music industry on notice: they’d never seen a creative flair like Kendrick’s, and there was no doubt now he was here to stay.

Section.80’s acclaim set the stage for Kendrick’s next achievement, 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d city, an instant classic that catapulted him to heights for which he wasn’t fully prepared. Powered by the singles “Backseat Freestyle,” “Swimming Pools (Drank),” and “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” Kendrick’s second studio album proved a massive hit, and almost overnight he went from enigmatic upstart to full-fledged superstar. Just two years later, in 2014, Kendrick was supposed to enjoy a grand coronation, at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, but destiny had a different timeline.

The twenty-six-year-old had pushed his way to the Staples Center, having dropped a steady stream of music that garnered universal acclaim and brightened his star to its most brilliant point. With guest appearances from hip-hop superstar Drake, and gangsta-rap-pioneer-turned-headphone-mogul Dr. Dre, good kid, m.A.A.d city debuted at number two on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and sold more than 240,000 copies in its first week out. Kendrick had been dubbed L.A.’s next great lyricist, another in a decades-long list of local rappers gone big. But Kendrick wasn’t Dre. He wasn’t Ice-T, Ice Cube, or Snoop Dogg. Those men had been synonymous with gangsta rap, a reality-based strain of hip-hop that documented L.A.’s turbulent gang culture and systemic racism in searing detail. On good kid, m.A.A.d city, Kendrick presented himself as the conflicted soul with one foot on solid ground and the other in the streets. He’d survived the stress of L.A. gang culture to finally arrive at music’s biggest night in downtown L.A.—some fourteen miles from his childhood home at West 137th Street.

There’d been a palpable buzz leading up to this point, yet Kendrick didn’t seem fazed by the moment. Despite all the pageantry that usually comes with the Grammys, there was a remarkable sense of calm on his face. It was like he’d been there before, like he belonged in this environment. It was the gaze of a man who’d already won, whether or not he collected hardware on that stage. He’d soon have the public’s full attention, and the awards, well, that’d be icing on the cake. (He was never one to get hopped up on accolades, anyway.) There was also a hint of resignation in his eyes; the Recording Academy hadn’t rewarded artists like Kendrick, at least not right away. They usually had to come around to people like him, eschewing his blend of intellectual street rap for palatable, pop-oriented work. Year after year, the industry rewarded safety, not the groundbreaking art of wise young poets.

But there he was anyway, dressed to the nines in a bespoke electric-blue tuxedo with his longtime girlfriend, Whitney Alford, at his side. Earlier that night, Kendrick had ignited the crowd with a brilliant performance of his track “m.A.A.d city,” with the high-profile rock group Imagine Dragons as the backing band. On a night of scintillating performances, Kendrick’s set was perhaps the strongest, foreshadowing what would become a regular run of iconic sets from the Compton rapper on the music industry’s grandest stage. In the crowd, Taylor Swift, the industry-minted country artist turned pop star with a penchant for lovelorn breakup songs, swayed joyously on camera. Minutes later, with the music in full swing, Queen Latifah, the Afrocentric rap pioneer turned star actress, gazed delightfully at the stage—her face teeming with pride, bewilderment, and pure excitement. This was arguably Kendrick’s crossover moment, the culmination of three years of steadily increased momentum.

Compton kids aren’t supposed to make it past the city limits—Willowbrook to the northwest or Paramount to the east. If you let the media tell it, those kids are not even supposed to make it out alive. Though the town wasn’t the epicenter of violent crime it had once been in the 1980s and ’90s, it was still fertile ground for gang activity, and by 2015, it would receive federal aid to help prevent gang violence and human...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Atria Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1982107596
• ISBN 13: 9781982107598
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 288
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande