DAMN.
Instead of going to church on Easter Sunday, I listened to the gospel of Kendrick Lamar. Its newest chapter, DAMN., debuted last Thursday evening.
DAMN. is all about urgency and anger, evident in the short, curt and capitalized song titles. For anyone wondering what direction Kendrick is heading in, the lack of lowercase letters indicates that he’s fed up with the injustices of our modern world and, though never one to hold his tongue, feels compelled to grab the megaphone and deliver them with 50 watts of power. Words are mightier than the pen that writes them, which is mightier than the sword.
DAMN. is also one of the few words that comes to mind when faced with the clusterfuck that is present day American society. After eight years of progressive policies and the beginning of a tense (albeit necessary) dialogue on how to create a more egalitarian country, Americans suddenly elected a dictator wannabe as president. In hindsight, we should have seen it coming. The late, great Glenn O’Brien certainly did when he said - in April 1990 no less, when Donald Trump contemplated a presidential run - “If Marla Maples is the Marilyn Monroe of the ‘90s, does that make Donald Trump the Jack Kennedy of the ‘90s? It looks that way to me. Rather than hurting Trump’s political chances, Marla Makes them. I think this sex-symbol campaign of his is really just the foreplay to a full-scale run at the presidency. America doesn’t want it all the time. But when America really wants it, like back at the dawn of the ‘60s, America wants a stud president, a potentate.” Swap out Marla Maples for the “grab ‘em by the pussy” scandal, and omniscient O’Brien was right all along.
Keith Ellison knew it too, declaring in July 2015 that “Anybody from the Democratic side of the fence who’s terrified of the possibility of President Trump better vote, better get active, better get involved because this man has got some momentum and we better be ready for the fact that he might be leading the Republican ticket.” Ellison was laughed at by the hosts of ABC’s “This Week” (where the segment aired), but they’re not the ones laughing now. None of us are anymore, not even Alec Baldwin and certainly not Kendrick.
Sure, there are witty lines on DAMN. that might make us chuckle or go “DAMN!” But that’s just Kendrick’s métier as the democratizer of poetry. Kendrick has no pretense. He headlines Coachella, even though the festival has come under fire the past several years for various reasons, including the owner’s ties to conservative, anti-LGBTQ causes and the attendees’ willingness to sport garb that appropriates traditional modes of dress from indigenous, marginalized cultures. What Kendrick knows - and why he takes on these gigs (in addition to the fact that they’re lucrative and that he’s a successful artist) - is that he’s an agent for change. If he gets one more person to protest, one more person to wake up to the chaos going on around them, his mission has succeeded. By headlining events like Coachella, he’s reaching people who have the luxury of time to protest, while not leaving behind his original audience who raise their voices in protest on the streets and at rallies because their lives depend on it. Like art and advertising, poetry can be commercial, too, and a work’s popularity and mass appeal don’t determine its value. Art needs to be accessible - as does poetry.
In that sense, DAMN. is Kendrick’s most commercial-sounding album. What’s commercial today was avant-garde yesterday. A sample of Geraldo Rivera’s hateful rhetoric on “BLOOD,” where Kendrick calls out Fox News for their antediluvian, racist criticism of hip-hop - is still a powerful gesture against the establishment and while it’s still pure genius, it’s no longer out of left field. The Philly Soul harmonies on the tune (which recur throughout the album) would have felt novel ten years ago. Today, samples and replications form the backbone of most music released. The old is new again. Charles Baudelaire mused “Through the Unknown, we’ll find the New.” In a day and age where everything has been done, the new can also be found through mish-mashing elements of the old, used in ways that could not have been known when they debuted. The zeitgeist and mainstream are one and the same more than ever. Social media has democratized art. This is the rise of Kendrick and the necessity of DAMN.
Artist, philosopher and poet René Ricard once declared, “I pledge allegiance to the living, and I will defend art from history. I will rescue art from the future, from its attrition into taste, and from the speculative notion that it will become more valuable with time.” Kendrick’s DAMN. is a work that is alive and derives its value from what is happening right now. It is not a piece of history, but it will become one against its own will. Right now, though, it’s a call to arms, to get up and stand up for your rights.