Open Collections

We gon’ be alright : Kendrick Lamar’s criticism of racism and the potential for social change through love

University of British Columbia

This thesis explores Kendrick Lamar’s criticism of institutionalized racism in America and its damaging effects on African-American subjectivity on his albums Section.80, Good Kid M.A.A.D City and To Pimp a Butterfly. The albums address the social implications of racism in the present day, throughout Lamar’s life and throughout the lives of his ancestors. In my analysis of Lamar’s albums, I address the history of American chattel slavery and its aftermath as a social system that privileges white over black. On the basis of my interpretation of the penultimate track on To Pimp a Butterfly, “i,” I propose a love ethic as a means through which the American social order can be changed. I take the term love ethic from Cornel West and bell hooks. A love ethic is a means through which individual bodies hurt by racism can be recognized and revalorized. Through the course of his three studio albums Lamar offers a narrative remediation of America’s discriminatory social order. In so doing, Lamar enacts the social change he wishes to see in America.

Text

2016-03-30

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/57363

English

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/