K Dot Reincarnated: Signifying Lucy (3 Part Reflection Series)
“Kendrick is reading Compton into the Bible”
The religious and ideological strivings in Kendrick Lamar’s music carry the folksy nature of downhome black Christian discourse. Lamar’s rap has streamlined deeply religious ideas and reenacted old Jazz and R&B Soul, which both accessories at times give it folk-tale-ish undertones. Lamar’s 2012, now classic project, good kid, m.A.A.d city, ranked #7 on Apple Music’s best 100 albums, and the album’s sonic texture is nostalgic and grainy as he depicts innocent juveniles traversing mundane teenage street mores, crooked cops, and peer pressure.
The project’s opening track, Sherane a.k.a Master Splinter’s Daughter, begins with a granular record crackle and a cryptic recording of two young men, with their voices overlapping, reciting a prayer in which they confess their sins and ask that Jesus come into their lives. At the moment, their verbal professions of faith made them angels and saints whose nimbuses and halos were bandanas and LA Dodger-fitted caps, and their lives became central motifs in the album’s narrative. Good kid, mA.A.d city ends with the same recording from which it began, a motif revealing the cyclical nature of time Kendrick often uses in his music. An older woman’s voice appears, assuring these figures, “See, you young men are dying of thirst, and you need Holy water.
However, these two unknown boys’ stories initiated the thematic development of Kendrick’s life narrative as told through his rap career. Through their religious sensibilities and theological disclosure, we get a peek into rap as a path to clarity concerning an artist’s religious life. Lamar does not explicitly reveal his religious or spiritual affiliations, but the Bible and Christian rhetoric are his chosen referents for tales about Compton, his anxieties, and his musings.
Jesus and Abrahamic religious figures have reappeared throughout his stories and are resignified to assign divine meaning to rap artists and Hip Hop’s stories. By signifying, I mean taking symbols, motifs, and iconography and reframing them as a means to both understand their function and assign them a role in your lived reality. The word “flaw” might mean a blemish or imperfection, but in Florida’s urban culture, it could be used to refer to someone’s character holistically as dishonest, lacking integrity, or easily compromising loyalty.
Lamar resignifies Satan as “Lucy” and retells the rapture in the book of Revelations in untitled unmastered’s second track. More directly, his encounter with a homeless man who turns out to be God embodied in How Much a Dollar Cost. Lamar has made these symbols in religion make sense in his lived reality.
More than this, Dot has turned rap booths into confession booths. Fame and stardom offer Black stars access to their deepest desires and most perverted vices. Given the music industry’s tendency to erode an artist’s moral veneer, a life of confession, mystique, and contradiction becomes grounding elements of a rapper’s sonic personality.
Overwhelming confession is a weighty indication of a past and current life heavily laden with guilt and transgression. Lamar admits in his 2015 anthem Alright, “Painkillers only put me in in the twilight, where pretty and benjamins is the highlight. Tell my mama I love her, but this what I like.” At the end of Sing About Me, following its shift in instrumental and tempo, Lamar’s voice is stripped of self-assurance, and he unhurriedly moves through the song with a tone that evokes distress and dread. “What are we doing? Who are we fooling? Hell is hot, and fire is proven to burn for eternity. The return of the student. That never learned how to live righteous but how to shoot it. Tired of running, choirs is hummin'. Tell us to visit, we lying 'bout comin'.”
The religious symbols in Kendrick’s music ask that we imagine his religious convictions. Throughout his career, Lamar’s theological lexicon and reference book expand as he tells layered and biblically inspired stories that parallel his own life and foreshadow America’s looming ruination. It's eerie to consider that as Lamar gets closer to the industry’s riches and fame, Satan, hellfire, and apocalyptic rhetoric become central storytelling tools that help him depict how he imagines the world around him.
We will explore Reincarnated and recognize it as the most vivid, up-to-date, and informed representation of Kendrick's theological development as he resignifies scripture through rap storytelling.
Told by: Kwon
