Theopoetics: Kendrick Lamar and Recovering The Poetic
“Light is poet. Making a blank sheet of paper out of all it sweeps over. The earth, is God’s journal.”
Intertextuality is not only the subtle overlapping of texts. Not interlocking theories or scholarly written works reflected in Bibliographies or citations that signify sources of inspiration. It is much deeper. Within the art are disembodied ideas and voices.
Symbols that can oftentimes be felt more than they are seen. These symbols are not meant to be captured, known, or identified by those who don’t acknowledge their value. A symbol's relationship to who it is meant to be a symbol for must be a means to measure its value. Symbols are like language. Language is a moving and maneuvering thing meant to provoke a response in who it flows through and out of.
In his documentary Wonder Years, Grammy award-winning artist 9th Wonder reflects on his early days as a producer and chasing a “high” when beat-making. He described this emotional phenomenon as a “feeling in his chest.” The emotions he felt when he heard A Tribe Called Quest’s Electric Relaxation or Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth’s They Reminisce Over You. He confesses, “I’m chasing a feeling.” Trying to recapture the essence of an experience or feeling– with a piece of art– within his art through what I would call creative catharsis. Processing a particular emotion by evoking it through what we create.
For artists, similar to 9th Wonder, it’s an attempt to recreate impact—to relive a moment or the feelings a song, poem, or lyric placed in your chest, hoping you would prolong its life. It resituates the source of inspiration. For 9th Wonder, this source was Digable Planets 9th Wonder (Blackitolism) video.
This is one of many ways we find coherence in the scriptures. God is the greatest storyteller. God’s collection of literary techniques and methods transcend our delimited means of structuring stories. God can reimagine moments. Using the past as inspiration for the present. It’s the confusion of Isaac, inquiring about the offering his father would use, as seen in the fear of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, praying to evade his suffering. But in both stories, there was, symbolically, a question, “cup” and “sacrifice.” And God, as author, poet, and artist, syndicates the symbols in God’s stories.
Signs and symbols belong to the artist. They are shadows stretched from the object against which light leans. In this sense, light is poet. Making a blank sheet of paper out of everything it sweeps over. The earth is God’s journal. We will recognize symbols, shadows cast, and signs as the “poetic.” In Theopoetics In Color: Embodied Approaches in Theological Discourse, theopoetics is the poetic of the poet; the expression of life in process. The poetic includes signs and symbols that bear possibilities. Possibilities that weigh on them like curses, denoting their tendency to be mistaken, misinterpreted, and trapped within the imagination of interpreters.
When Kendrick Lamar performed during halftime of the 2025 Super Bowl, the moment was studded with emblems and ciphers, motifs and themes that gesture toward his career as a rap artist, his sociopolitical consciousness, and, most importantly, Compton. In his 2011 debut studio Album, Section.80, Lamar recalls some of his childhood experiences on track 8, Poe Man’s Dreams. Throughout the song, he specifies who the messages in his music are intended for: “But anyway this is for my n****s, Uncles, 23 hours sending me pictures. I want you to know that I'm so determined to blow. That you hear the music I wrote. Hope it get’ you off Death Row…So when I touch the pen, the pen is in my view.” At this moment, Kendrick is direct and intentional about who he is writing for, with “the pen(prison and his loved ones incarcerated)” being in his scope. The metaphors, vernacular, and mundane details of his music are meant to soothe the hearts of his friends in prison—letters tailored for his loved ones at the margins.
He communicates the intent of his poetry. In Lamar’s music, like love letters, you might find italicized moments and symbols intended to signify messages to communities in Compton, his family, and friends–imprisoned and deceased. His openness about his relationship with the unhoused people in his community, or the abandoned and drug-abused, and those gang affiliated. We must communicate our interpretations of symbols in ways that gesture toward those who are forgotten. How might we interpret God’s words through this lens?
The cultural codes that bind the stories of this book belong to Lamar. Media, rap academics, and critics all crafted theories to explain the messages in his halftime performance. However, in the blogosphere, the symbols and cultural codes were no longer Kendrick’s or Compton’s.
His poetic was thrown into an arena for the world’s theoretical warfare. A virtual reality in which his life and story were a figment of what is real with “easter eggs” and “clues” for data collection. The story becomes a dusty book on an old shelf dubbed a “classic” or memorable moment, but nothing more. And stories fall in danger of being trapped behind theories about the story. Oftentimes, when theorizing, we abandon the story in pursuit of theory. Stories have become a bridge to our desire to speculate.
Resultingly, we abandon story and poem in search of a false poetic. Theorizing about shadows and forsaking light. I think the "Poetic" is an inherent relationship between the poem and the poet. How a poem, or the signs and symbols illustrated/projected within it, signify the poet's heart, existence, and essence. But essence is the thing that can't be captured, only felt. This is a place where flesh is the source of our episteme. And feelings of familiarity, the resonance in our hearts, are how we identify the poetic in our unique relationship with the poet. What feels consistent from one poem to the next? This is where our contexts, emotions, and bodies become our methods of knowing.
Ultimately, the "poetic" proves the poet has a story and intentions. Or leanings and a trajectory. It exposes a poet's desire to be known and trends in their creativity trajectory. It proves the poet is vulnerable and open to interpretation. But this vulnerability can threaten the poet’s story. When the culture has a monopoly on our cultural codes, young men and women dressed in red and blue on a stage as big as the one Kendrick performed are more likely to be interpreted broadly as symbolizing the American flag.
Instead, what does red and blue mean for Compton? Or the abused, bruised, and forgotten? If light is poet, let every shadow’s silhouette be the trace of who is forgotten—that who the sun will always see.
Told by: Kwon
