KENDRICK LAMAR
Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper has made his mark on young artists
Amil Cook’s passion is teaching young people in Pittsburgh about the importance of hip-hop. But he saved one of his most heartfelt lessons for his 13-year-old son, Amyr: Enjoy Kendrick Lamar. Enjoy every album. Enjoy every song. After all, greatness like this comes along but once a generation, if you’re lucky, he pledged.
“I said, ‘ You’re witnessing history. You’ve got a front-row seat,’” remembered Mr. Cook, who teaches technology and media at Propel Andrew Street High School in Munhall. “I personally think [Lamar] is going to go down as one of the all-time greats, and, arguably, he’s already at that juncture in his career at such a young age. “I’m just in awe of him.” When Lamar brings his TDE: The Championship Tour to KeyBank Pavilion in Burgettstown on Saturday, many in attendance will be artists and creators themselves, anxious to get a glimpse of the 30year-old Compton-born superstar who turned hip-hop music upside down this decade with an explosive mix of message and finesse.
To artists he’s inspired in Pittsburgh, Lamar is practically godsent — the only rapper alive who can shift culture with the release of a single track. Through four studio albums and a slate of mixtapes since his emergence on the West Coast scene in the late 2000s, he’s undoubtedly created a soundtrack to the black experience, these artists say, and has done so in a way that has thrust socially conscious rap music into the mainstream at last — in a time it’s needed desperately.
For Lamar himself, his albums have produced multiple Grammys and even a Pulitzer Prize for music, which had never been awarded to a rap artist. But for listeners of Lamar’s discography, they’ve become bookmarks in the anthology of their lives.
Many first heard Lamar’s music at the turn of the decade. Jordan Howard stumbled upon one of Lamar’s mixtape cuts — “Vanity Slaves” — in 2010, at a time when the hip-hop charts were consistently dominated by braggadocio and a worship for material items.
But Mr. Howard, an aspiring hip-hop artist and Wilkinsburg High School student at the time, knew Lamar was different. “Vanity Slaves” was a gut-wrenching portrayal of the black experience. Lines about insecurity roaming the black community — “homes where kids must have jewelry” — accompanied an old-school West Coast beat.
“It really meant something to me. In that moment, I felt represented,” recalled Mr. Howard, who now performs LiveFromTheCity as a member of 1Hood Media, a Pittsburghbased socially conscious hip-hop collective. “In that moment, I felt, ‘This is a dude that speaks to me.’”
As it goes, Lamar was just getting started. He debuted his first studio album during the same month Wiz Khalifa’s “Rolling Papers” became the first hiphop record certified gold in 2011. As Pittsburgh was ablaze with Khalifa’s infatuation with money and fame, the then 24-year-old Californian put out the deeply introspective “Section.80.” A reviewer at the time praised Lamar’s “helium voice” that bristled “with the sort of homicidal rage of his Compton forebears.”
He followed it with a certified classic — “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City,” the five-time Grammy-nominated 2012 release on Dr. Dre’s Aftermath imprint that was lauded by critics as a vivid snapshot of Los Angeles. Lamar had told the media at the time heas was trying to create “a new Compton sound” through his own personal experiences of adapting to struggle.
This resonated with Nigel McDaniel, then a student at Penn Hills High School. Mr. McDaniel, an 11th-grader, considered himself to be comfortable in his own skin. “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City” gave him the validation that it was OK to be himself, he said.
“It was another example showing me that you can be exactly who you are and have people take you for exactly who you are. You don’t gotta be what society says,” said Mr. McDaniel, now 23 and host of “Future Flavors” on WAMO 100, Pittsburgh’s hip-hop radio station.
It was in 2014 that Lamar emerged as a bona fide member of rap’s elite class, destined for a spot on the Mount Rushmore of hip-hop.
After tagging along on Kanye West’s “Yeezus” tour, he delivered a memorable performance on “Saturday Night Live” in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo.
Then, he was out with “To Pimp a Butterfly,” arguably his most widely praised release to date. The 16-track album fused jazz, funk and hip-hop to comment on the sorry state of race relations in America, at a time when police brutality was becoming a national dialogue. It, too, pulled in its fair share of Grammys.
The consistency in Lamar’s albums — and their overarching message of taking pride in one’s own individuality — stuck with Pittsburgh artist Josh C’aso Adams over the years. It can be heard in the lyrics to his cover of Black Star’s “Respiration,” in which he raps, “seek repentance and know what your worth is.”
“[Lamar] shares so much information on the position we are in today and even on who I am as a person and where AfricanAmericans really come from as a whole,” said Mr. Adams, a 30-year-old rapper hailing from Homestead.
After releasing a collection of demos from “Butterfly” (called “Untitled Unmastered”), Lamar found himself being crowned as the voice of an entire generation. Artists waited with bated breath for his next release. That would come in 2017 — in capital letters.
“DAMN,” released that April, was Lamar’s next outlet for his musings on spirituality and self-worth. It was another critically acclaimed chapter in the discography of an artist who has grown lyrically and stylistically with each release.
“Today, his music just is an unapologetic take on his experience in life,” said Ryan Brown, owner of the Pittsburgh-based farESH Brand and event coordinator for Make Sure You Have Fun, “from relationships to growing up in Compton, to the current climate in America. I appreciate transparency, honesty and vulnerability in music,and he continues to deliver on all three.”
Lamar hasn’t come through the Pittsburgh area since June 2013, when he brought the “Good Kid M.A.A.D. City” tour to Stage AE. During the show, he pulled two fans onstage — a boy under 10 and a college-age kid — to groove to the music. “It’s because of fans like these that I’ll come back to Pittsburgh,” he said.
He’ll do so this weekend, fresh off his release this year of the soundtrack to Marvel’s “Black Panther,” which he produced and curated.
Mr. Cook, the hip-hop educator, won’t make it to the show, but he took his son to Lamar’s Hershey performance earlier this month.
To see Lamar in person was meaningful for both of them, he said.
“I think he’s the most amazing, talented entertainer I’ve personally witnessed since Michael Jackson,” he said, “in terms of his ability to touch people’s hearts and shift the culture.”
Julian Routh: jrouth@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1952, Twitter @julianrouth.