“We gon’ be alright!” The crowd’s unrelenting chants fill the streets around Cleveland State University. Minutes ago, they were attending a Black Lives Matter conference. Now, they were being pepper sprayed by a transit officer as they attempted to block a squad car carrying a 14-year-old Black child from making its way to jail. The July 2015 incident, captured on video, is a striking act of resistance in response to the racially-charged abuses of power committed by U.S. police, its power only accentuated by the rallying cry of the protesters.
Just four months earlier, Kendrick Lamar releases his politically-charged magnus opus To Pimp a Butterfly. The album’s themes of Black empowerment and resilience garner widespread attention and acclaim, swiftly entering and cementing its place within pop culture discourse. Among its singles include “King Kunta” and “Alright”, both of which receive music videos in the subsequent months; as of November 2019, each video has over 100 million views on YouTube. These videos represent the efforts of Kendrick to re-aestheticize Compton within popular discourse, reclaiming the public image of his beloved hometown and reframing it on his own terms. While both videos express a consistent and powerful message of hope, they have drastically different tones, each corresponding to the song that inspired them.
“King Kunta” is Kendrick at his most defiantly braggadocious. On the track, Kendrick boasts about his success to his former enemies in the hood, likening himself to an empowered Kunta Kinte out for revenge. Its music video takes a similarly triumphant tone, shuffling between different locations within Compton filled with crowds dancing and celebrating along with Kendrick. He’s seen driving around the streets in a vintage car, patronizing the local convenience stores, dancing atop a billboard while surrounded by his friends. While “King Kunta” plays like a never-ending party, “Alright” is decidedly darker. As Kendrick tries to outrun the police as well as his own demons in his lyrics, the video shows him again riding down the streets of Compton, leaving a trail of cash behind him. He levitates, dances atop a stoplight, and eventually get shot by a cop with a finger gun. Yet there’s never a moment in the video where he’s not smiling, even as he plummets from the stoplight to his death.
The power of these videos lies in their nuanced depictions of Compton, directly challenging the inaccurate and essentializing stereotypes that have plagued the city. Historically, media representation of the African American experience has either sanitized the harsh reality of ghetto life or has portrayed escape from the ghetto as reasonably achievable through hard work (Alper, Leistyna, & The Media Education Foundation, 2005). On the flip side, conservative media figures and politicians have used the provocative work of artists like N.W.A. to perpetuate an image of Compton and its residents as violent, gang-dominated, and immoral.
The videos for “King Kunta” and “Alright” capture a much more empowering perspective of Compton, without washing away the gritty complexities of the street life. On the one hand, there are a multitude of scenes within both videos evoking themes of Black success and power within the “hood”. A particularly powerful image in “King Kunta” shows Kendrick kneeling atop a golden throne placed in the driveway of a neighborhood house, surrounded by his crew. Another scene shows the living room of a house, its walls adorned with framed pictures of Black icons like Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama. In “Alright”, Kendrick and his friends freestyle in a car carried not by wheels, but by uniformed police officers. A common theme found in both videos is Kendrick’s physical elevation. In “King Kunta”, Kendrick performs to a hyped-up crowd atop the famous and now-defunct Compton Swap Meet. In “Alright”, he flies through the streets of Compton and lands atop a prominent stoplight, continuing his performance. These powerful images of elevation seem to evoke transcendence, as if Kendrick’s no longer affected by the troubles of living in the hood.
Yet, neither video shies away from depicting the hardships and realities of Compton. The braggadocious nature of both the lyrics and visuals of “King Kunta” are juxtaposed with the location of Compton itself. Rather than a rise above the ghetto, Kendrick frames his success as an extension of Compton’s success; by filming at well-known spots within the city like the Compton Swap Meet, Kendrick glorifies his hometown rather than transcending it. Similarly, “Alright” juxtaposes a happy and successful Kendrick with images of police brutality and violence, including his own death at the end of the video. In his re-aestheticization of Compton, Kendrick ensures that both images of success and hardship are present, capturing a fuller scope than previously depicted in mainstream media.
However, the videos themselves can only have as much power as the discourse surrounding them. As Fiske wrote in “Commodities and Culture”, pop culture is “found in its practices”, and “characterized by the creativity of the weak in using the resources provided by a disempowering system while refusing finally to submit to that power” (Fiske, 1989). When Kendrick’s videos entered the pop culture discourse, they began taking on a new, more widespread meaning. As To Pimp a Butterfly’s message continued to spread across the U.S., #BlackLivesMatter protesters began chanting the hook of “Alright” as a mantra of hope in the face of injustice. As Pharrell Williams delivered the plainspoken, yet iconic lines – “We gon’ be alright!” – that same energy was channeled by protesters all across the country. As the chants in Cleveland raged on, the true impact of the pop culture created by Kendrick came to fruition. His re-aestheticization of Compton went beyond the city itself. His hometown struggles became a universal symbol of Black hope.
Just four months earlier, Kendrick Lamar releases his politically-charged magnus opus To Pimp a Butterfly. The album’s themes of Black empowerment and resilience garner widespread attention and acclaim, swiftly entering and cementing its place within pop culture discourse. Among its singles include “King Kunta” and “Alright”, both of which receive music videos in the subsequent months; as of November 2019, each video has over 100 million views on YouTube. These videos represent the efforts of Kendrick to re-aestheticize Compton within popular discourse, reclaiming the public image of his beloved hometown and reframing it on his own terms. While both videos express a consistent and powerful message of hope, they have drastically different tones, each corresponding to the song that inspired them.
“King Kunta” is Kendrick at his most defiantly braggadocious. On the track, Kendrick boasts about his success to his former enemies in the hood, likening himself to an empowered Kunta Kinte out for revenge. Its music video takes a similarly triumphant tone, shuffling between different locations within Compton filled with crowds dancing and celebrating along with Kendrick. He’s seen driving around the streets in a vintage car, patronizing the local convenience stores, dancing atop a billboard while surrounded by his friends. While “King Kunta” plays like a never-ending party, “Alright” is decidedly darker. As Kendrick tries to outrun the police as well as his own demons in his lyrics, the video shows him again riding down the streets of Compton, leaving a trail of cash behind him. He levitates, dances atop a stoplight, and eventually get shot by a cop with a finger gun. Yet there’s never a moment in the video where he’s not smiling, even as he plummets from the stoplight to his death.
The power of these videos lies in their nuanced depictions of Compton, directly challenging the inaccurate and essentializing stereotypes that have plagued the city. Historically, media representation of the African American experience has either sanitized the harsh reality of ghetto life or has portrayed escape from the ghetto as reasonably achievable through hard work (Alper, Leistyna, & The Media Education Foundation, 2005). On the flip side, conservative media figures and politicians have used the provocative work of artists like N.W.A. to perpetuate an image of Compton and its residents as violent, gang-dominated, and immoral.
The videos for “King Kunta” and “Alright” capture a much more empowering perspective of Compton, without washing away the gritty complexities of the street life. On the one hand, there are a multitude of scenes within both videos evoking themes of Black success and power within the “hood”. A particularly powerful image in “King Kunta” shows Kendrick kneeling atop a golden throne placed in the driveway of a neighborhood house, surrounded by his crew. Another scene shows the living room of a house, its walls adorned with framed pictures of Black icons like Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama. In “Alright”, Kendrick and his friends freestyle in a car carried not by wheels, but by uniformed police officers. A common theme found in both videos is Kendrick’s physical elevation. In “King Kunta”, Kendrick performs to a hyped-up crowd atop the famous and now-defunct Compton Swap Meet. In “Alright”, he flies through the streets of Compton and lands atop a prominent stoplight, continuing his performance. These powerful images of elevation seem to evoke transcendence, as if Kendrick’s no longer affected by the troubles of living in the hood.
Yet, neither video shies away from depicting the hardships and realities of Compton. The braggadocious nature of both the lyrics and visuals of “King Kunta” are juxtaposed with the location of Compton itself. Rather than a rise above the ghetto, Kendrick frames his success as an extension of Compton’s success; by filming at well-known spots within the city like the Compton Swap Meet, Kendrick glorifies his hometown rather than transcending it. Similarly, “Alright” juxtaposes a happy and successful Kendrick with images of police brutality and violence, including his own death at the end of the video. In his re-aestheticization of Compton, Kendrick ensures that both images of success and hardship are present, capturing a fuller scope than previously depicted in mainstream media.
However, the videos themselves can only have as much power as the discourse surrounding them. As Fiske wrote in “Commodities and Culture”, pop culture is “found in its practices”, and “characterized by the creativity of the weak in using the resources provided by a disempowering system while refusing finally to submit to that power” (Fiske, 1989). When Kendrick’s videos entered the pop culture discourse, they began taking on a new, more widespread meaning. As To Pimp a Butterfly’s message continued to spread across the U.S., #BlackLivesMatter protesters began chanting the hook of “Alright” as a mantra of hope in the face of injustice. As Pharrell Williams delivered the plainspoken, yet iconic lines – “We gon’ be alright!” – that same energy was channeled by protesters all across the country. As the chants in Cleveland raged on, the true impact of the pop culture created by Kendrick came to fruition. His re-aestheticization of Compton went beyond the city itself. His hometown struggles became a universal symbol of Black hope.
References
Fiske, J. (1989). Commodities and culture. In Understanding popular culture. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 23-47.
Smith, J. Alper, L. Lesityna, P. Jhally, S. (Director). (2005). Class Dismissed [Video file]. Media Education Foundation. Retrieved November 13, 2019, from Kanopy.
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