It’s been long enough since the album came out, so I decided to write this because I don’t feel like studying for my midterm (it’s next week I got time) and also I’m mad at white people.
But Way, you’re always mad at white people.
Lol well yeah, but this time is particular because I was going through Boulder’s snapchat
Bad move.
I know, but listen, click click click and this mother is playing a TPAB song on his fucking ukulele.
Fucking, seriously? This moment? It encapsulates the entirety of my problem with TPAB.
TBAP is shit because it’s a product of a movement while distancing itself from it. It’s a fake-ass album for fake-ass white hipsters that want to be “down” with the movement that they have no understanding of and no interest in fixing. It’s diet-race-realization. It’s for the moderate that tut-tutted at Black Lives Matter protests from the comfort of their homes while getting hyped at Blacker the Berry. To be fair, I was hyped about it too, until I realized the last line is more fucking ‘it’s black people’s fault’ bullshit that I expect from Common, not Kendrick.
But it’s cool, Kendrick’s dead to me. If he wasn’t dead to me when TPAB came out and I listened to it for a few weeks, he was DEFINITELY fucking dead to me when he featured on a Taylor Swift song.
Believe it or not, Kendrick’s fanbase is like, ENTIRELY white. But this makes sense, considering the modern music industry has been plastering his smug-ass face on every single magazine in existence. Time, Rolling Stone, GQ, the Guardian, 24/7 coverage from Pitchfork — for real, it ain’t no wonder. So there’s something VAGUELY uncomfortable about listening to a dude strum his piece of shit four-string not-instrument while cooing “I don’t want you monkey mouth motherfuckers sittin’ in my throne again” on Snapchat in some dorm-room.
Now I got white dudes all OVER hip-hop forums trying to explain to me what the “Black struggle” fucking is, I shit you not! I remember someone wanted me to express my opinion on hubski when it came out, and I refrained for that reason (and also the fact that it was out for like a week and somebody called it a classic). I was going to save this for year 2 of “My hip-hop of the year” posts, but I’m maaaaaad.
I’m mad because TPAB is middle-class hip-hop. I knew this, but it was cemented in my brain when I hopped into my boy Rick’s car and this album started fucking playing. Now I love Rick. He’s been my buddy since 6th grade. But this motherfucker has never listened to hip-hop in his life. This shit is not a coincidence. Rick loves apple pie and baseball (seriously), not Dynamic Certified and Public Enemy. The hell did this album come from on his part?
And of course you don’t have to be black to appreciate hip-hop. That’s not what I’m saying here. What I’m saying is that TPAB is fucking manufactured for middle-class white people to eat up. It’s the fucking hand-job of protest music — “you know what I really want.” It lets white people feel good about themselves and think they understand shit about the struggle, but then go off to work in their fucking Priuses where they can listen to K-dot say shit like "When we don't respect ourselves how can we expect them to respect us”, and then they nod and go “yeah this makes sense.” Then Azealia Banks puts him on blast for his bullshit and all of a sudden she’s an “angry black bitch that needs to shut the fuck up."
REASON BEING! Azalea’s point — and subsequently mine — is not the point that white people wanna get down with. We’re supposed to shuck and jive for y’all the way you want, not have a fucking opinion.
So CONGRATULATIONS Kenny — you made some white money and all of a sudden "black people don’t respect themselves", while you ride the wave of black-unrest to a pool of even more middle-class money. And speaking of, where the fuck was this “conscious” bullshit in 2012? Too busy fucking Sherane? Nothing about your album is nuanced or poetic, it’s just a bunch of flimsy “2deep4me” lyrics overlaid with basic jazz samples that white dudes on RapGenius will cream their pants annotating.
Fuck To Pimp a Butterfly.