Kendrick Lamar’s New Album Will Be A Spit of Fire
Kendrick Lamar recently put out a new song ahead of his fourth-coming album, Mr. morales & the Big Steppers, due to be realised on May 13, 2022. The album will be his first studio album since the release of DAMN in 2017. This album is a highly anticipated one, not only because it’s been five years in the making. Nor because Lamar is considered one of the most influential rappers of his generation. Many who know the music of Kendrick Lamar have come to appreciate how much it stretches the limits of its genre in the urge to capture a nuanced, multi-layered appraisal of the current times while staying true to the artiste’s personal experiences.
What fascinates me with Kendrick Lamar is his faithfulness to Process. It seems the artiste, from an early age, understood his place and position as a mediator, a witness and, most potently, a griot. He embodies a certain belief I have about the place of the artist in our time. The artist is a form- and meaning-maker. Theirs is also a convoluted process of optimism mixed with wariness, and melancholia, but shored up by the incessant hunger for hope. This kind of hunger does not kill. It rejuvenates and resurrects that which is dead and trampled on the sidewalks of history. It gathers knowledge(s) hanging in the air simply because it escapes the material and the visible. The entire process of navigating a complex interplay…
