From John Coltrane to Kendrick Lamar
Kendrick Lamar in concert at the Festival d'été de Québec (Canada), July 7, 2017 © Redferns - Ollie Millington / Getty images
By: Joe Farmer Follow
5 mins
Formerly, free jazz sounded the alarm and denounced the creative and social immobility of the great America.
50 years later, the rebellion is still alive but is expressed with the tools of today, the actors of today, the trends and fashions of today.
In 1987, a future and brilliant speaker was born in Compton, California.
Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was to become an architect of the African-American rebellion.
His intelligence, punctuated by scathing and thoughtful words, touched the anti-establishment fiber of an entire generation.
The journalist Nicolas Rogès devotes a complete book to him, "Kendrick Lamar, from Compton to the White House", available from the Editions "Le Mot et le Reste".
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He is only 33 years old, but his aura goes far beyond the world of rap.
Kendrick Lamar could have, like many of his contemporaries, let himself be carried away by the unease that an unequal society imposes on populations weakened by institutionalized discrimination.
Yet he managed to resist the spiral of violence and sterile confrontations by rival gangs in the underprivileged suburbs of the 90s. A quick-witted Kendrick Lamar very quickly saw the trap of responding to intimidation.
He understood the absolute need to rise beyond stereotypes and cultural reflexes.
If he fought hard not to be the victim of a cruel economic system, he does not however refute his origins and even honors his roots in his speech and his works.
Nourished by the repertoire of his elders, the pioneers of hip hop culture, Dr Dre, 2Pac and Ice Cube, he has remained curious and attentive to the different forms of expression of the African-American community.
Nicolas Rogès' book published by "Le Mot et Le Reste" editions.
© RFI / Joe Farmer
Although jazz did not seem to be an obvious source of inspiration for this young rapper fed on Soul-Music that his father listened to daily, the convolutions of John Coltrane and the advice of a few distinguished instrumentalists, including Terrace Martin, propelled him in a world he never suspected.
Kendrick Lamar's clairvoyance allowed him to merge all these sound echoes escaped from "The Epic of Black Music" to appropriate the sap and magnify it.
"To Pimp a Butterfly" was undoubtedly one of the major albums of 2015 and remains the anchor of an artist in search of an artistic ideal that his abused youth could have perverted.
His verve and his ardent desire to extricate himself from a destiny too often caricatured raise him to the rank of poets of the modern era.
He even received the Pulitzer Prize in 2018!
Kendrick Lamar's gradual evolution towards a unanimously recognized intellectual maturity precisely matches his meetings and travels.
His stay in South Africa in 2014 will certainly be one of the memorable and enriching human experiences for this young black American then in search of identity and tangible historical landmarks.
Visiting Nelson Mandela's cell was a useful ordeal, a putting into perspective of his own intimate torments confronted with the reality of physical and cerebral imprisonment.
From then on, Kendrick Lamar, already very aware of the horrors of the black people, grew a little more and reveals a civic acuity that his increasingly explicit productions do not deny.
Kendrick Lamar in concert in Austin, Texas at Zilker Park, October 8, 2016 © WireImage - Rick Kern / Getty images
How surprising it is to read an entire book devoted to a young thirty-something whose artistic development and examination of conscience are not yet complete.
This is the challenge launched by Nicolas Rogès, himself in his thirties, whose expertise follows the path of a rebellious, worried, militant generation, which is redrawing the contours of our troubled times.
Kendrick Lamar's website
Nicolas Rogès website
Kendrick Lamar, from Compton to the White House (Le Mot et le Reste editions)
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