16 Bars For Kendrick Lamar…
One: Incomparably complex compositions kill off commonplace conservative condescension; these cocksure clowns can’t even come through. I commend Compton, that black future, super computer for producing you
Two: Kendrick; you could have rapped your entire first album over the sound of snow melting and it still would’ve been the best hip-hop record I heard last fall
Three: You are never cornball. You are always crop circle. You are a mutiny in outer space. Thirty enslaved men swinging sickles the same way sky ripples before the storm
Four: You always free-style, when you free-style. Helicopter and hella proper and get the doctor, are all strangers that sound like old friends when you spit. You do not fear the page, but you are not chained to it
Five: What are you chained to?
Six: When School Boy Q tells all the white people at his concert to say the N word, does anything inside you curl into a fist?
Seven: At what age did you first trade fist for microphone? Whether booth or block, did it ever stop feeling like a fight to be seen?
Eight: Backstreet Freestyle might have the dopest instrumental in the history of ever
Nine: Do you ever get tired of the word ever? When someone calls you the best west coast rapper ever? Does it bruise like a birthday punch? Does this question; of lyrics versus history versus aesthetics rest on your mind like a plucking barnacle, just taking up space?
Ten: If there is ever a zombie apocalypse and someone has to record the history of human race, I will nominate you. I have a feeling, that you will make everything sound even more electric
Eleven: Does Sherane ever call?
Twelve: Do you ever feel blackbird small? Inside are you a boy still running home from bible study, cursing the weight of your textbooks as gunfire serenades the neighborhood?
Thirteen: We real hood. We rap good. We sell dope. We held hope. We let it go. We never know. When death comes, no cops show. Them play clothes. Them real guns. Friends all gone. They stole my song. We die. We die out here. We fly. Mad pies out here. Blackbirds. Black boys. Destroyed, my worlds. They tried
Fourteen: Black Boy Blues articulated pitch perfect. If nothing else, the whole world heard it
Fifteen: Every word is words worth work turnt up. Word is bond. Words are Kierkagaard. Words are the murphies song that fly from your pen. The reverbs. Negro’s spiritual humming. Under every act of lyrical dexterity. Amen to that. To the melody of all that dark noise. Word, to the kids in the suburbs, who can no longer call their privilege invisible. Words are bonds. Your bars break the chains. You sing the inevitable
Sixteen: We will sing about you. I promise
