In 1937, the Section 8 housing act was passed. The purpose of this act was to provide extremely poor neighborhoods with rental housing assistance, by government subsidies to private landlords. In 1975 the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) began implementation of the Section 8 Program, sequestering many poor black neighborhoods into small sections.
In LA, there was a rise in prostitution, and also throughout the 80s many murders of women who were sex workers.
In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan overwhelmingly beat Jimmy Carter in the presidential elections, becoming the nations next president. Before Mr. Carter had left his post, he had just signed the Mental Health Systems Act, which was designed to support those with chronic mental illness, via mental health services and to work towards preventing mental illness.
Several months after Reagan was sworn in, the Mental Health Systems act was done away with, before any funding for it was sent out. Without the Mental Health Systems act, and several other mental health funding projects ending, places like Compton took some pretty big hits. Crack flooded the section 8 streets.
Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was born in June 17, 1987 in Compton California, and this is the environment he was a product of. Section 80.
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In the next three blogs I will be presenting to you a theory that I have. The idea is this: Lamar's last three albums are very intentionally connected. They have a point, and together they paint a picture for us as listeners.
There are three subjects that each album seems to adopt. Them, me and us, Section.80, Good Kid MAAD City, and to Pimp a Butterfly, respectively.
Lamar's first debut studio album, Section.80, follows the life of two Los Angeles dwellers in the 80's, Keisha and Tammy ("Keisha, Tammy come up front"). Although not every song is about these two ladies, Lamar paints a picture of what it was like to live in LA in the 80s and the album is takes place in this setting.
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There are many things that I could say about this album, but I'm choosing to not go into each song in depth (I will do this more with GKMC), but I think there are some key things that this album teaches us about Kendrick, and the legacy that I believe he will be leaving with his music.
1. It is evident in his first studio album that his music isn't simply about him. In the case of section.80, the whole album is about black people living in the 80s and what life was like for them. This album embodies the "them" subject of his project. (Listen to Tammy's song and Keisha's Song)
2. In my opinion, the most important song and verse in Kendrick's career thus far is in this album. In a single verse, Kendrick describes what he will be doing through music and gives us an idea of how to make sense of it. In the song, "Ab-Soul's Outro", Lamar says this:
This is an extremely important line. This is the lens that one must understand and have when listening to any Kendrick Lamar. He isn't a commentator observing from the outside, but he's also not a self aware rapper talking to the "outside", he is a part of the community and struggles he talks about, looking around and caring for the people in it with him.
3. Although this album isn't directly about Kendrick, what this album is doing is setting the stage for his next album, which tells us his story. But like most stories, context is important. Section.80 is the context for this 3 part (for now) story. It describes the people, laws, politics, social structures, struggles and difficulties of black people in LA, where Kendrick is born. What kind of world was Kendrick entering? Section.80.
4. My favorite song on the album, HiiiPower reveals to us a movement that Lamar wants to start. The movement is symbolized by putting 3 fingers up ("Everybody put three fingers in the air"), each finger (and "i") is supposed to stand for heart, honor and respect. The Hiiipower movement is designed to combat the systems in place (some man made, and some a byproduct of mans evil intentions). Lamar places a lot of value in Martin Luther King Jr ("Visions of Martin Luther staring at me"). He believes that change will not come through violence and hatred, rather heart, honor and respect will be the motivating forces in this movement.
5. Kendrick Lamar is employing something known as Critical Race Theory in this album (as well in his other albums). Critical Race Theory is a study of society and culture and how race, systems, power and politics intersect (look it up).
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One of the last lines in the album is this:
"Cause we been off them slave ships, got our own pyramids, write our own hieroglyphs."
A sad and terrible realization that Lamar is expressing, is how black people in America, because they are a people group brought to this country as slaves, have only begun to build and make their own identity and future in recent history. It's time for African Americans to write their own future, and not have it written for them by white supremacists.
As a 24 year old living in 21st century America, there is actually no way for me to even BEGIN to fully comprehend, imagine, or truly understand the narrative of a boat coming to this country, filled with "neegro" slaves. That for hundreds of years, a group of people, who were stolen from their homeland, were forced to come to a new place, work till they could work no more, and were often beaten or killed. I can't even comprehend a reality, one that existed ONLY some 70 years ago, where people were shot, raped, lynched, SIMPLY because of the color of their skin. But these things happened, and I have to find a way to enter into that reality and that pain and to understand that still to this day we are seeing the remnants of this atrocity, and that we are far from being done with racial issues, Lamar understands this. This difficulty that me as a non-black viewer of our recent American History can be applied to even more recent history, like the 80s, or even to the present.
So what do section.80 babies, who are now adults understanding their history do? They fight back, with HEART, HONOR, and RESPECT.
But what if those same systems and environments exist today? What if people still go out and shoot and kill people because of their skin color? What if the evils take different forms in each new era? What then? The answer for Kendrick Lamar is, you turn to God, and search for an eternal answer, because only He can quench our thirst.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next: The Lamar Legacy Pt. 2: Good Kid, M.A.A.D City an Autobiography
HiiiPower - Kendrick Lamar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xRerLLcJvY
In LA, there was a rise in prostitution, and also throughout the 80s many murders of women who were sex workers.
In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan overwhelmingly beat Jimmy Carter in the presidential elections, becoming the nations next president. Before Mr. Carter had left his post, he had just signed the Mental Health Systems Act, which was designed to support those with chronic mental illness, via mental health services and to work towards preventing mental illness.
Several months after Reagan was sworn in, the Mental Health Systems act was done away with, before any funding for it was sent out. Without the Mental Health Systems act, and several other mental health funding projects ending, places like Compton took some pretty big hits. Crack flooded the section 8 streets.
Kendrick Lamar Duckworth was born in June 17, 1987 in Compton California, and this is the environment he was a product of. Section 80.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the next three blogs I will be presenting to you a theory that I have. The idea is this: Lamar's last three albums are very intentionally connected. They have a point, and together they paint a picture for us as listeners.
There are three subjects that each album seems to adopt. Them, me and us, Section.80, Good Kid MAAD City, and to Pimp a Butterfly, respectively.
Lamar's first debut studio album, Section.80, follows the life of two Los Angeles dwellers in the 80's, Keisha and Tammy ("Keisha, Tammy come up front"). Although not every song is about these two ladies, Lamar paints a picture of what it was like to live in LA in the 80s and the album is takes place in this setting.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are many things that I could say about this album, but I'm choosing to not go into each song in depth (I will do this more with GKMC), but I think there are some key things that this album teaches us about Kendrick, and the legacy that I believe he will be leaving with his music.
1. It is evident in his first studio album that his music isn't simply about him. In the case of section.80, the whole album is about black people living in the 80s and what life was like for them. This album embodies the "them" subject of his project. (Listen to Tammy's song and Keisha's Song)
2. In my opinion, the most important song and verse in Kendrick's career thus far is in this album. In a single verse, Kendrick describes what he will be doing through music and gives us an idea of how to make sense of it. In the song, "Ab-Soul's Outro", Lamar says this:
"See a lot of y'all don't understand Kendrick Lamar
Because you wonder how I could talk about money, hoes, clothes
God and history all in the same sentence
You know what all the things have in common
Only half of the truth, if you tell it
See I've spent twenty three years on the earth searching for answers' til one day I realized I had to come up with my own
I'm not on the outside looking in, I'm not on the inside looking out I'm in the dead fucking center, looking around"
Because you wonder how I could talk about money, hoes, clothes
God and history all in the same sentence
You know what all the things have in common
Only half of the truth, if you tell it
See I've spent twenty three years on the earth searching for answers' til one day I realized I had to come up with my own
I'm not on the outside looking in, I'm not on the inside looking out I'm in the dead fucking center, looking around"
This is an extremely important line. This is the lens that one must understand and have when listening to any Kendrick Lamar. He isn't a commentator observing from the outside, but he's also not a self aware rapper talking to the "outside", he is a part of the community and struggles he talks about, looking around and caring for the people in it with him.
3. Although this album isn't directly about Kendrick, what this album is doing is setting the stage for his next album, which tells us his story. But like most stories, context is important. Section.80 is the context for this 3 part (for now) story. It describes the people, laws, politics, social structures, struggles and difficulties of black people in LA, where Kendrick is born. What kind of world was Kendrick entering? Section.80.
4. My favorite song on the album, HiiiPower reveals to us a movement that Lamar wants to start. The movement is symbolized by putting 3 fingers up ("Everybody put three fingers in the air"), each finger (and "i") is supposed to stand for heart, honor and respect. The Hiiipower movement is designed to combat the systems in place (some man made, and some a byproduct of mans evil intentions). Lamar places a lot of value in Martin Luther King Jr ("Visions of Martin Luther staring at me"). He believes that change will not come through violence and hatred, rather heart, honor and respect will be the motivating forces in this movement.
5. Kendrick Lamar is employing something known as Critical Race Theory in this album (as well in his other albums). Critical Race Theory is a study of society and culture and how race, systems, power and politics intersect (look it up).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The modern French philosopher Michel Foucault dives into this idea of power/knowledge and how the two are interconnected. In his writing, Foucault explains how constructions of power in our specific contexts, "reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives" (Foucault 1980). There is a very scary thing that Foucault is describing, and it is this: As humans, it is close to impossible for us to truly understand others' experiences in a different time and culture, because the power/knowledge structures that existed for them, may not exist in the same way for us, and because of that, we can't gain a complete sense of why people do what they do. This leaves me with a sense of despair and hopelessness, but I believe that it is through this realization, that we can begin to enter into people's pains and understand motives and experiences beyond us. Kendrick Lamar understands this I believe, and he wants us to enter into this place with him.
One of the last lines in the album is this:
"Cause we been off them slave ships, got our own pyramids, write our own hieroglyphs."
A sad and terrible realization that Lamar is expressing, is how black people in America, because they are a people group brought to this country as slaves, have only begun to build and make their own identity and future in recent history. It's time for African Americans to write their own future, and not have it written for them by white supremacists.
As a 24 year old living in 21st century America, there is actually no way for me to even BEGIN to fully comprehend, imagine, or truly understand the narrative of a boat coming to this country, filled with "neegro" slaves. That for hundreds of years, a group of people, who were stolen from their homeland, were forced to come to a new place, work till they could work no more, and were often beaten or killed. I can't even comprehend a reality, one that existed ONLY some 70 years ago, where people were shot, raped, lynched, SIMPLY because of the color of their skin. But these things happened, and I have to find a way to enter into that reality and that pain and to understand that still to this day we are seeing the remnants of this atrocity, and that we are far from being done with racial issues, Lamar understands this. This difficulty that me as a non-black viewer of our recent American History can be applied to even more recent history, like the 80s, or even to the present.
So what do section.80 babies, who are now adults understanding their history do? They fight back, with HEART, HONOR, and RESPECT.
But what if those same systems and environments exist today? What if people still go out and shoot and kill people because of their skin color? What if the evils take different forms in each new era? What then? The answer for Kendrick Lamar is, you turn to God, and search for an eternal answer, because only He can quench our thirst.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next: The Lamar Legacy Pt. 2: Good Kid, M.A.A.D City an Autobiography
HiiiPower - Kendrick Lamar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xRerLLcJvY
Great stuff. Looking forward to the rest of the series.
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