The 3 things ‘Damn’ taught me as I left University

Kendrick Lamar’s last four albums’s have all received rave reviews and, despite being a relative newcomer for the accolade, many Hip-Hop gurus consider him one of the greatest rappers of all time.
It’s a mixture between his atmospheric, woven story telling and some of the hardest beats of our generation which makes him someone you can listen to on a good or bad day. Damn dropped when I was finishing university, with over 15,000 words of dissertation material and essays to write as I rounded up what was an unexciting third year, to what was an unexciting university experience. His album eased me through some laborious days of sitting around and just typing words. Here are three ways his album aided the boring and critical times of my 2017.
1 The album is eminently listenable as it explores fundamental feelings and human foibles such as ‘Fear’ and ‘Pride’. In a sense it is a much easier narrative and project to follow along with than his other work. Whereas ‘To Pimp A Butterfly’ was heralded as groundbreaking in it’s tone and condemnations of modern American racism, at times it was highley experimental with influences of Jazz and old soul music. Damn is a lot more stripped back, and ‘simplistic’ (relative to his earlier material). For a student, in his final days, in need of focus, an album like Damn offered a story, a range of tones and beats without being a mountain of a listening experience.
2 This point relates to the first one, in regard to how the album boils down the human experience to chapter headings like ‘Love’ and ‘Loyalty’. Kendrick is trying to micro examine the feelings he is experiencing as a multi millionaire rapper who has ‘made it’. It shows that a meteoric rise in stature and public perception of his work, does not necessarily correlate to how he feels internally. He constantly refers to not going “back to broke” in ‘Element’ and in ‘Fear’ he describes the lawsuit Rihanna filed against her accountant who scammed her out of millions of dollars in 2007:
What is an advisor somebody that’s holdin’ my checks?
Just to fuck me over and put my finances in debt?
I read a case about Rihanna’s accountant and wondered
How did the bad girl feel when she looked at them numbers?
The type of shit’ll make me flip out
And just kill somethin’, drill somethin’

Kendrick is concerned with who is watching his back: and who is “praying for me?” (‘Feel’). It’s a never ceasing quest to define who you are and who you can trust. Kendrick is a man who could hire the best security, lawyers and financiers to help him as he gets richer and more acclaimed, yet he feels incomplete and insecure. This showed me that as the edgy cliff face of adult life approached, there isn’t a sudden cool comfort from the insecurities of intense revision and essay writing naturally bring. If you are concerned and care about your work, performance, social life, and growth as a young adult throughout uni, a piece of paper and graduation won’t make that suddenly change. There isn’t a stepping off point emotionally, and Kendrick showed me that. Kung-Fu Kenny is arguably the greatest rapper of all time at the age of 30, and he is still nervous about the climb, and the descent. University students should be too.
3Large scale artistic projects and natural talent. Kendrick drops amazing albums nearly once every 18 months since his Section 80 release and he features on a massive amount of other rappers work, Travis Scott, Flying Lotus and Kanye West are key examples of his extensive collaborations. He is versatile, and not afraid to work hard and express his talent as much as possible. As someone who balanced something of a career and university at the same time, since my second year, the biggest debate in my mind was whether to stay true to academia and hope my pride in getting a good grade would land me closer to my goals. Or to take a hit on my academic life, and split my time (often conflictingly) between making videos whilst writing about film theory. The second option was much harder as I felt like a ‘Jack of all trades and master of none’, I sometimes felt I was sabotaging an academic footing for money, or just some cool shoots in the short term. Those where my fears for some time, but in retrospect, focusing on my craft, and aiming for larger creative visions paid off. Kendrick always takes risks and they nearly always work. How can a rapper put U2 in a chorus of a rap song and no one make a fuss? Kendrick aims large and executes against it. Coming out of university into the potentiality of unemployment, lack of career direction and life generally stalling was the threat of just focusing on university.
Wanting to do more, however precariously, as I listened to ‘Damn’ during the spring months of 2017 in London, got me a degree, some sanity during the early hours, and a focus to take the next step.
LawrenceBury@live.co.uk
IG: Lawrence_Bury