Photo by Jessica Lehrman
During the BET Awards, Kendrick Lamar performed his To Pimp a Butterfly track “Alright” while standing on a vandalized police car. This was not to the liking of the pundits on Fox News, who accused Lamar of inciting violence. Geraldo Rivera, in particular, called hip-hop more damaging to black people than racism. (Okay!)
Today, in an interview with TMZ, Lamar responded.
“How can you take a song that’s about hope and turn it into hatred?,” he asked. “The message, the overall message, is we gonna be all right. It’s not the message, we gonna kill people.”
“This is our music,” he later added. “This is us expressing ourselves. Rather [than] going out here and doing the murders myself, I want to express myself in a positive light the same way other artists are doing. Not going out in the streets, go in the booth and talking about the situation and hoping these kids can find some type of influence on it in a positive manner. Coming from these streets and coming from these neighborhoods, we’re taking our talents and putting ’em inside the studio.”
Watch the full interview:
Watch the “Alright” video:
Watch Pitchfork.tv’s feature on Kendrick:
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