Wesley’s Theory – L. O. Evans

As the first track on the album, “Wesley’s Theory”¹ has plenty of heavy lifting to do, yet it can’t be overstated just how brilliantly left-field this song is in terms of both breaking our expectations and establishing our framework for understanding the rest of the album.

Introducing a hip hop classic

Most classic hip hop albums — particularly those from the Golden Age — feature skits and record samples. In fact, it’s part of the genre’s unwritten rules of conduct that any album that aspires to the status of a hip hop classic usually begin with one or the other or both. Some memorably iconic examples include the Shaw Brothers film sample that kicks off Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), the huffy professor asking Kanye West to give a valedictorian speech on The College Dropout, and the Bizarro ASMR of Snoop Dogg receiving a back rub in the bath at the beginning of Doggystyle. But it’s easy to forget that even a straight-ahead rap album like Nas’s Illmatic begins with the low rattle of the New York Subway, a clip from the 1982 hip hop film Wild Style, and a trebly snippet of the rapper’s iconic debut verse on Main Source’s “Live at the Barbeque“.

Arguably, Nas’s opening is one of the few that has stood the test of time since he didn’t treat it as an opportunity to quote his favourite films or write sub-par sketch comedy. Instead, through the magic of intellectual montage, the opening to Illmatic establishes all the key info we need to know about Nas: this is where he comes from, this is where he’s been, and this is where he’s going. Like Nas, Kendrick Lamar understands that skits and samples can be used as essential narrative units rather than superfluous ornaments. On Section.80, he began braiding short skits throughout his albums that act as elliptical scenes from a larger narrative. In doing this, he’s found a way to continue the tradition of using skits and samples while avoiding the diminishing returns of toilet humour and scenes of hood violence. Plus it gives him some of those traditional Rolling Stone-reader bona fides too, since offsetting some of the narrative structure onto spoken word skits allows him to avoid the indulgent theatrical flourishes that have plagued all good concept albums since the prog rock era.

So it’s natural that anybody listening to To Pimp a Butterfly for the first time might expect this album might open like its ancestors and predecessors by providing a skit that establishes the first thread of an ongoing narrative. And while Lamar will eventually elevate his use of skits to a whole new level across this album, that’s not how things begin here at all. Instead, we hear a needle drop, followed by soft record noise and a soul sample emerging from the lower frequencies like some forgotten buried treasure. This is familiar enough territory for a hip hop album: sampling has been an integral part of the genre from the jump, so an oldies song like this signifies ancestral authenticity, as if we’re about to listen to something with the mid-90s East Coast boom-bap sound.

The real twist comes when the record begins to skip on the word “star”.² Suddenly, out of nowhere, we hear an unfamiliar voice call out “Hit Me!” — James Brown’s call to action on songs like “Get on the Good Foot” and “I Got a Bag of My Own”— and we’re instantly spaghettified into the cosmos, with Flying Lotus‘s synths and electric pianos pinging about inside the reverberated space while Thundercat‘s bass lets out liquid, squelching sounds. It’s like walking around a party while nursing a glass of wine, only to stumble across a room where everyone’s doing hard drugs.

Flying Lotus’s prototypes

A year before the release of To Pimp a Butterfly, FlyLo and Lamar collaborated for the first time on the song “Never Catch Me”. At the time, it seemed like an unparalleled moment of creative synergy, with Lamar rapping at breakneck speed over a beat that opens with three different drum samples falling in and out of sync like relay runners before Thundercat breaks in with a restless, improvised bassline. And the song doesn’t settle, either, switching up halfway through into a footwork beat that then morphs into jazz drumming, leading to a middle section where everything fizzles out, only to recombine for a frenetic six-string bass solo, before finally ending with a coda where a lone synth melody is embraced by a brassy synth pad descends over everything like the end to a bad acid trip.

It is, quite frankly, insane and totally nonpareil. The only useful points of comparison are Flying Lotus’s own Cosmogramma — which was equally frenetic, omnivorous and boundary-breaking — and Mac Miller’s “S.D.S.”, which was the only other time FlyLo collaborated with a rapper at that point. So it’s interesting to note that the beat for “Wesley’s Theory” originally belonged to Mac Miller too; he rapped over a demo of Flying Lotus and Flippa’s original production on his unreleased song “Cocaine Is…”:

It’s worth exploring the differences between the songs to understand what Lamar and his team brought to the table. “Cocaine Is…” lumbers along at 98 BPM, while “Wesley’s Theory” has been sped up to a nimble 114 BPM. Most producers would just do this with the tempo controls in Ableton or Logic or whatever digital audio workstation (DAW) they’re using, allowing all the instruments to remain locked into the same key without any transposition. But FlyLo appears to have actually just used old-fashioned Alvin and the Chipmunks-style vari-speed to increase the tempo for “Wesley’s Theory”, which gives it this kind of nervy overclocked energy by pushing it 3 semitones higher. While a high-flown critic might assume that FlyLo is paying homage to other artists who have used this vari-speed trick such as Prince (on his Camille songs) and Stevie Wonder (on “Maybe Your Baby” and “Living for the City”), it could just as likely be the case that he made a pragmatic choice if the original stems from “Cocaine Is…” were audio files rather than MIDI notes, since increasing the tempo using vari-speed produces the cleanest sound with the fewest artifacts leftover after you’ve processed the audio.

Harmony and tension

The change in tempo is such a noticeable contribution since so many of the core elements are shared by both “Wesley’s Theory” and “Cocaine Is…”. For example, they are both based around the same ambiguous harmonic structure, where a low pure-toned synth bass (possibly from a Roland TR-808) ascends in minims using the first four notes of the F# Phrygian Dominant scale (F#→G#→A#→B) while the notes from a Rhodes electric piano fall like warm raindrops in broken chords with two bars of Bmin¹³ and two of Emin⁶.

Here’s a simplified eight-bar arrangement of how it sounds with an enharmonic option for exploring the bassline:

While the bassline invites us to think in terms of modal harmony, the chords encourage a functional interpretation. Modally, the bassline starts on F#, so the first chord voicing could be interpreted as F#^{sus4(b6, b9)} (voiced 7–1–4–5–b6–1–b9), followed by F#^sus4(b9) (voiced 4–b9–5). But breaking down the voicings like this means they both lack a third — and while having one chord without a third is acceptable, if all your chords lack a third, you’re probably thinking in the wrong key.

By comparison, a tonal analysis of the harmony places us in the key of B minor, with the bassline drawing on the B harmonic minor scale. The chords begin on the i (Bmin¹³) and move to the iv (Emin⁶), but the bassline begins on the dominant F# and ends on the tonic of B. While the bassline outlines a perfect cadence, the chords do the opposite, creating a tension that never resolves but simply loops over and over again, and this is one of the key factors that contributes to the song’s oddly unsettling mood, where the lyrical speaker of Kendrick is throwing himself into hedonism while clearly being dragged towards an afterlife in hell.

For this reason, it makes an odd kind of sense to interpret “Wesley’s Theory” through the lens of both modal and functional harmonic analysis, since the two centres of tonal gravity are kind of like the way that people always think of heaven and hell as polar realms above and below the Earth, and the album presents itself as an exploration of what happens when a successful artist finds himself torn between these two poles.

Staying in the pocket

FlyLo also carries over the steady groove of the drum beat from “Cocaine Is…” while adding some fills that aren’t there in the original song. There’s no drummer listed in the liner notes, so I spent some time debating whether or not they’re played live, since there’s a few details that it can be hard to program unless you’re used to doing high-level drum replacement — which, to be fair, is increasingly common in modern records, but is also kind of anathema to FlyLo’s usual approach where he avoids quantization by blending samples with programming. For example, the quavers on the hi-hat are accented with the shank/tip method, which adds some funk to the groove by giving it some dynamic heft on the downbeats; this is a trick that relies on you either having a real hi-hat with a range of timbres or a sample set (such as Toontrack’s Superior Drummer) that can approximate the real thing. Similarly, the fills and ghost notes feature the kind of dynamics and micro timing that come with playing real drums, such as most drummers will hit each drum just a bit quieter and less accurately with their weaker hand. While a producer can “humanise” these elements in a DAW, it’s a different kind of humanisation to the J Dilla-influenced drunken rhythms that FlyLo usually uses.

So my initial assumption was that Flying Lotus might have played them himself, since he does acknowledge that he has a drum set in his studio in this interview with Ableton. However, something sounded so distinctly familiar about the drums that I continued digging. It’s the kind of subtle yet solid playing that you can hear on hundreds of black American throughout the 60s and 70s. And then it hit me: it’s the drum track from Funkadelic’s “(Not Just) Knee Deep” — a song famously sampled by Prince Paul on De La Soul‘s “Me Myself and I“. And the drummer is someone who isn’t actually known for their drumming at all: it’s Bootsy Collins, the legendary bassist for the iconic iterations of James Brown’s J.B.’s and George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic (along with having an amazing solo career of his own). Bootsy’s influence is obviously all over Thundercat’s bass playing on “Wesley’s Theory” — more on this later — but his drumming on “(Not Just) Knee Deep” is less easy to identify. Despite this, you don’t even need to listen to all 15 minutes and 21 seconds of the song to catch it’s influence on “Wesley’s Theory”; Bootsy plays all the beats and fills that Flying Lotus uses in the first 3 minutes. The influence is even clearer when you realise that the songs are only a whisker away from each other in key and tempo: while “(Not Just) Knee Deep” clips along at 115 BPM in A minor, “Wesley’s Theory” is only one step behind it at 114 BPM in B minor.

In fact, if we compare both tracks side-by-side, it’s hard to deny that FlyLo probably created the drums on “Wesley’s Theory” by chopping up samples of the original stems and layering other single-hit drum samples on top to fill out the kick drum and snare. There are prominent handclaps over the top of the Funkadelic song, but the underlying drumming is the same. Have a listen below to the two main drum beats, along with all the fills, played one-after-the-other:

However, this is just my theory — and the problem with asserting it at all is that there might be a good reason, in terms of sample clearance, for FlyLo not to show his hand. Like most sample-based artists, he’s often secretive about where his samples come from, and that’s only right; as the musician Blake Robin (a.k.a. Luxxury) seems to be arguing in his forthcoming book How to “Steal” Music, the laws around copyrighting songs are shady as fuck, so it makes sense for artists who rely on samples to operate in the shadows. Plus there’s the added issue that while the estates of George Clinton and Philippé Wynne would get the songwriter royalties (based on this data from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), Bootsy’s the one who deserves the money. It’s his drumming, after all. So even writing this down is a bit of an ethical quandary for me, and I can only hope — based on the prevalence of P-Funk samples in hip hop — that this doesn’t cause some intellectual property lawyer to become tumescent with glee.

A canyon of synths

Regarldess, the real jewel in FlyLo’s contributions isn’t a sample anyway; it’s the cavernous spelunking that he creates with all his synthesizers on the song. Here’s an example of where these sounds are at their most prominent in the second chorus, taken from my recreation of it in Logic:

There’s one repeating 8-bar phrase of ascending and descending plinks slathered in so much echo, reverb and pitch-shifting that each note sounds like a needle trying to prick holes in the heavens. Meanwhile, an asymmetrical squiggle of falling notes, trebly burbles, and whistling electric piano tones scatter themselves along the audio spectrum like stones dropped down a canyon. Beneath this, a synth patch that’s halfway in timbre between flutes and brass occasionally doubles the Rhodes piano line. It all somehow creates the sense that Kendrick is about to fall while flying too close to the sun; like Wesley Snipes, he’ll eventually be struck down by institutional forces like the police and prisons (which The Wire creator David Simon has pointed out are the postmodern equivalent of Olympian gods) — an idea that is underscored by the doppler effect of a car siren that takes us from the end of the first verse into the refrain .

One final detail present in the original Flying Lotus track that gets repurposed in an interesting way is the high-pitched portamento saw wave. It turns up three times: once before the refrain of “We should never gave you niggas money”, once before the voicemail from Dr. Dre, and once before the bridge with George Clinton. In each case, it’s starting G6 note pierces through the canyon of sound like a laser beam, adding to the song’s tense atmosphere.

The sound is a close cousin of the G-funk whistle (which appears on songs like “Ain’t Nothing But a G Thang” and was famously employed by Michael Hunter in his theme song for the West Coast pastiche of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas), and its appearance this early on the album is one of the many reminders that while Kendrick aspires to live the lifestyle of legendary West Coast figures like Eazy-E or Tupac, he needs to be ready for the dangers that lie on the other side of it.

Other subtle touches

Of course, Flying Lotus isn’t the only producer on the song; also listed are Flippa, Sounwave and Thundercat. If I had to guess what each person’s contribution would be to the song, I would assume that Thundercat gets a credit for his bassline and vocal arrangements while Flippa and Sounwave added the horns and 808 handclaps. The trumpet and alto sax, in particular, are a subtle yet highly effective addition: there’s a moment just before the first refrain (also repeated before George Clinton’s bridge) where they blare out a fortissimo F#5 chord for two bars, rising up to a G5 chord for another two, creating a tension over the looping bassline and electric piano that — as with most tension in this song — doesn’t get resolved but simply abandoned.

N.B. Since trumpet and alto sax are transposing instruments — in B-flat and E-flat respectively — I’ve provided the dots for the horn section in both concert pitch B minor and transposed to their relative keys.

Similarly, the rhythmic tension created as the beat drops out and Lamar raps in the persona of Lucy (i.e. Lucifer, the devil) in the second verse is added to by a bar-long crescendo where the trumpet plays a high A-natural against an A# in the 808 bass, creating a dissonance between the harmonic and natural minor keys that is resolved when they make a James Brown-style stab on the tonic in the first beat of the next bar as the drums, bass guitar and backing vocals kick back in.

Carving out space

We can also assume that either Lamar, FlyLo, Flippa, Sounwave or Butterfly engineer Derek Ali (a. k. a. MixedByAli) are to thank for the skilful moments where the beat cuts out. These moments help to punctuate the song’s sections; for example, Josef Leimberg’s spoken word intro ends with him saying the album’s title while everything else cuts out apart from a slide by Thundercat that goes up and down the length of his bass guitar. Similarly, the question of “Destroyed, but what for?” at the end of the second chorus is punctuated by the backing dropping out before the voicemail tone sounds in the last quaver of the bar. As the persona of Lucy announces “I’ll Wesley Snipe your ass before 35”, the backing cuts out a beat early exactly on “I’ll” to emphasise the song’s message that the house always wins when it comes to thinking you can game the system as a black man in America. Finally, the most fun one happens when George Clinton sings “Look both ways before you cross my mind”, with the vocals crossing over the stereo spectrum from the left to the right ear. This is an allusion to Clinton’s own song “Paradigm“, recorded with the P-Funk All Stars and Prince, making yet another link between Kendrick Lamar as the inheritor of a black American music traditions that stretches back to artists like Prince and P-Funk.

Ali is also responsible for the careful balance of elements in the song’s mix. In an interview with Sound on Sound, he admits that he became a bit obsessive about the mix for “Wesley’s Theory” and spent at least a week on it, with three 18-hour days on the drums alone. While FlyLo at his most maximalist (such as on Cosmogramma) favours squashed compression on his albums, creating unexpected moments where a new instrument will suddenly occlude the others in the mix, Ali provides a bit more breathing space on “Wesley’s Theory” by ensuring that each group of instruments has its place in the frequency spectrum.Don’t get me wrong — as the waveforms below show, it’s still heavily compressed in the way that most modern recordings have to be as a result of the loudness wars.

But it’s impressive that Ali manages to make the two different basslines snake around each other in the low and mid-range frequencies (around 50-80hz and 170-500hz respectively) without ever getting in each other’s way while carving out a space for the synths in all the frequencies the sit north of there. By doing this, he elevates Thundercat’s bass to the status of another voice, occupying a similar space to Kendrick’s rough-hewed tone with its honk and growl.

[Infographic of frequencies in song]

Thundercat’s filtered funk

And what a bassline it is. Throughout the whole song, Thundercat squelches out contrapuntal melodies that feel like they’re in conversation with Lamar’s own words. His midrangey tone on this song is clearly indebted to the aforementioned Bootsy Collins, who started playing through an auto-wah envelope filter during his time with P-Funk.³ The auto-wah provides its distinct quack and growl by quickly shifting the timbre from low and foggy to thin and reedy — and back again —based on how loudly the bassist plays each note.

[A/B comparison of bassline]

But there’s another subtle homage in Thundercat’s bassline too: he occasionally slips in ascending or descending staccato quavers in a stepwise sequence, just like Bernie Worrell does in his iconic Minimoog bass synth improvisations on “Flash Light” — an element that was present in Flying Lotus’s own bass synth line on “Cocaine Is…”, suggesting that it’s one of the song’s many conscious homages.

[Missing image of stepwise sequences in Flash Light vs. Wesley’s Theory]

Voices in dialogue

FlyLo acknowledged that Lamar’s interest in using the beat was directly connected to Clinton’s music: in the first season of Alex Pappademas’s excellent podcast The Big Hit Show, which explores the process of making and releasing To Pimp a Butterfly, FlyLo says, “I started playing him a lot of the funk inspired stuff from George Clinton. […] The next day he was like, ‘Yo, I got this crazy concept.’ And he was super hype about it.”

So it should come as no surprise when we suddenly hear Clinton himself on the song’s bridge. If anything, it is a surprise to hear how raspy his voice has become (likely from years of drug use) since the song opens with a spoken-word introduction featuring a bass voice that sounds like the Clinton of the 1970s, who would intone absurd statements in an authoritative voice at the start of songs like “Red Hot Momma” and “Maggot Brain”.⁴ However, that first voice actually belongs to trumpeter Josef Leimberg. On The Big Hit Show, Leimberg explains that, as a stalwart of the same L.A. jazz scene that birthed Thundercat and Lamar’s frequent collaborator Terrace Martin, he was called in to play trumpet on the album, but he realised that he had left it at another studio, so he told the other musicians he’d come back the following day: “That’s when Kendrick turned around and said, ‘I need that voice’.”

All of these voices together create a polyphonic effect in the literary sense, placing the wisdom of elders like Leimberg and Clinton in dialogue with the maturing mindsets of younger voices like Lamar and Thundercat. Yet Lamar also crafts a dialogue between his own personas in the form of Kendrick and Lucy here, playing out the battle between his desires and temptations. And this essentially prepares us for all the dynamics within the rest of the album, where we will see Kendrick continually coming into conflict with these other voices on his road to self-actualisation as an artist. Overall, then, “Wesley’s Theory” kicks down the door of our expectations, preparing us for an album that will clearly pay homage to the 20th century of black American music, while also crafting something that is inarguably 21st century in its approach.

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SAMPLE
“Every Nigger is a Star” (1973) by Boris Gardiner

Every nigga is a star⁵This repeated declarative establishes the album’s focus on the conflicts of being a black celebrity. Gardiner’s song (which arguably interpolates Sly and the Family Stone's "Everybody is a Star", making this intro a moment of deep intertextuality) came out of the black power movement and aims to counteract the historical racism shown towards black people by dignifying them by reappropriating the slur “nigger”. The repetition of the sample highlights the tension in Gardiner’s mission: Is it ever possible to fully reverse the word’s connotations? By extension, is it possible to reverse the effects of historic racism and achieve a sense of self-worth that is equal to that of white privilege? [N.B. While the word is spelled “nigger” in the song’s official title, I opted for the reappropriated spelling of “nigga” since Boris Gardiner’s pronunciation lacks the hard rhotic R, and the inclusive message at the heart of the song suggests he’d probably spell it without the hard R if it came out today.]
Every nigga is a star
Every nigga is a star
Every nigga is a star
Every nigga is a star
Who will deny that you and I and every nigga is a star?⁶This final question, sampled from Gardiner’s song, is left unanswered as the song skips on the word “star”. The use of the sample reframes the rhetorical question as an open interrogative, implying that the album will explore the mindsets that deny black people this sense of dignity. (N.B. This kind of reframing is a common feature of sampling, which has been a defining feature of hip hop music since its inception.)

INTRO
Josef Leimberg (spoken)

Hit me!⁷This imperative was commonly said by the funk musician James Brown to his horn section. In the 1970s, Brown’s band were led by trombonist Fred Wesley; Wesley went on to play for Parliament-Funkadelic, whose bandleader, George Clinton, makes a cameo later in the song. These allusions to 1970s funk draw a connection between Lamar’s experiences as a black American celebrity in the 2010s and the black celebrities of that era, many of whom were expected to navigate the divide between being famous with white audiences while being viewed as important figureheads by the burgeoning black power movement. It is also an allusion to Public Enemy, a political hip hop group who explored social issues affecting black Americans on their album Fear of a Black Planet (where one of the songs samples the same exhortation from James Brown).”
When the four corners of this cocoon collide
You’ll slip through the cracks hoping that you’ll survive
Gather your wit, take a deep look inside
Are you really who they idolize?
To Pimp a Butterfly⁸The intentionally mixed metaphor of this opening line is the first instance of the album’s overall conceit, which Lamar outlines in his poem on the album’s final song, “Mortal Man”: the caterpillar represents our base desire “to eat or consume everything” in order to survive, while the butterfly represents our “talent […] thoughtfulness and […] beauty”; meanwhile, “the cocoon which institutionalizes him” is the lifestyle and culture that the caterpillar grows up in. By mixing metaphors and claiming that this “cocoon” has “four corners” which “collide” and form “cracks”, Lamar implies that what initially appears suffocating can eventually escaped in some way. The reference to “four corners” alludes to street corners, locations where dealers people usually sell heroin and crack in impoverished neighbourhoods — thereby suggesting that the ghetto is just as much a mindset or “cocoon” as it is a physical space. It is also an apocalyptic image, alluding to biblical verses such as Revelation 7:1, where four angels stand on four corners of the earth before the Second Coming of Christ. (Lamar will go on to explore his role as a Messianic figure in the rest of the album.) This apocalyptic imagery is echoed in the mock-interview with 2Pac in “Mortal Man”, where Pac says “the ground is gonna open up and swallow the evil”. In a similar way, the idiom of slipping “through the cracks” is repurposed here, alluding to the great crack in the Earth mentioned in apocalyptic Biblical passages such as Isaiah 24:20. Through this allusion, Lamar implies that rejecting his celebrity status might only lead to failure, so he will need to “gather [his] wit” so that he can “pimp a butterfly” and become a self-actualised figurehead for black Americans.

CHORUS
Kendrick Lamar

At first, I did love you
But now I just wanna fuck
Late nights thinking of you
Until I get my nut⁹In the first chorus, Lamar establishes one of his conceits for this song: hip hop is a woman who he mistreats. This conceit is an allusion to the hip hop classic “I Used to Love H.E.R.” by Common, which paints hip hop as a woman who has become less respectable over time, forming an analogy for how the commercialisation of hip hop in the 1990s led to gangsta rap becoming the dominant style. While Common’s song is filtered through an uncomfortably patriarchal lens, judging hip hop for her promiscuity, Lamar subverts this by making himself into the sex-obsessed individual who is only focused on the short-term gratification of commercial success, reinforced in the harsh monosyllabic slap of consonants in the words “fuck” and “nut”.
Tossed and turned, lesson learned
You was my first girlfriend
Bridges burned, all across the board
Destroyed, but what for?¹⁰While the relationship is initially presented in the present tense, Lamar shifts to the past tense for the second half, making it seem as if he has already given up. He draws on weasel wording and cliches — for example, saying “bridges burned” without explaining who burned the bridge — a tactic often used by a guilty person to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. Similarly, the usual meaning of tossing and turning is subverted into a sexual metaphor where Lamar deals with his stress and anxiety through sex: hip hop is either metaphorically “tossed” over, or he is “tossed” off (slang for masturbation), and she is “turned” on, then “turned” out of his house without any sense of romance. However, even though Lamar is implying that he has sold out and just wants to “fuck”, the playful density of consonance and assonance in this section reinforces the idea that he still feels some deeper love towards hip hop. We hear /t/, /l/, /b/ and /ae/ phonemes appearing across phrases such as “tossed and turned” and “bridges burned”, and he slants his rhymes, going from “turned”, and “learned” to “first” and “girl”, while somehow making the vowel sound in the middle of “destroyed” rhyme with “board” and “for”.

1^st VERSE
Kendrick Lamar

When I get signed, homie, I’ma act a fool
Hit the dance floor, strobe lights in the room¹¹Lamar adopts a nasally, juvenile tone of voice here and satirises the aspirations of naïve rappers by adopting the persona of a sell-out who only imagines the material things that he will gain from signing his contract.
Snatch your little secretary bitch for the homies¹²The rapper exaggerates the misogyny and promiscuity of this sell-out persona, with the implicit sexual violence reinforced by the plosive consonance on the words “snatch” and “bitch”. The mention of “homies” in a sexual context alludes to Snoop Dogg’s “Ain’¹³t No Fun (If the Homies Can’t Have None)”, an incredibly misogynistic song that appeared on his bestselling album Doggystyle, which would have been hugely popular during Lamar’s youth.
Blue-eyed devil with a fat-ass monkey¹⁴“Blue-eyed devil” is a racial epithet for white people, historically used by members of the Nation of Islam. The speaker implies that he is giving in to his temptations by seeking out a seductive white woman (“monkey” is slang for vagina), which foreshadows the coming personification of Lucifer as “Lucy”, a temptress, on “For Sale? (Interlude)”.
I’ma buy a brand new Caddy on Vogues¹⁵Cadillac cars were popular with pimps in the 1970s, became unfairly associated with black people on social welfare in the 1980s, and were intentionally marketed to black people from the 1990s onwards (see this article for more). The speaker seeks to gain social status by emphasising the same misogyny and symbols of wealth that other rappers have, without realising that these signifiers don’t provide any further social capital since they are still seen as “hood” or “ghetto” by the white establishment.
Chunk the hood up, two times,¹⁶To throw up gang signs (using your hands) in your neighbourhood. deuce-four¹⁷The speaker plans to get huge 24-inch rims on his car; however, the specific phrasing of “deuce-four” draws an ironic parallel between the shallow materialism and violence of the speaker and the deeper history of black Americans, since the 24th Infantry Regiment was a group of black American soldiers who fought in a number of wars throughout the 20th century and were colloquially known as "deuce four".
Platinum on everything, platinum on wedding ring¹⁸The speaker associates platinum with wealth since a platinum record represents a high watermark for record sales. The fact that this is then extended to a wedding ring shows that, in both cases, the speaker is more focused on the hollow symbols of wealth than the things they are supposed to signify (musical talent and love).
Married to the game and a bad bitch chose¹⁹If someone is “married to the game”, they are dedicated to a life of organised crime, so Lamar is using this as an extension of the misogyny presented elsewhere in this persona -- he is not marrying a person since he doesn’t see women as having any value; instead, he values the hood lifestyle and culture.
When I get signed, homie, I’ma buy a strap
Straight from the CIA, set it on my lap²⁰Lamar provides some allusions here that add an ironic element to the speaker’s desires: while he just plans to buy a gun, the idea that it will be bought “straight from the CIA” alludes to the agencyvs role in providing arms to terrorist groups such as the Afghan mujahideen and the Syrian opposition, which have often led to those groups later attacking U.S. armed forces. Lamar is implying that there is a correlation between legalised state violence and illegal crime. Moreover, the speaker’s plans to “set it on [his] lap” allude to the self-defence tactics used by the Black Panther Party, a Socialist organisation who sought to exploit gun laws and prevent police brutality by openly carrying loaded guns. Again, Lamar suggests that the complex past of black Americans and their fight for civil rights has been reduced to a hollow symbol, one which can be commodified and sold back to white people for profit, thereby providing short-term economic capital to individuals like himself, rather than providing solutions that will empower black people and create wealth and equality for them in the long-term.
Take a few M-16s to the hood
Pass ’em all out on the block, what’s good?²¹The M-16 is an automatic rifle; similar to the AK-47, it is used in drive-by shootings, which became the preferred method of attack for gangs in Los Angeles (where Kendrick Lamar is from) in the 1990s due to the state’s permissive gun laws and flat, open suburban spaces.
I’ma put the Compton swap meet by the White House
Republican run up, get socked out²²The Compton Fashion Center, an indoor flea market, is a landmark in West Coast hip-hop. In this context, it represents the tensions that socially mobile people experience between living in relative poverty and seeking to remain fashionable and stylish. Lamar builds on the implication that the speaker has gained economic capital without social capital; he still chooses to shop at a flea market rather than using his wealth to visit boutique stores. This then leads into the metaphor of a Republican getting “socked out” — a pun that suggests they will either learn how to be stylish like black people from Compton, or get beaten up by them. (N.B. A high majority of black Americans vote for the Democratic Party).
Hit the press with a Cuban link on my neck²³Cuban link chains are a popular form of jewellery worn by rappers, as referenced on Raekwon’s album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…
Uneducated, but I got a million-dollar check like that²⁴The national rate of high school graduation for Black teenagers is 59%, compared to 80% for their White peers and there are a number of issues around absenteeism. This is caused by a range of socio-economic factors that aren’t simply solved by becoming rich; as Wesley Snipes exemplifies, people often don’t know what to do with wealth once they gain it, since they were not educated in a way that ever expected them to be rich.

REFRAIN
Thundercat & George Clinton
with Anna Wise & Whitney Alford

We should never gave
We should never gave niggas money
Go back home, money, go back home
We should never gave
We should never gave niggas money
Go back home, money, go back home²⁵This is paraphrased from a famous sketch in Chappelle’s Show, where Charlie Murphy recounts his ridiculous encounters with Rick James at the height of the James’s fame and cocaine addiction. Dave Chappelle, playing Rick James, shouts it after being beaten up by Murphy, implying that Murphy is an embarrassing him by acting like a hoodlum. In this song, “they” is changed to “we” and the determinative phrase “you niggas” is shortened to “niggas”, suggesting that the phrase is being said by to black people by white people in positions of power, representing the racist view that black people shouldn’t become rich because they won’t be able to spend the money wisely. This argument gains an extra layer of irony since, in both the song and the sketch, it is said by a rich and successful black person, implying that fame and money can separate black people from their own community and cause them to create an artificial distinction between themselves and “niggas”. Moreover, it could be seen as an ironic allusion to the history of slavery, since black people weren’t given money in the form of reparations and the idea of going “back home” to Africa was not only impossible for many black people who were born as English-speaking citizens of the U.S., but also led to freed black Americans establishing generations of neo-colonial suffering in the country of Liberia.

Everybody get out!

CHORUS
Kendrick Lamar
with backing vocals by Thundercat & George Clinton

At first, I did love you

Love you

But now I just wanna fuck

I just wanna fuck

Late nights thinking of you

Of you

Until I get my nut

Til I get my nut

Tossed and turned, lesson learned
You was my first girlfriend

Bridges burned all across the board

Across the board

Destroyed, but what for?

BREAK
Dr. Dre (spoken)

Yo, what’s up? It’s Dre
Remember the first time you came out to the house?
You said you wanted a spot like mine
But remember, anybody can get it
The hard part is keeping it, motherfucker²⁶This fake answering machine message comes from Dr. Dre, a producer who is notable for commercializing the sound of gangsta rap and selling headphones through his company Beats by Dre. Dre has acted as a mentor to Lamar, signing him to his label and producing songs on his first album. Like Lamar, Dre is from Compton, California, and one of Lamar’s key memories is seeing Dre and 2Pac record the video for “California Love” in Compton when he was a child. His appears on this track as the ideal representation of success for a black man in hip hop -- someone who has managed to come from humble beginnings to great financial success and managed to make wise investments while still helping younger artists from similar backgrounds.

2^nd VERSE
Kendrick Lamar

What you want you? A house or a car?
Forty acres and a mule, a piano, a guitar?²⁷Lamar shifts persona here to Uncle Sam, the personification of America, representing both the financial opportunities and pitfalls presented by American capitalism. Uncle Sam’s offers represent some of the basic concerns for black Americans: “a house or a car” were common expectations for black Americans moving from the South to California in the 1950s during the Great Migration; “a piano, a guitar” represent black music, one of the key ways that black Americans have historically been able to have an income even while living under Jim Crow laws; and forty acres and a mule is a promise of land ownership that was infamously made during the American Civil War to many freed black families, before being rescinded by Andrew Johnson once he became U.S. President. The fact that Uncle Sam offers all of these options implies that they don’t hold the same deep social value for white people, and that (like the forty acres and a mule) they are merely bargaining chips.
Anything, see, my name is Uncle Sam, I’m your dog²⁸Lamar puns on the various meanings of “dog” here. The overt slang definition is “trusted friend”, but it also implies that Uncle Sam is deceptively presenting himself as someone who is fiercely loyal to him, when in reality he will attack Kendrick the moment that he views him as a threat.
Motherfucker, you can live at the mall²⁹Shopping malls became widespread in the U.S. during the post-war economic boom, representing the abundance of options available to middle-class American consumers. However, the experienced a strong decline after the Great Recession, leading to current phenomenon of abandoned dead malls. As a result, Uncle Sam’s suggestion that Kendrick can “live at the mall” reflects the fact that materialism ultimately creates an illusory world of empty signifiers, since while a mall does contain things like clothes and furniture, it can't provide the family, safety and wealth that a home provides.³⁰
I know your kind (That’s why I’m kind)³¹Lamar provides Uncle Sam with deceptively equivocating language to show how the American dream tricks well-intentioned black people — he plays on the homonymic nature of the word “kind” and the homophone of “you’re” vs. “your”, implying both that Uncle Sam is flattering Kendrick (“I know you’re [a] kind [person]”) and that he is stereotyping him (“I know your kind [of people]”).
Don’t have receipts (Oh, man, that’s fine)
Pay me later, wear those gators³²Buy now, pay later (BNPL) financing and credit card usage are common methods for poor people to be able to own expensive goods immediately while delaying payments. However, both methods can cause the consumer to rack up debt if they aren’t able to make their repayments and are charged further interest. Uncle Sam is not only encouraging Kendrick to enter into this kind of debt; he is telling him to do it for a pair of alligator shoes, a flashy luxury good and status symbol in the U.S. that is nevertheless a sign of being nouveau riche rather than old money wealth. doesn’t necessarily serve any practical value.
Cliché? Then say, “Fuck your haters”³³Uncle Sam encourages Kendrick to use a cowardly defence, arguing that people who critique you are merely “haters”, thereby ignoring the actual content of their arguments by always assuming they are making them out of insecurity.
I can see the baller in you, I can see the dollar in you³⁴Echoing his earlier equivocation around the word “kind”, Uncle Sam calls Kendrick a “baller”, suggesting both that he can see the same raw talent in Kendrick that he might see in a young basketball player, and that he can see the opportunities for financial exploitation that come with “balling” — spending money lavishly. Similarly, he claims he can see the “dollar” in Kendrick, meaning both that he can imagine ways for Kendrick to make money from his talent, and that he can see himself successfully exploiting this situation for his own financial gain.
Little white lies, but it’s no white-collar in you
But it’s whatever though because I’m still following you³⁵Lamar again highlights the difference between economic capital vs. cultural and social capital, stating that even though Kendrick has earned money from rapping, it’s not the same as being a white-collar worker since he doesn’t have the education or connections to be able to maintain a high societal status.
Because you make me live forever, baby
Count it all together, baby
Then hit the register and make me feel better, baby³⁶Uncle Sam appears throughout the modern history of the United States and the ideals that he represents are often invoked by Americans, thereby allowing him to “live forever” as a cultural figure. Since Kendrick presents Uncle Sam as the embodiment of consumerism, he implies that heedless consumerism is the very lifeblood of how modern U.S. society functions.
Your horoscope is a Gemini, two sides
So you better cop everything two times
Two coupes, two chains, two C-notes
Too much ain’t enough, both we know³⁷Kendrick Lamar was born on June 17, 1987, which makes him a Gemini — a zodiac sign that is represented through the symbol of twins. Uncle Sam takes this mystical imagery and perverts it into another consumerist pursuit, telling Kendrick to buy everything twice. The objects that Lamar are a visually alliterative chains of phrases beginning with ‹t› and ‹c›, but they become increasingly abstract — while a coupe car is an object with a specific purpose, a chain is merely a luxury good that serves no practical purpose, and a C-note ($100 bill) serves even less purpose since most shopowners will be suspicious of the possibility of the note being counterfeit. Uncle Sam encourages Kendrick to go from buying actual things to simply purchasing money itself, a meaningless gesture that gives him the appearance of being rich with increasing his wealth. This need for two of each thing also links back to the Biblical and apocalyptic imagery in the song’s opening, since Noah is told to bring two of each animal onto the ark before God floods the Earth. While Noah’s command serves a societal purpose, Uncle Sam’s commands are purely materialistic. He ends by paradoxically stating “too much ain’t enough”, homophonically twisting the need for "two" of each thing into a desire for “too much”, a hedonistic desire for excess.
Christmas, tell ’em what’s on your wish list
Get it all, you deserve it, Kendrick³⁸Uncle shifts between roles here, encouraging Kendrick to tell his parents or Santa Claus about his “wish list” before encouraging Kendrick to “get it all”, implying that Kendrick is both a child and an adult, and that these acts of consumerism are designed to fulfil a childlike — and arguably childish — desire to own many things without paying any mind to whether or not you can afford them.
And when you hit the White House, do you
But remember, you ain’t pass economics in school³⁹As with at other points in the song, Uncle Sam leads Kendrick towards his failure by simultaneously telling him he will eventually make it to “the White House”, the highest seat of power in the U.S., while also reinforcing the idea that he doesn’t have the knowledge and skills to rub shoulders with other members of the political establishment.
And everything you buy, taxes will deny
I’ll Wesley Snipe your ass before thirty-five (Yeah)⁴⁰The U.S. has a complex sales tax system since it varies from state to state, and many people are expected to file tax returns each year to account for various deductions and repayments. While this system leads to Americans paying less in taxes than people in other developed economies through various methods of tax avoidance, it can also lead to widespread tax evasion, whether through intentional or unintentional means. Lamar is suggesting that the complexity of this tax system is a way for America, as a nation, to prevent the undereducated nouveaux riches from ever gaining real power and wealth.

BRIDGE
George Clinton
with Kendrick Lamar

Yeah, looking down, it’s quite a drop

  It’s quite a drop, drop, drop

Looking good when you’re on top⁴¹George Clinton, one of the song’s two mentor figures, appears again to provide advice here. However, much like Dr. Dre, his advice doesn’t provide solutions, and he simply implies that you need to remain mindful even as you’re experiencing success.

  We’re on top together

You got a medal for us⁴²Unlike Dre, Clinton appears to taunt Kendrick, asking him if he has any measurable proof of his critical acclaim, the way a soldier would if they did something honourable during their duty. Although this question is slipped in just before a particularly dense line, its presence might link back to the fact that Lamar’s major label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d city, was snubbed at the 56th Grammy Awards for nearly every nomination in favour of The Heist by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, a less critically acclaimed hip hop group who appeared to have benefitted from the sociological privilege of being white American men being voted for by other white American men who had little interest in hip hop culture.
Leaving metaphors metaphysically in a state of euphoria⁴³This line seems to be intentionally abstract, providing the kind of “lyrical miracle” complexity-for-complexity’s-sake that Lamar otherwise studiously avoids in his songwriting. In the context of the lines immediately preceding and following it, the sentence appears to be part of Lamar’s critique of himself via George Clinton’s voice, warning Kendrick if he purely focuses on “lyrical miracle” rapping without focusing on the substance of what he is saying, he will be bound to “drop” and “slip through the cracks”.
Look both ways before you cross my mind⁴⁴The phrase “cross my mind” simply means for a thought to occur, but the warning to “look both ways” implies that these thoughts pose a danger to the thinker, like an oncoming vehicle. Again, Clinton doesn’t provide solutions; his warning is just that — a reminder to Kendrick that he needs to be careful as he tries to unknot his internal and external conflicts.

REFRAIN
Thundercat & George Clinton
with Anna Wise & Whitney Alford

We should never gave,
We should never gave niggas money,
Go back home, money, go back home.
We should never gave,
We should never gave niggas money,

Go back home, money, go back home.

Tax man coming, tax man coming
Tax man coming, tax man coming
Tax man coming, tax man coming
Tax man coming, tax man coming!⁴⁵

Footnotes

1
The title alludes to the actor Wesley Snipes, who was indicted in 2006 for tax evasion and tried to claim he was a “non-resident alien” of the U.S. By presenting this pseudo-legal defence as a “theory”, Lamar asks us to consider the socio-economic forces that lead black celebrities to struggle with fame and view themselves as outsiders to the country and culture that gave birth to them.
2
Of course, this is actually an artfully simulated record skip, done by having the producer loop the first beat of the bar. Wisely, Lamar gets us to suspend our disbelief by providing the record noise at the start of the song; as a result, we buy into the skeuomorphic ruse that we are listening to an old, scratchy record.
3
Here’s a video of Bootsy talking about why he likes the Mu-tron III pedal for creating a funky envelope filter sound.
4
It’s also worth noting that Clinton provided the introduction to the song “Can’t C Me” on 2Pac’s album All Eyez on Me, so Lamar’s use of the legendary singer on “Wesley’s Theory” is also another nod to the fact that he is both literally and figuratively in conversation with Pac throughout To Pimp a Butterfly.
5
This repeated declarative establishes the album’s focus on the conflicts of being a black celebrity. Gardiner’s song (which arguably interpolates Sly and the Family Stone’s “Everybody is a Star”, making this intro a moment of deep intertextuality) came out of the black power movement and aims to counteract the historical racism shown towards black people by dignifying them by reappropriating the slur “nigger”. The repetition of the sample highlights the tension in Gardiner’s mission: Is it ever possible to fully reverse the word’s connotations? By extension, is it possible to reverse the effects of historic racism and achieve a sense of self-worth that is equal to that of white privilege? [N.B. While the word is spelled “nigger” in the song’s official title, I opted for the reappropriated spelling of “nigga” since Boris Gardiner’s pronunciation lacks the hard rhotic R, and the inclusive message at the heart of the song suggests he’d probably spell it without the hard R if it came out today.]
6
This final question, sampled from Gardiner’s song, is left unanswered as the song skips on the word “star”. The use of the sample reframes the rhetorical question as an open interrogative, implying that the album will explore the mindsets that deny black people this sense of dignity. (N.B. This kind of reframing is a common feature of sampling, which has been a defining feature of hip hop music since its inception.)
7
This imperative was commonly said by the funk musician James Brown to his horn section. In the 1970s, Brown’s band were led by trombonist Fred Wesley; Wesley went on to play for Parliament-Funkadelic, whose bandleader, George Clinton, makes a cameo later in the song. These allusions to 1970s funk draw a connection between Lamar’s experiences as a black American celebrity in the 2010s and the black celebrities of that era, many of whom were expected to navigate the divide between being famous with white audiences while being viewed as important figureheads by the burgeoning black power movement. It is also an allusion to Public Enemy, a political hip hop group who explored social issues affecting black Americans on their album Fear of a Black Planet (where one of the songs samples the same exhortation from James Brown).”
8
The intentionally mixed metaphor of this opening line is the first instance of the album’s overall conceit, which Lamar outlines in his poem on the album’s final song, “Mortal Man”: the caterpillar represents our base desire “to eat or consume everything” in order to survive, while the butterfly represents our “talent […] thoughtfulness and […] beauty”; meanwhile, “the cocoon which institutionalizes him” is the lifestyle and culture that the caterpillar grows up in. By mixing metaphors and claiming that this “cocoon” has “four corners” which “collide” and form “cracks”, Lamar implies that what initially appears suffocating can eventually escaped in some way. The reference to “four corners” alludes to street corners, locations where dealers people usually sell heroin and crack in impoverished neighbourhoods — thereby suggesting that the ghetto is just as much a mindset or “cocoon” as it is a physical space. It is also an apocalyptic image, alluding to biblical verses such as Revelation 7:1, where four angels stand on four corners of the earth before the Second Coming of Christ. (Lamar will go on to explore his role as a Messianic figure in the rest of the album.) This apocalyptic imagery is echoed in the mock-interview with 2Pac in “Mortal Man”, where Pac says “the ground is gonna open up and swallow the evil”. In a similar way, the idiom of slipping “through the cracks” is repurposed here, alluding to the great crack in the Earth mentioned in apocalyptic Biblical passages such as Isaiah 24:20. Through this allusion, Lamar implies that rejecting his celebrity status might only lead to failure, so he will need to “gather [his] wit” so that he can “pimp a butterfly” and become a self-actualised figurehead for black Americans.
9
In the first chorus, Lamar establishes one of his conceits for this song: hip hop is a woman who he mistreats. This conceit is an allusion to the hip hop classic “I Used to Love H.E.R.” by Common, which paints hip hop as a woman who has become less respectable over time, forming an analogy for how the commercialisation of hip hop in the 1990s led to gangsta rap becoming the dominant style. While Common’s song is filtered through an uncomfortably patriarchal lens, judging hip hop for her promiscuity, Lamar subverts this by making himself into the sex-obsessed individual who is only focused on the short-term gratification of commercial success, reinforced in the harsh monosyllabic slap of consonants in the words “fuck” and “nut”.
10
While the relationship is initially presented in the present tense, Lamar shifts to the past tense for the second half, making it seem as if he has already given up. He draws on weasel wording and cliches — for example, saying “bridges burned” without explaining who burned the bridge — a tactic often used by a guilty person to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. Similarly, the usual meaning of tossing and turning is subverted into a sexual metaphor where Lamar deals with his stress and anxiety through sex: hip hop is either metaphorically “tossed” over, or he is “tossed” off (slang for masturbation), and she is “turned” on, then “turned” out of his house without any sense of romance. However, even though Lamar is implying that he has sold out and just wants to “fuck”, the playful density of consonance and assonance in this section reinforces the idea that he still feels some deeper love towards hip hop. We hear /t/, /l/, /b/ and /ae/ phonemes appearing across phrases such as “tossed and turned” and “bridges burned”, and he slants his rhymes, going from “turned”, and “learned” to “first” and “girl”, while somehow making the vowel sound in the middle of “destroyed” rhyme with “board” and “for”.
11
Lamar adopts a nasally, juvenile tone of voice here and satirises the aspirations of naïve rappers by adopting the persona of a sell-out who only imagines the material things that he will gain from signing his contract.
12
The rapper exaggerates the misogyny and promiscuity of this sell-out persona, with the implicit sexual violence reinforced by the plosive consonance on the words “snatch” and “bitch”. The mention of “homies” in a sexual context alludes to Snoop Dogg’s “Ain
13
t No Fun (If the Homies Can’t Have None)”, an incredibly misogynistic song that appeared on his bestselling album Doggystyle, which would have been hugely popular during Lamar’s youth.
14
“Blue-eyed devil” is a racial epithet for white people, historically used by members of the Nation of Islam. The speaker implies that he is giving in to his temptations by seeking out a seductive white woman (“monkey” is slang for vagina), which foreshadows the coming personification of Lucifer as “Lucy”, a temptress, on “For Sale? (Interlude)”.
15
Cadillac cars were popular with pimps in the 1970s, became unfairly associated with black people on social welfare in the 1980s, and were intentionally marketed to black people from the 1990s onwards (see this article for more). The speaker seeks to gain social status by emphasising the same misogyny and symbols of wealth that other rappers have, without realising that these signifiers don’t provide any further social capital since they are still seen as “hood” or “ghetto” by the white establishment.
16
To throw up gang signs (using your hands) in your neighbourhood.
17
The speaker plans to get huge 24-inch rims on his car; however, the specific phrasing of “deuce-four” draws an ironic parallel between the shallow materialism and violence of the speaker and the deeper history of black Americans, since the 24th Infantry Regiment was a group of black American soldiers who fought in a number of wars throughout the 20th century and were colloquially known as “deuce four”.
18
The speaker associates platinum with wealth since a platinum record represents a high watermark for record sales. The fact that this is then extended to a wedding ring shows that, in both cases, the speaker is more focused on the hollow symbols of wealth than the things they are supposed to signify (musical talent and love).
19
If someone is “married to the game”, they are dedicated to a life of organised crime, so Lamar is using this as an extension of the misogyny presented elsewhere in this persona — he is not marrying a person since he doesn’t see women as having any value; instead, he values the hood lifestyle and culture.
20
Lamar provides some allusions here that add an ironic element to the speaker’s desires: while he just plans to buy a gun, the idea that it will be bought “straight from the CIA” alludes to the agencyvs role in providing arms to terrorist groups such as the Afghan mujahideen and the Syrian opposition, which have often led to those groups later attacking U.S. armed forces. Lamar is implying that there is a correlation between legalised state violence and illegal crime. Moreover, the speaker’s plans to “set it on [his] lap” allude to the self-defence tactics used by the Black Panther Party, a Socialist organisation who sought to exploit gun laws and prevent police brutality by openly carrying loaded guns. Again, Lamar suggests that the complex past of black Americans and their fight for civil rights has been reduced to a hollow symbol, one which can be commodified and sold back to white people for profit, thereby providing short-term economic capital to individuals like himself, rather than providing solutions that will empower black people and create wealth and equality for them in the long-term.
21
The M-16 is an automatic rifle; similar to the AK-47, it is used in drive-by shootings, which became the preferred method of attack for gangs in Los Angeles (where Kendrick Lamar is from) in the 1990s due to the state’s permissive gun laws and flat, open suburban spaces.
22
The Compton Fashion Center, an indoor flea market, is a landmark in West Coast hip-hop. In this context, it represents the tensions that socially mobile people experience between living in relative poverty and seeking to remain fashionable and stylish. Lamar builds on the implication that the speaker has gained economic capital without social capital; he still chooses to shop at a flea market rather than using his wealth to visit boutique stores. This then leads into the metaphor of a Republican getting “socked out” — a pun that suggests they will either learn how to be stylish like black people from Compton, or get beaten up by them. (N.B. A high majority of black Americans vote for the Democratic Party).
23
Cuban link chains are a popular form of jewellery worn by rappers, as referenced on Raekwon’s album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…
24
The national rate of high school graduation for Black teenagers is 59%, compared to 80% for their White peers and there are a number of issues around absenteeism. This is caused by a range of socio-economic factors that aren’t simply solved by becoming rich; as Wesley Snipes exemplifies, people often don’t know what to do with wealth once they gain it, since they were not educated in a way that ever expected them to be rich.
25
This is paraphrased from a famous sketch in Chappelle’s Show, where Charlie Murphy recounts his ridiculous encounters with Rick James at the height of the James’s fame and cocaine addiction. Dave Chappelle, playing Rick James, shouts it after being beaten up by Murphy, implying that Murphy is an embarrassing him by acting like a hoodlum. In this song, “they” is changed to “we” and the determinative phrase “you niggas” is shortened to “niggas”, suggesting that the phrase is being said by to black people by white people in positions of power, representing the racist view that black people shouldn’t become rich because they won’t be able to spend the money wisely. This argument gains an extra layer of irony since, in both the song and the sketch, it is said by a rich and successful black person, implying that fame and money can separate black people from their own community and cause them to create an artificial distinction between themselves and “niggas”. Moreover, it could be seen as an ironic allusion to the history of slavery, since black people weren’t given money in the form of reparations and the idea of going “back home” to Africa was not only impossible for many black people who were born as English-speaking citizens of the U.S., but also led to freed black Americans establishing generations of neo-colonial suffering in the country of Liberia.
26
This fake answering machine message comes from Dr. Dre, a producer who is notable for commercializing the sound of gangsta rap and selling headphones through his company Beats by Dre. Dre has acted as a mentor to Lamar, signing him to his label and producing songs on his first album. Like Lamar, Dre is from Compton, California, and one of Lamar’s key memories is seeing Dre and 2Pac record the video for “California Love” in Compton when he was a child. His appears on this track as the ideal representation of success for a black man in hip hop — someone who has managed to come from humble beginnings to great financial success and managed to make wise investments while still helping younger artists from similar backgrounds.
27
Lamar shifts persona here to Uncle Sam, the personification of America, representing both the financial opportunities and pitfalls presented by American capitalism. Uncle Sam’s offers represent some of the basic concerns for black Americans: “a house or a car” were common expectations for black Americans moving from the South to California in the 1950s during the Great Migration; “a piano, a guitar” represent black music, one of the key ways that black Americans have historically been able to have an income even while living under Jim Crow laws; and forty acres and a mule is a promise of land ownership that was infamously made during the American Civil War to many freed black families, before being rescinded by Andrew Johnson once he became U.S. President. The fact that Uncle Sam offers all of these options implies that they don’t hold the same deep social value for white people, and that (like the forty acres and a mule) they are merely bargaining chips.
28
Lamar puns on the various meanings of “dog” here. The overt slang definition is “trusted friend”, but it also implies that Uncle Sam is deceptively presenting himself as someone who is fiercely loyal to him, when in reality he will attack Kendrick the moment that he views him as a threat.
29
Shopping malls became widespread in the U.S. during the post-war economic boom, representing the abundance of options available to middle-class American consumers. However, the experienced a strong decline after the Great Recession, leading to current phenomenon of abandoned dead malls. As a result, Uncle Sam’s
30
31
Lamar provides Uncle Sam with deceptively equivocating language to show how the American dream tricks well-intentioned black people — he plays on the homonymic nature of the word “kind” and the homophone of “you’re” vs. “your”, implying both that Uncle Sam is flattering Kendrick (“I know you’re [a] kind [person]”) and that he is stereotyping him (“I know your kind [of people]”).
32
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) financing and credit card usage are common methods for poor people to be able to own expensive goods immediately while delaying payments. However, both methods can cause the consumer to rack up debt if they aren’t able to make their repayments and are charged further interest. Uncle Sam is not only encouraging Kendrick to enter into this kind of debt; he is telling him to do it for a pair of alligator shoes, a flashy luxury good and status symbol in the U.S. that is nevertheless a sign of being nouveau riche rather than old money wealth. doesn’t necessarily serve any practical value.
33
Uncle Sam encourages Kendrick to use a cowardly defence, arguing that people who critique you are merely “haters”, thereby ignoring the actual content of their arguments by always assuming they are making them out of insecurity.
34
Echoing his earlier equivocation around the word “kind”, Uncle Sam calls Kendrick a “baller”, suggesting both that he can see the same raw talent in Kendrick that he might see in a young basketball player, and that he can see the opportunities for financial exploitation that come with “balling” — spending money lavishly. Similarly, he claims he can see the “dollar” in Kendrick, meaning both that he can imagine ways for Kendrick to make money from his talent, and that he can see himself successfully exploiting this situation for his own financial gain.
35
Lamar again highlights the difference between economic capital vs. cultural and social capital, stating that even though Kendrick has earned money from rapping, it’s not the same as being a white-collar worker since he doesn’t have the education or connections to be able to maintain a high societal status.
36
Uncle Sam appears throughout the modern history of the United States and the ideals that he represents are often invoked by Americans, thereby allowing him to “live forever” as a cultural figure. Since Kendrick presents Uncle Sam as the embodiment of consumerism, he implies that heedless consumerism is the very lifeblood of how modern U.S. society functions.
37
Kendrick Lamar was born on June 17, 1987, which makes him a Gemini — a zodiac sign that is represented through the symbol of twins. Uncle Sam takes this mystical imagery and perverts it into another consumerist pursuit, telling Kendrick to buy everything twice. The objects that Lamar are a visually alliterative chains of phrases beginning with ‹t› and ‹c›, but they become increasingly abstract — while a coupe car is an object with a specific purpose, a chain is merely a luxury good that serves no practical purpose, and a C-note ($100 bill) serves even less purpose since most shopowners will be suspicious of the possibility of the note being counterfeit. Uncle Sam encourages Kendrick to go from buying actual things to simply purchasing money itself, a meaningless gesture that gives him the appearance of being rich with increasing his wealth. This need for two of each thing also links back to the Biblical and apocalyptic imagery in the song’s opening, since Noah is told to bring two of each animal onto the ark before God floods the Earth. While Noah’s command serves a societal purpose, Uncle Sam’s commands are purely materialistic. He ends by paradoxically stating “too much ain’t enough”, homophonically twisting the need for “two” of each thing into a desire for “too much”, a hedonistic desire for excess.
38
Uncle shifts between roles here, encouraging Kendrick to tell his parents or Santa Claus about his “wish list” before encouraging Kendrick to “get it all”, implying that Kendrick is both a child and an adult, and that these acts of consumerism are designed to fulfil a childlike — and arguably childish — desire to own many things without paying any mind to whether or not you can afford them.
39
As with at other points in the song, Uncle Sam leads Kendrick towards his failure by simultaneously telling him he will eventually make it to “the White House”, the highest seat of power in the U.S., while also reinforcing the idea that he doesn’t have the knowledge and skills to rub shoulders with other members of the political establishment.
40
The U.S. has a complex sales tax system since it varies from state to state, and many people are expected to file tax returns each year to account for various deductions and repayments. While this system leads to Americans paying less in taxes than people in other developed economies through various methods of tax avoidance, it can also lead to widespread tax evasion, whether through intentional or unintentional means. Lamar is suggesting that the complexity of this tax system is a way for America, as a nation, to prevent the undereducated nouveaux riches from ever gaining real power and wealth.
41
George Clinton, one of the song’s two mentor figures, appears again to provide advice here. However, much like Dr. Dre, his advice doesn’t provide solutions, and he simply implies that you need to remain mindful even as you’re experiencing success.
42
Unlike Dre, Clinton appears to taunt Kendrick, asking him if he has any measurable proof of his critical acclaim, the way a soldier would if they did something honourable during their duty. Although this question is slipped in just before a particularly dense line, its presence might link back to the fact that Lamar’s major label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d city, was snubbed at the 56th Grammy Awards for nearly every nomination in favour of The Heist by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, a less critically acclaimed hip hop group who appeared to have benefitted from the sociological privilege of being white American men being voted for by other white American men who had little interest in hip hop culture.
43
This line seems to be intentionally abstract, providing the kind of “lyrical miracle” complexity-for-complexity’s-sake that Lamar otherwise studiously avoids in his songwriting. In the context of the lines immediately preceding and following it, the sentence appears to be part of Lamar’s critique of himself via George Clinton’s voice, warning Kendrick if he purely focuses on “lyrical miracle” rapping without focusing on the substance of what he is saying, he will be bound to “drop” and “slip through the cracks”.
44
The phrase “cross my mind” simply means for a thought to occur, but the warning to “look both ways” implies that these thoughts pose a danger to the thinker, like an oncoming vehicle. Again, Clinton doesn’t provide solutions; his warning is just that — a reminder to Kendrick that he needs to be careful as he tries to unknot his internal and external conflicts.
45
The shouting female voices abruptly end the song like a scene from a horror film. We are no longer considering the idea of Kendrick losing his wealth (and, by extension, his fame) as a remote possibility; instead, it is something that is going to happen imminently, unless Kendrick can run away — which explains the frenetic jazz rhythms that he employs on the next track in the album’s sequence.