It feels like a lightning rod at a time when America is at its most polarized since its citizens’ antithetical ideologies led to an actual war. Twelve months on, To Pimp a Butterfly is still powerful in its confrontation of issues currently fizzling through American political discourse. “We gon’ be alright” is a slogan for anyone who feels downtrodden, whether or not you believe the mantra to be true, and it’s the album’s most accessible entry point into its themes of political resilience. ‘Alright’, like its graying progenitor ‘Lift Every Voice’, seems destined to live forever, or at least until Donald Trump escorts us into our final days on Earth. The Pharrell-produced track has picked up a few awards, sure, but it has also become a protest song for the millennial generation, hollered out at marches and demonstrations against the original American sin: white supremacy. In essence, ‘Lift Every Voice’ is a gospel number, and to be very accurate, a Negro spiritual, coalescing civil rights and the presence of faith.Ī year after Kendrick Lamar’s complicated magnum opus To Pimp a Butterfly, its apex and focal point remains ‘Alright’, a song that reminds me of ‘Lift Every Voice’ and best represents the robust political and pop cultural force Kendrick has become in the 12 months since its release. It was in the Baptist church specifically, the ones where it’s so spirited and lively that the walls dance and shimmy like a Harlem Renaissance painting.
Most frequently, I remember hearing ‘Lift Every Voice’ in church – which I hated because it was always too hot and always too long, and always evangelizing something I was very skeptical of believing. Lowery using parts of what has been referred to as the “Black American National Anthem” during Barack Obama’s inauguration. In 2009, I remember witnessing, with the world, Rev. marches in early January - which I hated because it was always too cold and always too long - was as about as inevitable as seeing scores of black fraternities and sororities proudly marching down the route with pride as bright and warm as the bell of Miles Davis’ trumpet. I don’t remember the first time I heard ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’, but I do remember hearing it a lot as a child.
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