Kendrick Lamar and the Making of Black Meaning

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Acknowledgements
Introduction: K.Dotting the American Cultural Landscape with Black Meaning
Anthony B. Pinn and Christopher M. Driscoll
Part I: Section.80 (2011)
Kendrick Lamar's Section.80: Reagan Era Blues
Ralph Bristout
Can I be Both?: Blackness and the Negotiation of Binary Categories
in Kendrick Lamar's Section.80
Margarita Simon Guillory
Hol' Up: Post-Civil Rights Black Theology within Kendrick Lamar's
Section.80 Album
Daniel White Hodge
Sensibility in Section.80: Kendrick Lamar's Poetics of Problems
Michael L. Thomas
Part II: good kid, m.A.A.d. city (2012)
The Good, the m.A.A.d., and the Holy: Kendrick Lamar's
Meditations on Sin and Moral Agency in the Post-Gangsta Era
Juan M. Floyd-Thomas
'Real is Responsibility': Revelations in White through
the Filter of Black Realness on good kid, m.A.A.d. city
Rob Peach
'Black Meaning' Out of Urban Mud: good kid, m.A.A.d city
as Compton Griot-Riff at the Crossroads of Climate-Apocalypse
James W. Perkinson
Rap as Ragnaroek: Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, and the Value of Competition
Christopher M. Driscoll
Part III: To Pimp a Butterfly (2015)
Can Dead Homies Speak? The Spirit and Flesh of Black Meaning
Monica R. Miller
Loving [You] is Complicated: Black Self-Love and Affirmation
in the Rap Music of Kendrick Lamar
Darrius D. Hills
From 'Blackness' to Afrofuture to 'Impasse': The Figura
of the Jimi Hendrix/Richie Havens Identity Revolution
as Faintly Evidenced by the work of Kendrick Lamar
and More than a Head Nod to Lupe Fiasco
Jon Gill
Beyond Flight and Containment: Kendrick Lamar, Black Study,
and an Ethics of the Wound
Joseph Winters
Part IV: DAMN. (2017)
'Real Nigga Conditions': Kendrick Lamar, Grotesque Realism,
and the Open Body
Anthony B. Pinn
DAMNed to the Earth: Kendrick Lamar, De/colonial Violence,
and Earthbound Salvation
Ben Lewellyn-Taylor and Melanie C. Jones
Kendrick Lamar's DAMN. as an Aesthetic Genealogy
Dominik Hammer
'I'm an Israelite': Kendrick Lamar's Spiritual Search,
Hebrew Israelite Religion, and the Politics of Celebrity Encounter
Sam Kestenbaum
Damnation, Identity, and Truth: Vocabularies of Suffering
in Kendrick Lamar's DAMN.
Andre E. Key
Hebrew Israelite Covenantal Theology and Kendrick Lamar's
Constructive Project in DAMN.
Spencer Dew
Conclusion: KENosis : The Meaning of Kendrick Lamar
Monica R. Miller
References
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Kendrick Lamar has established himself at the forefront of contemporary hip-hop culture. Artistically adventurous and socially conscious, he has been unapologetic in using his art form, rap music, to address issues affecting black lives while also exploring subjects fundamental to the human experience, such as religious belief. This book is the first to provide an interdisciplinary academic analysis of the impact of Lamar’s corpus. In doing so, it highlights how Lamar’s music reflects current tensions that are keenly felt when dealing with the subjects of race, religion and politics.

Starting with Section 80 and ending with DAMN., this book deals with each of Lamar’s four major projects in turn. A panel of academics, journalists and hip-hop practitioners show how religion, in particular black spiritualties, take a front-and-center role in his work. They also observe that his astute and biting thoughts on race and culture may come from an African American perspective, but many find something familiar in Lamar’s lyrical testimony across great chasms of social and geographical difference.

This sophisticated exploration of one of popular culture’s emerging icons reveals a complex and multi faceted engagement with religion, faith, race, art and culture. As such, it will be vital reading for anyone working in religious, African American and hip-hop studies, as well as scholars of music, media and popular culture.

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