Book Review of TPAB by Sequoia Maner: Watch the Throne
“Kick your game, spit your flow/can’t fuck with this Top Dawg shit though” - Jhene Aiko (2012) from Terrorist Threats.
The chorus of the Jay-Z and Kanye West Song No Church in the Wild (2012) lays out a hierarchy of power relationships: mob over human, king over mob, god over king, and finally, non-believer over god. At face value, this ranking makes sense, but as someone who is a recovering Catholic, I cannot say that I have evidence of the power of any god, mono or pantheistic. However, we do have real, tangible examples of the power of rulers; the power of kings, as Frank Ocean sings. The idea of god works only due to belief in that god but for a king, for a ruler? Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden still hold tremendous power over the lives of a Gazan child or a Black person incarcerated in the US (collectively and respectively, because these things are sadly connected), even if those people were to deny their existence. A king has real power and influence, and I would be remiss not to acknowledge in 2024, that in terms of commercial rap music and cultural power, Kendrick Lamar has demonstrated truly regal prowess through the mastery of rap artistry, which was effectively deployed against one Aubrey Drake Graham, one of the most commercially successful and influential rappers in the last two decades. Drake could have prayed to whatever deities he wanted; we can see that would not have done anything for him; people across the globe are going to think of him as a pedophile, a terrible father, and a culture vulture, probably for a long time.
Even though it has become heavily commercialized, certain facets of hip-hop culture still have a beautiful sort of meritocracy to them: if you have ever participated in a breakdancing battle or a rap cipher (when a group of rappers gather in a circle and create rap lyrics on the spot), as I have, you are essentially alone in the arena, and all you have to “win” is your wits. On the battlefield of challenges based on rapping, your goal is to persuade others that you are the best at what you are doing at the moment. If the belief in yourself falters, then you stumble, you falter; you lose. In most other areas of life, I am against domination; however, being a rapper and seeing what Kendrick did engenders a lot of respect in me because, as someone who loves the culture and the basic tenets of the culture, I could not help but appreciate the displays of intelligence, cunning, and history that he displayed in his back and forth with Drake. I think many of us can agree that Kendrick Lamar is the current king of (commercial) rap, but I don’t believe this is all that new. I would argue that Dr. Sequoia Maner meticulously documented K. Dot’s ascension to the throne in her 2022 33 ⅓ book about Kendrick Lamar’s third studio album, To Pimp a Butterfly (TPAB), which was released almost a decade before this was written.
Dr. Maner’s very personal and (of course) very poetic analysis of the album is broken up into three parts: “Rage,” Spirit,” and “Love.” I found this framing interesting; Dr. Maner provides an analysis of
TPAB encapsulates what it is like to exist as a Black American through those three key facets. Throughout the book, Dr. Maner displays not only a keen knowledge of American music culture, including funk, jazz, rap, and hip hop, but she also integrates theories and quotes from great Black thinkers, from Sonia Sanchez (Maonr, 2022, p. 50) to Tupac Shakur. Speaking of the latter, her interlude about the impact of Tupac’s political philosophy, to say nothing of his skills as a rap star, provided a deep historical context, one of Kendrick’s foundations as a rapper. As she states: “In many ways, [Kendrick] Lamar’s sophomore release is a sort of musical manifesto, one that articulates a political ideology within and through Tupac Shakur (Maner, 2022. P. 76).” It is a bit strange to think of Tupac being an ancestor, who Kendrick almost literally channels (Kendrick has a conversation with the ghost of Tupac at the end of the song “Mortal Man” (Manor, 2022. P. 74) as a ghost to speak with, but the truth is Tupac is dead and has been for decades. Even though he was very young upon his demise, so of course, it makes sense for Maner to discuss the ancestral worship that many Black people engage in, especially in a chapter entitled “Spirit.”
Tying Kendrick’s prestige to Tupac’s legacy (which is throughout the book) in such detail accentuates her connection to the work of two West Coast legends. Through her eyes, as someone from LA, I had a deeper appreciation as a non-LA/California person of what Tupac’s oeuvre and TPAB mean to Black Americans generally. I am being intentional with the acknowledgment of being a Black American as both TPAB and Maner’s book grapple with the pain, loss, and injustice of having our conscious connections to the African continent severed during the colonial period of European colonization, and how much that has created confusion and contradictions in how we as Black Americans understand our relation to the world and the diaspora. In the first section of the book, “Rage,” and throughout, Dr. Maner provides a cogent racial analysis vis-a-vis TPAB that discusses how Kendrick both subverts and embraces negative stereotypes about Black folks (“Kendrick takes the slew of negative associations attached to the black male head on when he proudly proclaims: My hair is nappy, my dick is big, my nose is round and wide” (Maner, 2022, p.40), while also engaging in a somewhat confusing flattening of the African continent into all of Compton during his incredible (difficult to find on Youtube, interestingly enough) performance at the 58th Grammy Awards in 2016.
Dr. Maner points out that this imagery “...Collapsed [Africans] into an undifferentiated mass. Sculpted for an American audience, this image could serve to reinforce the ignorance of Africa that exists in the United States where there is a[n]...absence of colonial discourse. Too often, African Americans are taught to see themselves as distinctive and distinguished (Maner, 2022. p.101).”
I have never been to Africa, but that critique really hit home for me in pointing out that the Dubosian double consciousness is alive and well. I also think this touches on the yearning and the search for a place of belonging and home that I and a lot of other Black Americans experience. Much like Dr. Maner, I see where he went wrong, and neither of us is saying that Kendrick is a perfect human being, but I can also appreciate the sincerity with which he tries to articulate what he and a lot of us feel about being of a place that isn’t ours. I can somewhat understand that when I am in all-Black spaces or in countries like Brazil, that have populations that are majority African descent and then start acting different when I return to the US. Being in spaces like that, in countries like that, changes you, and it is tough to convey that connection and those changes to others, be it in words or images. Yet, I can see that Dr. Maner appreciates the effort to sincerely communicate a concept that we currently have no words for., even if it isn’t done in the most delicate manner.
Like a lot of my favorite writing on American music, Dr. Maner provides a succinct history lesson of our country and society through the lens of how Black people were and continue to be at the vanguard of shaping what is “cool” in American culture, and how that eventually is co-opted and commodified by the capitalist structure of the USA. She writes: “The American musical landscape is comprised of predictable patterns of innovation and appropriation whereby black sounds become filtered through whiteness, so much so that the original cultural essence of the originating sound is minimized (Maner, 2022. P. 33).” For Kendrick to make an album so Black and to be recognized and lauded for it is a testament to the power of his artistry. Even though I enjoy some Drake bops, when Kendrick pointed out that a lot of Drake’s music isn’t authentically true to himself, I sat my ass down and listened, and really thought about what he said about Drake’s music. And as we know, millions of people around the globe listened as well, and I think, were able to relate to the authentic Blackness that Dr. Maner so eloquently shows us that exists at the heart of TPAB. One could argue that Drake was at the top of the (commercial) rap game in terms of recognition and influence, and I am sure his checks will still keep coming, but Kendrick Lamar showed the whole world what authentic Black art looks like, the might it has, and what real king shit looks like. The 33 ⅓ volume elucidates, for those that have the pleasure of reading it, that the power of knowledge, vulnerability, and authenticity are the crown jewels for a rapper who would deign him, they, or herself to sit atop the rap game. I am firmly anti-monarchist, but there was nothing that the OVO stans could believe that would stop Kendrick from calling their leader’s credibility into question and calling him “a pedophile over some free jazz (Fox, 2024.)” and get away with it. I am not a monarchist, but in this situation, long live the king.
References
Ab-Soul., Jhene Aiko., Brown, D. (2012). Terrorist Threats [Song]. Top Dawg Entertainment.
Fox, Z. [zackfox]. (2024, April 13). Kendrick bout to call him a pedophile over some free jazz [Tweet].
Manor, S. (2022). To Pimp a Butterfly. Bloomsbury Academic.
West, K., Carter, S., Ocean, F. The Dream. (2012). No Church in the Wild [Song]. Roc-A-Fella Records.
Post Script:
