[Just a terrific essay on K-Dot and the traditions of Black blues. -egg]<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a certain kind of American story that is characterized by a laconic surface and a tight-lipped speaking voice. The narrator in this story has been made inarticulate by modern life. Vulnerable to his own loneliness, he is forced into an attitude of hard-boiled self-protection,\u201d writes Vivian Gornick in her essay \u201cTenderhearted Men,\u201d in which she takes to task the terse, unchanging masculinity of Raymond Carver and Andre Dubus. Gornick, however, could just as easily be writing about the emotional impasse found in hip-hop.<\/p>\n
A few months ago, when Kendrick Lamar released his album good kid m.A.A.d city<\/em>, it excited all of the critics who get paid good money to not get too excited. They were mesmerized by the album\u2019s narrative arc and the power of\u00a0Lamar\u2019s storytelling. The cosigns and cameos Lamar had received from his Compton godfathers Dr. Dre and MC Eiht impressed them. Lamar\u2019s first major label release wasn\u2019t just good \u2014 it also had the strange fatalism of a plaintive, grave, 25-year-old man-child unafraid to sound all Septimus Smith with his anxieties, to break open the status quo\u2019s \u201claconic surface\u201d with his youthful vulnerability. He is young, but also old enough to know that nothing in life is promised for men like him except death. So, on the album\u2019s strongest song, he asks for only one thing and it recalls the blues elegies of Son House and Robert Johnson: \u201cWhen the lights shut off, and it is my turn to settle down, promise that you will sing about me.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n