Around 7:00 p.m., Zimmerman called the Sanford Police Department to report a so-called “suspicious person” in the gated community. “This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something,” Zimmerman claimed in the 911 call. “It’s raining and he’s just walking around looking about.… These assholes, they always get away.” Zimmerman can be heard saying “fucking coons” (a racial slur against black people) in relation to Trayvon, who’s running away from his pursuit. The police told Zimmerman not to follow Trayvon, but he did anyway. According to reports, Trayvon was on the phone with his girlfriend as Zimmerman followed him in a car, openly wondering why he was being followed in the first place. An altercation ensued, and—according to Zimmerman—as he reached into his pocket for his cell phone, Trayvon threw a punch and knocked him to the ground. Trayvon got on top of Zimmerman and kept punching. That’s when Zimmerman pulled a gun from his holster and fired a shot, which struck Trayvon in the chest. He was pronounced dead at 7:30 p.m. Trayvon was unarmed; he perished with just twenty-two dollars, a cell phone, a bag of candy, and some juice.
Trayvon’s father didn’t find out until the next morning that his son had been murdered. He was out having dinner with his fiancée and figured that Trayvon had simply gone to a movie and turned off his phone. But Tracy’s greatest fear was realized when a police cruiser, an unmarked sedan, and a chaplain pulled up to the house, and he was greeted by a detective asking him to describe what clothes his son had worn the night before. Eventually, the detective came back with a photo of Trayvon at the scene, “his eyes rolled back, a tear on his cheek, saliva coming from his mouth,” according to a Reuters report.
Zimmerman claimed self-defense in the killing. The police department, citing Florida’s “stand your ground” law, accepted Zimmerman’s claim and let him go without evidence to disprove his story. This left Tracy and Trayvon’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, to wonder if justice would be served for their son. Or would he be just another black boy cut down before his prime, mourned in hashtags and candlelit vigils while his killer walked freely? In a world of fifteen-second social media clips, celebrity gossip news, and cat videos, would we care enough to mourn? Would we stop to lament this injustice, or were we that desensitized to black trauma?
It took the national media almost two weeks to care about Trayvon at all. Aside from a couple of segments on Orlando news and limited coverage in the Orlando Sentinel newspaper, Trayvon’s death was just a blip on the radar. If it weren’t for the persistence of Tracy and Sybrina, coupled with the hiring of a high-powered publicist and attorney, this story wouldn’t have gotten any traction at all. Trayvon’s parents launched a petition on Change.org to force Sanford police to arrest Zimmerman and for state prosecutors to fully investigate their son’s death. “Trayvon was our hero,” they wrote in the petition. “At the age of 9, [he] pulled his father from a burning kitchen, saving his life. He loved sports and horseback riding. At only 17 he had a bright future ahead of him with dreams of attending college and becoming an aviation mechanic. Now that’s all gone.” The Trayvon news coverage was a slow burn—from local, to regional, then national—due in part to the petition and online activism, with prominent civil rights leaders taking to outlets like Twitter and Facebook to denounce the teen’s death. In most instances, they linked to the petition, which created a groundswell of support for the family’s cause, and forced the national media to cover the story.
Still on tour with Drake and A$AP Rocky, Kendrick was watching TV on his bus when he came across the news of Trayvon’s murder. He was seething, and as he told Rolling Stone in 2015, the incident “put a whole new anger inside me,” to the point where he picked up a pen and started jotting down lyrics. An hour later, he had the first draft of a new song called “The Blacker the Berry.” Trayvon’s death “made me remember how I felt. Being harassed, my partners being killed,” Kendrick told the publication. To him, Trayvon wasn’t just some kid in the wrong place at the wrong time. He could’ve been Trayvon, shot down in cold blood as the public looked elsewhere. Not only did the news distress Kendrick, it disturbed the highest-ranking politician in the world, U.S. president Barack Obama, the country’s first black president. “When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son,” he told reporters at the White House. “Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago.… There’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.” Central Florida, South Side Chicago, or Compton, it didn’t matter: Kendrick had made similar runs to the convenience store without thinking twice about it, not worried if some glorified security guard would try to earn stripes at his expense. Trayvon was all of us, every black person in America. The bullet that pierced his skin could’ve punctured ours just the same.
Though the track appeared in finished form on 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick was already thinking two steps ahead, letting the anger fuel the most venomous rhymes he’d ever written. He was tapping into Compton, scrolling through the gang culture and near-death instances, funneling the angst into an unprocessed stream of intense fury. In its finished form, Kendrick spews his rage through clenched teeth, tight fists, and a furrowed brow, his tone so raspy you’d think he swallowed nails before the beat started. “You hate me, don’t you?”
