But there was at least one person who did not like Kendrick’s statement: talk show host and pundit Geraldo Rivera, who went on Fox News to condemn the “Alright” performance. On a segment of The Five, Rivera lambasted the track, saying that the song wasn’t helpful. “This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years,” he said. “This is exactly the wrong message.” Kendrick, in response to the TV pundit, asked, “How can you take a song that’s about hope, and turn it into hatred? The problem isn’t me standing on a cop car, his attempt [dilutes] the real problem… the senseless acts of killing these young boys out here. For the most part, it’s avoiding the truth. Hip-hop is not the problem, our reality is the problem.” Geraldo’s narrative was the same type of “All Lives Matter” rhetoric that some right-wing conservatives used to minimize the long-standing abuse that people of color have been exposed to for generations. To say “All Lives Matter” was to say “Let’s get back to how things used to be, back when we could look away from the abuse and not have to address it.” It was to ignore the privilege that created this chasm, hoping that this fad would go away. Now, due to the prevalence of social media and smartphones, there was no way to avoid the issue. You couldn’t act like police brutality wasn’t a problem, or that blacks in the inner city didn’t have viable concerns with how they were being treated in their own neighborhoods. They were handled like they didn’t belong, like they were somehow hindering police officers who were there to protect and serve. To say “All Lives Matter” was to insinuate that “we’re all in this together,” but U.S. history had shown that simply wasn’t true. “All” meant “white,” and with the rise of Black Lives Matter, a new generation of black people were saying they’d no longer be silent, that the fight of our ancestors had not gone in vain.
Geraldo’s stance echoed the same argument used after each mass shooting in the States. When a young man grabs an assault rifle and shoots up a school or a mall, conservatives blame violent video games, or heavy metal music, or anything that skirts the real problem: that citizens shouldn’t be able to buy an assault rifle at a department store. We pray for the fallen, we mourn for the families, but then our leaders don’t do anything to regulate gun purchases. So to claim that hip-hop has done more than racism to damage the black community is a flat-out lie: hip-hop saves the community; it’s the voice of the voiceless, the sound of oppressed people spinning negativity into vibrant art. Genres like soul and jazz also carry healing powers, and they, too, can get political, but not like hip-hop. When done correctly, rap knows how to cut directly to it. Jazz is mostly about tone; it’s largely instrumental, so listeners have to surmise what musicians like Kamasi Washington are trying to say with their instruments. Rappers use very direct language, and Kendrick was no exception, at least on “Alright.” Though he was known to shield his message behind dense layers of poetry and dual meanings, the words here don’t leave anything to the imagination. This wouldn’t be the last run-in between Kendrick and Fox News.
As people began to digest To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick took subtle steps toward blending his community back home. The rapper had signed a deal with Reebok to release his own sneaker with the words BLUE on the left shoe and RED on the right one. While this was Kendrick’s way of trying to push for a resolution between Pirus and Crips in Compton, it was also a savvy business move. This was Kendrick trying to create the world that he rapped about. He had aspirations of the two groups getting along, or at least coming together to fight common enemies who threatened the livelihood of red and blue alike. In his view, as gang culture eradicated black men in Compton—whether by death or incarceration—there were still trigger-happy cops and shady politicians with whom to contend, and those battles were more important than fighting for city blocks they didn’t even own. Kendrick’s plan was ambitious; to combat a long-standing gang culture took incredible fortitude. Yet this signaled a major breakthrough for him personally: in years past, the shy kid from Compton would’ve never gotten involved in the battle, but now, as the hottest rapper in the world, Kendrick was using his celebrity to bring awareness to a range of issues. Finally, after twelve years of honing his craft, the rapper was on top. All that he’d seen, all those poems in Mr. Inge’s class, those sidewalk freestyles with Matt Jeezy, the pressure-packed audition for Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith, the days of dreaming with Dave Free, being shot at, traveling up and down the road in a bus and performing to half-empty arenas, all those things led to this point—to the day where he’d have Compton on his back and the public’s full attention. At last, Kendrick’s father, Kenny, could see him on the BET Awards. He was dreaming big like his mother had told him to. He kept going and kept God first, just like his friends asked, and like Tupac indirectly urged
