"Jeremiah was a prophet tasked with guiding the people through the loss of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Kendrick is navigating us through the loss of black life in a “post-racial” America. Both poets’ writings also reveal a deep conflictedness not only with their own inner life but with the realpolitik of their day."
"The all-encompassing, oppressive ideology of Jeremiah’s day was lauded by the urban elite, the religious, the imperial superpowers and local politicians who created hell on earth for the poor. Jeremiah’s cry can be summed up in Kendrick’s lyric, “Some of us never did wrong but still went to hell.” For Kendrick, hell is America’s creation of the ghettos, its prison industrial complex, its clandestine torture dungeons in poor neighborhoods."
read the rest here:
http://religiondispatches.org/kendrick-lamars-hip-hop-jeremiad/
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