Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah does a really great job of making the literary case for Kendrick Lamar over at the LA Review of Books. Even though this piece is almost a month old, it still gets to the heart of a few issues within the black literary tradition and makes some valid points, namely:

• Where are the authors (and, let’s be real, hip-hop artists) who skillfully share the lives of working class, everyday black folks through their work?
• Kendrick Lamar’s narrative approach is refreshing, and yet still rooted in the culture of chronicling the hurdles of black urban life. The layout of the track listing of Good Kid m.A.A.d. City, the content and consistency of the entire album, is at once both extremely complex yet extremely accessible. That’s what makes him and his body of work so compelling.
• Post-racialism is bullshit.

After seeing the visuals for Lamar’s “Poetic Justice” and reading Ghansah’s piece I couldn’t help but think of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Two young people fresh off of the high of new romance, enjoying a kick back, just having fun like young people do. Drake is the commercial in the middle of the real show, being all Drake-y, but it’s tolerable. The ending had me in my feelings – I wasn’t expecting so dark a turn in the video’s storyline but it was ultimately a great (and brave) choice because what makes a story great are the stakes – and far too often in lit and in hip hop the stakes aren’t made clear or tangible. These-star crossed lovers are slain, it appears, for simply having fallen in love in a place where you can’t even party without fearing for your life. A bitter bit of poetic justice, indeed.

What did you think?