Affirming Difference in ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’

Without presenting myself as an authority on racial identity politics or African-American culture, this essay discusses the way in which creative media has been a forum for resistance and an affirmation of difference in identity politics. While this essay focuses on African-Americans, it does not aim to exclude other interconnected spheres of identity such as gender, class, ability, or ignore the diversity within the African-American identity (a label that simplifies and generalises in itself). In my own listening and interpretation of Kendrick Lamar’s new album, To Pimp a Butterfly, I highlight the ‘creative’ way in which many African-American musicians affirm their difference with reference to Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of ‘creativity’, where the ‘creative’ goes beyond communicating what is already understood and instead challenges these meanings by considering seriously the indeterminate or ambiguous. In this sense, I underscore the manner in which forms of difference, as opposed to assimilation or familiarity, have been a powerful tool of expression and resistance, particularly in identity politics; and raise important questions concerning the nature of the struggle for emancipation.

In many modes of social action associated with identity politics which aim to address social prejudices and stereotypes around race, emphasis is conventionally placed on making familiar the unfamiliar. In attempts to draw together different groups of people to ‘overcome’ or ‘set aside’ differences, as we so often hear, what is neglected from this discourse is an effort to challenge norms and assumptions around our conceptions of the human. This social action of recognising different groups of people through making the unfamiliar familiar centres on the question: ‘Who is worthy of my recognition and care?’ In many discussions around identity politics (whether they concern sexuality, gender, race, or ability), what is at stake is this recognition of humanity, of innate worth and respect. Yet how powerful is this tool of familiarity, which seeks to demonstrate that those who have been left out should be included, when it fails to problematize (and arguably reinforces) the very boundaries of the ‘in-group’ and its meaning?

Deleuze and Guattari’s analysis suggests that in homogenising phenomena through familiarisation for the sake of communicating a fixed, common meaning, ‘we lack resistance to the present’ and are unable to move forward from ‘clichés’ and ‘indeterminable discussion’.[1] What this means is that if we only approach understanding the world in the hopes of fitting things into categories and definitions that we already comprehend, then we fail to make any progress on the way the think about things. When we begin to assume that these categories and definitions are stable, we deny the capacity for creation, destruction, and transformation intrinsic to the changing landscape of meaning. In this sense, we need to approach what is different with difference in mind. This is not to say that we want to define them by difference, but rather, we need to respect this difference and understand that it is these differences by which we can alter and redefine the structures of meaning we already have.

While it is of fundamental importance that silenced voices are made heard and understood by those who are not the same, it becomes an effort to acquaint the majority or the privileged with another’s essentially different experiences. As such, this communicative action can become a colonisation of non-White experiences into the understanding of the ‘Subject of Europe’, simply by attempting to make these necessarily different voices intelligible.[2] Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” underscores this problem, wherein the ‘rules’ of speaking characteristically exclude the Other from spheres of discourse.[3] In the way that African-American Vernacular English is disregarded by White Americans as poor grammar used by the uneducated,[4] and in the way that the ‘Best Rap Album’ Grammy has almost always been awarded to white artists whenever there are white nominees,[5] the voices of African-American people have only been understood and judged through the meanings of those in positions of privilege and power, dissolving difference into the cultural and linguistic framework of the white norm.

In the works of particular artists, the experiences of African-American people have been voiced in a very different way through music, emphasising difference rather than familiarity, and so problematizing and challenging the existing structures of meaning within racial identities. Instead of communicating perspectives through a language that is accessible to non-African-Americans in order to make voices intelligible, the creative form of music allows for individuals to highlight and affirm difference, and make references to the past in a different mode of expression. While my own exposure to hip-hop and rap is narrow, my interpretation of Kendrick Lamar’s music highlights the ‘creative’ difference as opposed to ‘communicative’ familiarity in social media.

Lamar’s 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly exemplifies both the affirmation of difference and the opening up of the self-containment of the ‘now’ in ‘resistance to the present’.[6] Like many African-American artists before him, Lamar’s lyrics and music refer to political speeches (e.g. William Lynch’s 1712 speech in “Complexion”), news stories (e.g. 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin in “The Blacker the Berry”), literary references (e.g. Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man in “King Kunta”), and past genres of music integral to African-American culture such as 70’s funk, jazz, neo-soul, scatting, and rhythm and blues (Rolling Stone 2015).[7] He continually refers outside of his own context and work, disrupting what we take for granted in the here and now by drawing connections beyond the present time. On “Mortal Man”, Lamar engages in an imaginary conversation with the deceased Tupac Shakur, weaving in samples from one of Tupac’s interviews from 1994. Here, Lamar ‘talks’ to Tupac about the consequences and contradictions of success and fame in the context of the African-American struggle in dialogue with the past. He uses this intertextuality to burst open the self-sufficiency of the now, forcing the reader to consider the manner in which meanings and experiences are translated, transformed, and reproduced in different contexts.

In “i”, Lamar is recorded performing the song to an audience in his hometown, but is cut short by a fight breaking out in the audience. He then speaks to the audience, saying: ‘Not on my time, kill the music…

…How many we done lost?

No, for real, answer the question, how many n*ggas we done lost, bro?

This year alone.

Exactly, so we ain’t got time to waste time my n*gga,

N*ggas gotta make time, bro.

The judge make time, you know that, the judge make time right?

The judge make time, so it ain’t sh*t.’[8]

The listener is thrust into an unpredictably raw and powerful conversation, becoming audience to an unexpected dialogue both outside and incorporated within his performance. That is, the dialogue that disrupts the song, but at the same time also becomes part of it. Through these discourses on the people, issues, events, and styles of present and past, Lamar opens up and therefore challenges the place of the song. In this move, the listener is confronted with the meaning of this interruption. In what ways do the contexts surrounding a song (or any other form of art) affect its meaning? In what ways do we transform and create pasts and futures in the present? And from what historical, spatial, or temporal standpoints do we understand our experiences in the present? As such, Lamar temporalizes his work in a creative and thoughtful (and sometimes disharmonious) discourse with the past, emphasising the transience and vitality of a ‘now’ invariable tied to the past and future.

It is also in this sense that Lamar undertakes a Foucauldian genealogy of African-American history with an invested interest in the ‘now’ by reinterpreting the past and forging relations to the present. This is evident within an acapella poem on the same track:

‘…I’ma dedicate this one verse to Oprah

On how the infamous, sensitive N-word control us,

So many artists gave her an explanation to hold us.

Well, this is my explanation straight from Ethiopia,

N-E-G-U-S. Definition: royalty; King royalty – wait, listen…

N-E-G-U-S. Description: Black emperor, King, ruler, now let me finish:

The history books overlook the word and hide it,

America tried to make it to a house divided.

The homies don’t recognise we been using it wrong,

So I’ma break it down and put my game in a song.’[9]

Highlighting the way in which Lamar utilises a genealogy of the conventionally derogative term, exploring and challenging its roots, Lamar thus re-examines its meaning today. Thus he ‘hold[s] both past and present open to becoming… by which reality transforms and the future unfolds’ emphasising a revitalisation and rereading of the past within the present.[10]

In this sense, Lamar problematizes the nature of time, the exigency of the present, and explores the language of the past, thus ‘twisting and turning, bunching and tearing, unfolding, and refolding’ the present.[11] The use of slang and historical, cultural, and political references make his lyrics somewhat opaque on first listening. Yet, this is precisely how Lamar invites the audience to reflect upon this ambiguity and difference which retains a much deeper meaning for African-American history and culture, as his lyrics spill over the margins of writing and temporal contexts.

In this essay I only attempt in-depth analysis on a single song, on a single album, from a single artist, yet it is clear that affirming difference and challenging conventional meanings or time, space, and identity have a profoundly different impact and consequence when compared to conventional aims for familiarisation. However, in making the distinction between the communicative action predominant in combatting racism (especially in social media such as Humans of New York) and the creative expression of music, I do not aim to valuate one over the other, but instead ask: how might ‘communicative’ and ‘creative’ goals differ in the same struggle while complementing or contradicting one another? And depending on context, how might one form be favoured over another? While the creative mode may be less accessible to wider audiences than the communicative mode, does it not challenge the very fabric of the social reality that grounds racial struggles, by nature of this inaccessibility? I wish to raise these questions not to undermine any particular mode of action in identity politics, but rather emphasise the multiplicity and openness inherent in time, space, and meaning, within which any act of resistance must operate.

In this way, the affirmation of difference can be considered an act of true resistance. Against efforts to homogenise and make sense of meanings and experiences in terms of what is familiar to us, are we not merely reinforcing conventional norms about what it means to be human? By recognising and asserting difference rather than attempting to overcome it or bridge the gap between cultures which operate within invariably different systems of meaning, it is of immense importance to be able to challenge and problematize what we take for granted in human interaction. In trying to make sense of other cultures in terms of our own, are we not colonising their unique and irreplaceable particularities by subsuming them within our own overarching categories? Perhaps, in recognising that our understanding of the world is rooted in our culture of making familiar that which is unfamiliar, and therefore in recognising that we cannot fully understand other cultures on our own terms; we may even be able to question the homogeneity of meaning within our own culture, and go on to challenge and reanimate the structures of meaning that make up our experience of the world.