Kendrick Lamar Is A Blueprint For Emerging Writers

HERE'S HOW YOU FOLLOW IT

If you were on Twitter at all this week, it would’ve been hard to miss Kendrick Lamar trending. He dropped his first new song since his 2017 album titled Damn. and the internet exploded. Magazines wrote think pieces, YouTubers showed real-time reactions, and his fans went deep trying to guess the meaning of the song and visuals.

Kendrick followed that up with the release of his new album, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, on Friday, May 13, and he’s still trending as I write this.

Not many artists can take five years off and still incite this kind of excitement. But Kendrick is a unique artist. His talent and abilities set him apart, but his approach to creating and delivering music to his fans is what we’ll be discussing today. There’s always a lesson to be learned from pop culture, and musicians are some of the best examples for writers to learn from.

Kendrick Lamar sets his own expectations

In 2012, Kendrick Lamar dropped good kid m.A.A.d city, his major-label debut to the world. The album was rap at its most raw, paired with lyrics that told a story of a “good kid” being influenced by his friends to do things outside of his character, ultimately leading to violence, revenge, and retribution.

Three years later, Kendrick releases To Pimp A Butterfly, and everything changed. The album garnered 11 Grammy nominations, the second most at the time behind only Michael Jackson. The Metacritic score, which is a cumulative score based on multiple reviews, was 96. To Pimp A Butterfly infused elements of jazz with gangster rap, poetry, soul, and storytelling and was universally praised as one of the most revolutionary albums of all time.

I want to pause here so we can begin our learning. Despite the acclaim Kendrick received from this album, it wasn’t the most popular. It sold 324,000 copies, which is a good number, but nothing compared to Taylor Swift’s 1.2 million she sold in the first week of her album, 1989, which was released the same year (and would actually beat out To Pimp A Butterfly for album of the year). TPAB wasn’t even the top-selling rap album that year. That title went to Drake for If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late with 535,000 units in its first week.

Listening to TPAB isn’t easy. You need to pay attention to every lyric, to the interludes echoed between each song, to the contrast of his voice against the beats; you’ll need to sit with the message of the entire album and consume it almost the way you would a book - with as little distraction as possible. It’s a challenging project and one that wasn’t built for radio or to be in line with popular music culture in any way. TPAB was a departure from the trendy sound of hip hop, and after the popularity of his first album, Kendrick took a huge risk.

The risk was losing his core audience, who loved Kendrick for his lyrical ability, head-bobbing production, and elite level of rhyming. His music has always been purposeful, even on good kid m.A.A.d city, but TPAB replaced relatable rhymes for more conscious melodies. By doing this, Kendrick was intentionally controlling and defining how he wanted to be viewed as an artist, and that’s one who would never succumb to convention or expectations outside of his own.

There’s always sacrifice

Kendrick also learned something from TPAB. He pushed the rap boundaries as far as they could be pushed, and although he created what was a near-unanimous masterpiece that moved culture, its complexity was a hurdle for listeners.

His follow-up to TPAB was Damn. The messaging on Damn. was just as thoughtful as it was on TPAB, but the sounds and lyrics of the album were much easier to digest. He had collaborations with Rihanna and U2. The video for his first single, DNA, featured actor Don Cheadle. Kendrick, himself, admitted that he wanted to blend the relatability and rhyming of good kid m.A.A.d city with the depth of To Pimp A Butterfly to make it more palatable for his fans. Kendrick sacrificed.

What can writers learn from this

As writers, there’s plenty to learn. All of these lessons flow into each other so although I’ve separated them, think of them as concurrent lessons rather than consecutive ones. Make sense? OK, let’s get into it:

1. Define your path and live with the results

When Kendrick first dropped To Pimp A Butterfly, the initial public reaction was hesitancy. At first, it was criticized for being too preachy and too much of a departure from his first album. But Kendrick was creating the type of music that he wanted to and in the process, defining what kind of artist he wanted to be. As a writer, you have a choice, (and it’s not necessarily a binary choice). There’s absolutely nothing wrong with writing stories and topics that are in line with popular culture or part of the current zeitgeist. If you’re an author and your goal is to get published or produce a novel or book that has commercial potential, then it might even be advisable to insert yourself into the conversations of the moment. If it’s more important for you to tell precisely the story you want to tell, regardless of whether or not it fits with what’s popular, then you should feel free to do that too. Just understand that you may be fighting uphill, and even though you can still get to the top, it might take a little longer. The important lesson here is that you are in control and defining who you are as a writer and being clear with your goals is step one.

2. Don’t be afraid to change

Creativity is fluid. Your tastes change, your goals change, and as a person, you’re continually growing and changing. There’s a misconception that as a writer, you have to write about one thing or you have to write one genre. Bloggers hear this a lot: “don’t confuse your audience. They should be able to depend on the type of content you’re going to produce.” Sure, if you’re super passionate about a single topic and that topic has enough breadth and scope to deliver content for an extended period of time, go for it. But if your tastes change and you’re ready to step into a different lane, don’t ignore those feelings simply because you think your core audience is not going to like it. What you need to do is be strategic about how you branch out. For example, you can use different platforms to create different content. Keep the platform you’re currently using to continue delivering the content your audience is accustomed to, then find another platform for the content you’re thinking about branching off into. Or, use the same platform but create a different stream. Maybe this new content is only appealing to a subset of your current audience. Cater it to that subset and deliver the content you think speaks to them most.

3. Sacrificing isn’t selling out

If you know your audience is responding to a particular type of content, and you continue to deliver that content, that’s a good thing. Don’t feel bad. You’re creating something they want and that’s something you should celebrate. What often happens to writers who have built a community is that we feel obligated to produce for that community even if we’re bored with the content that we’re producing. It starts feeling like a job instead of like the flame that originally ignited our writing. Or something else happens; we get an opportunity to earn income writing something we’re not necessarily passionate about. We fight with ourselves because we write to feed our souls and taking that money somehow feels wrong; like we’re selling out. Please don’t do that to yourself. Use that money to give you the space and freedom to create the content you’re actually passionate about. It’s a sacrifice, just like Kendrick making Damn. for his audience.

These are all lessons you can apply today and into your future as a writer. Pop culture is there for us to learn from, and Writers Are Superstars is here to capture and share those lessons.