Today, many hip-hop and rap enthusiasts refer to Kendrick Lamar as the new Kanye West. In other words, as the new god, the new genius of rap. The reasons vary far and wide for why so many attest to this but perhaps the most prevalent is his explication of the black experience.
Lamar uses his rap as a way of expressing his own personal experience as a black American in the modern day, something Ralph Ellison did as well with his novel Invisible Man. In fact, Lamar sites the text overtly in many interviews as being an influence on his own work.
In an interview with writers from The Medium, after discussing the novel, Lamar was asked what it felt like to suddenly be visible, the article reads that “he took a moment to soak in the question before responding… that being invisible keeps him grounded. And, perhaps more significant, he added: ‘Sometimes the message is more important than the messenger.’”
Most of the connections between Lamar and Ellison are seen in his album “To Pimp A Butterfly”. One particular song many scholars cite as an overt reference to Invisible Man is one of his biggest hits from the album, “King Kunta”, where he talks about yams. This is a direct reference to Chapter 13 when the protagonist smells yams and finds exhilaration in what is deemed his ‘stereotypical behavior’. He is overjoyed with the freedom he finds instead in enjoying the yams. To Kendrick, “The yams are the power that be, you can smell it as I walk down the street”, a proud reclamation of his blackness in this suddenly visible world for him.
A further, more detailed, and by far a more eloquent explanation of the yams can be found in this video. Be warned however, that this video does diminish the specified and pointed black power that I believe Lamar calls on (and one that cannot be called on by non-POC like she exemplifies in the end).
“It’s not the black experience, but rather his black experience that can be used to inspire, empower and educate. Over a half-century later, Kendrick Lamar has become the modern figurehead from which Ellison’s novel takes its namesake.” (Hale, “Kendrick Lamar Is The Invisible Man”)
For Ellison and Lamar it is important to drive the point home that their stories, their narratives, are not the black experience but one black experience. Each is one experience of many although the message is essentially the same between these two in particular. Black men, to this day, are seen as invisible as human and yet extremely visible for their blackness only.
I was really struck by Lamar’s sense that “Sometimes the message is more important than the messenger.” In the context you note here, it has to do with him denying “visibility” in a way, and embracing invisibility. This relates well to what I think Ellison really means by invisibility: its a reflective, all encompassing awareness of one’s identity and positionally. In a sense it is a pain-induced awareness. It embodies what we talked about in class as a certain “jazz consciousness,” an “analytical way of listening” to the music of what happens, and a knowledge that ultimately serves as a foundation for just,informed action. The best art is what Ellison describes as a “covert preparation for more overt action,” and the best art, to me, is that which is the product of an achieved invisibility–this is the message–rather than a dedicated action on behalf of the messenger.