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Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Visit us online at faith.yale.edu.

Femi Olutade: What Kendrick does in DAMN. Is he pulls it out from his experience growing up in Compton and South Central LA, this place of violence, what he refers to as a mad city, where there's so much that has. It's gone on because of the environment that people have gone through. He shows the ills of that environment by showing it in himself.

But throughout the album, what you start to discover is that Kendrick depicts himself as a prophet. And as he's depicting the evil inside himself, what he eventually reveals is that he is just a mirror for America, that everything that he is saying and doing and showing about his struggles between pride and humility, between lust and love.

And this desire to try to reach for and achieve and search for sex, money, and murder is how he describes it. That is something that is core to the hip hop and environment that Kendrick grew up in, but is actually a mirror. of something that is much larger and a spiritual set of thoughts and emotions in America.

And when Kendrick starts playing the Super Bowl and everyone starts coming out in red, white, and blue, and you know, even before that, Samuel L. Jackson comes and says, I'm your Uncle Sam, this personification of America, that there's this larger commentary about Kendrick being this mirror for the tendencies and for the thoughts and emotions that are generally shared through.

The media through the economic system to the governmental system of America.

Evan Rosa: This is For the Life of the World, a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. I'm Evan Rosa with the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.

Super Bowl LIX was amazing, but not because of the football, or the commercials. It was that 13 minute halftime tour de force that Kendrick Lamar offered the world. Uncle Sam Samuel L. Jackson introduces the show. 

Samuel L. Jackson (Uncle Sam): Salutations, this is your Uncle Sam, and welcome to the Great American game. 

Evan Rosa: A PlayStation controller appears. Is the game football? A video game? Some other game entirely?

Kendrick appears, crouched on a car. 

Kendrick Lamar: My Gemini twin back powering up. No more handshakes and hugs. The energy only circulate through us. Everybody must be judged. But this time God only favored us 20 years. 

Evan Rosa: Dozens of red, white, and blue dancers emerge evoking both the American flag, which they eventually form, as well as the gang wars between Bloods and Crips.

Or as Kendrick says in his song Hood Politics demo Crips and Kins 

Kendrick Lamar: ain't, but Crips against Red State versus a blue state. Which one you governing and 

Evan Rosa: what ensues? is an intricately choreographed set of layered meanings. Illusions. Hidden references and easter eggs to both his own songs and other cultural iconography.

Not all of which have been noticed, by the way. Not to mention explained or understood. Why Samuel L. Jackson? Is it because he plays the Uncle Tom figure in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained? Tennis star Serena Williams appears doing the SeaWalk or CripWalk, dressed in blue. A callback to her 2012 crip walk at the London Olympics, for which she got raked over the coals for, quote, glorifying gang culture.

Or what about those figures leisurely draped over streetlights? A literal reference both to the way that Kendrick introduced his clothing brand, PG Lang, as well as a reference to the video of All Right, which became the anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement. In that video, Kendrick is depicted as having been shot down from a streetlight.

Murdered by a police officer. 

Samuel L. Jackson (Uncle Sam): Dark nights and my prayers.

Evan Rosa: These are just a few of the references. I could go on. Kendrick's music, as well as so much other rap today, is soaked in double, triple, entendre, and more. So much so that you couldn't possibly pick up on all of it by leisurely kicking back and watching the Super Bowl halftime show. It demanded so much more of us.

You can find links to the Super Bowl halftime performance, as well as all of the lyrics from it in the show notes today.

This episode is an introduction to the political theology of Kendrick Lamar and joining me is Femi Olutade. Arguably the living expert on the theology of Kendrick Lamar. As a lifelong fan of hip hop, he's deeply familiar not just with the music Kendrick made, but the influences that made Kendrick. Femi has written incredibly nuanced theological musicological reflections about Kendrick's 2017 album, DAMN., which won the Pulitzer prize for music.

And I became familiar with Femi's work in 2021 while listening to a podcast called Dissect, which analyzes albums line by line, note by note. They cover mostly rap, hip hop, and R& B, but the season on Radioheads and Rainbows is just as good. Femi joined host Cole Kushner to co write a 20 episode analysis of DAMN., offering incredible insight into the theological, moral, and political richness of Kendrick's album, which repays so many replays, forward and backward.

Samuel L. Jackson (Uncle Sam): We're gonna put it in reverse! 

Evan Rosa: Yes, you can play the album backwards and forwards, like a mirror. And they tell. Two different stories, one about wickedness and pride and the other about weakness, love and humility. Oh my gosh. We should all just go listen. 

Kendrick Lamar: So I was taking a walk the other day. 

Evan Rosa: Now if you want to jump into my conversation with Femi about Kendrick Lamar's political theology, please do.

Just jump ahead a few minutes. But I wanted to offer a few preliminaries of my own to help with this most recent context of the Super Bowl halftime performance. Because almost immediately, it was interpreted as nothing more than one of the pettiest, most egotistical, most overkill ways to settle a rap beef between Kendrick and another hip hop artist, Drake.

You see, one way of looking at hip hop is that it's an endless debate between who's the greatest. Now, some fans celebrated this interpretation. Others found it at best irrelevant, confusing, and at worst, a very offensive waste of an opportunity to make a larger statement before an audience of 133 million viewers.

But in my humble opinion, both get it wrong. Kendrick Lamar simply does not work this way. If it was the biggest diss track of all time, it wasn't aimed merely at Drake, but America. And if it was offensive, it was because of its moral clarity and force. To a divided nation, striking a prophetic cord operating similar to a parable.

Parables, according to Jesus, are meant to give more to those who already have, and take away from those who already have nothing. That's from Matthew 13. Because, as the prophet Isaiah says,

Now, at this point, it's possible that you're confused. I don't want to lose you. Rather, I'd invite you to hang with me and lean in. Watch the show again. Listen more closely. Because rap, according to Jay Z, is a lean in genre. A lean in experience. You can't understand it without close examination. Without contextual, bottom up, historical appreciation.

You can't understand it without a willingness to be educated about what it's like to be Black in America. You can't understand it. You can only understand it when your mind is switched on. But I guarantee you that in Kendrick Lamar's outstanding, choreographed, prophetic theater, there's so much more going on.

There's levels to it, you and I know. 

Kendrick Lamar: And if you 

Evan Rosa: want those levels to be clearly spelled out for you, A cleaner, smoother, tighter, more palatable, less subtle social commentary that can be abstracted from history, circumstance, and the genre of rap itself, so that it can be rationally evaluated? Well, you're occupying the exact position Kendrick is critiquing.

Which he predicts in the very performance itself. As he warns us, 

Kendrick Lamar: The revolution bout to be televised, you picked the right time but the wrong guy. 

Evan Rosa: And as Uncle Samuel L. Jackson points out, No, no, no, 

Samuel L. Jackson (Uncle Sam): no, no! Let's do Ghetto! Mr. Lamar!

We're 

Evan Rosa: not gonna like the performance unless you give us the hits, unless you give us the softer, smoother songs. But the female vocal counterpoint, SZA, provides in the easier listening songs from the middle of the set, Luther and All the Stars. Yeah, 

Samuel L. Jackson (Uncle Sam): that's what I'm talking about! What America wants, nice and calm!

You almost there. 

Evan Rosa: Still, what was that? What were those 13 minutes? Well, far from a wasted opportunity. It was public performance art of the highest caliber. So you just let it land. Oh 

Kendrick Lamar: no! It's a cultural divide, I'mma get it on the floor. 

Evan Rosa: It's easily the greatest halftime show in the history of halftime shows.

You really about to do it? Forty acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music. So watch it again. Notice something new. You really about to do it? Yeah, they tried to rig the game, but you can't fake influence. Submit yourself to it. Let it change you. And if you really want to understand it, you need to be open to the possibility that some social commentary can only be understood in light of certain lived experiences.

In this case, at least for me, as a white man, I'd need to learn about the Black American experience. And then, rather than demanding that Kendrick explain it to me in my own vernacular, I just would need to listen to what he's already said, lean in, and listen to his whole body of work, learn his story, expertly rendered in these jaw dropping lyrical performances.

And just, the sickest beats. I could live with him in that Section 80 housing. 

Kendrick Lamar: Fancy girls on Long Beach Boulevard. 

Evan Rosa: Drive with him through his childhood streets of Compton on Good Kid, Mad City. One 

Kendrick Lamar: day you'll respect the Good Kid, Mad City. Mass hallucination, baby. 

Evan Rosa: Resist the tempting forces of both Uncle Sam and Lucifer.

On his journey from Caterpillar to Butterfly in To Pimp a Butterfly. 

Kendrick Lamar: I didn't want to self destruct. The evils of Lucy was all around me. So I went running for answers. 

Evan Rosa: I could look in the mirror he holds up. America's reflection of me, that's what a mirror does, as he says in his Pulitzer Prize winning DAMN..

Kendrick Lamar: America's reflections of me, that's what a mirror does. 

Evan Rosa: I could hear out his messy psyche, laid totally bare in Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers. I've been going through something.

And I could join him for a ride in his latest album named after a car, the 

Samuel L. Jackson (Uncle Sam): GNX. 

Evan Rosa: In the days following Kendrick's Super Bowl performance, J. Cameron Carter, a professor of African American Studies and Comparative Literature and Religion at the University of California, Irvine, he called for a more in depth study of this 13 minute performance, noting that, quote, Black performance carries within it.

An interrogation of the question of country as the problem and question of U. S. political theology and the legacy of Christian empire.

So if you didn't already know about the spiritual clarity and theological richness of Kendrick Lamar and his music, I hope this episode presents an opportunity for you to dive in. It isn't meant to close any books or offer a full explanation of Kendrick's performance, let alone his music, but just to lean in a little bit more.

And to quote Kendrick, salute the truth and the 

Kendrick Lamar: prophecy. So 

Evan Rosa: thanks for leaning in with me and Femi Olutade. Hope you enjoyed. Femi, thank you so much for joining me on For the Life of the World. 

Femi Olutade: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here and chatting about Kendrick and spirituality and other things. 

Evan Rosa: Yeah, absolutely.

I need to confess, you know, I'm, I've been familiar with you because of your appearance on the podcast dissect. And when you came on to essentially what seemed to be a co production or co writing of that whole season on Kendrick Lamar's album, DAMN.. It was kind of a life changing moment for me and meant a lot to me to be going through something as rich and deep as, as that album, I think for a lot of people that listened to the album, it was one of those, and this will be a theme for our conversation, I think it was one of those scenarios where there was like a slow unfolding or revelation of what was actually happening in the album.

And that's just part of what it is to engage Kendrick's music. Femi, how did you find yourself working on that season of Dissect and, and becoming this kind of expert on the theology of Kendrick Lamar? 

Femi Olutade: Um, yeah, it's a great question. I think there's certain long term things, just like a longer spiritual upbringing.

Um, I was raised in an evangelical charismatic background. Um, my parents are immigrants from Nigeria. And really throughout our time growing up and we grew up in America, there's really this, the, the Christian tradition, which is what we knew that was really foundation of how our parents raised us even more than the American side of things, even more than, than the Nigerian cultural side, it was really spirituality.

And we had Bible studies. Every single evening we went to church four times a week. So I think, uh, I think a part of this started is just, just growing up being raised by parents who were, is very committed to their faith and created very committed to Jesus. And that was how as growing up, I learned to see the whole world.

So there, there's that there's me, myself being, you know, because like I said, my, my parents are, are immigrants from Nigeria and black. And so growing up in America where you're black. But also you have this identity that is outside of the African American identity. There's a whole journey in understanding what it means to be Black in America, where you're not from the, the descendants of those that came here enslaved, and don't know you have the historical history of your parents going through the civil rights movement and like.

the 1970s. You know, my parents and a lot of the Nigerians came here in the 80s. So it's like a different like background. And so for me, when I got to be a teenager, hip hop was a thing that for me, I discovered maybe later than other people that might've had their parents playing it when they were growing up.

Like my parents were not playing hip hop music when I was growing up. So for me, I heard it more so and got into it and found things like particularly Tupac was really the first one that I got into. When I was maybe like 14 or so. And so it was really my introduction to a lot of American black culture, a lot of African American culture was listening to hip hop.

And I think just the, the, the way in which it wrestled, at least the artists that I listened to a lot with just issues of social justice, issues of right and wrong issues of pain and suffering and looking for healing and God in the midst of a lot of going on was. So I'm going to talk a little bit about why I really gravitated and got so much out of hip hop.

And so I, from that, I listened to hip hop for years and years, you know, before Kendrick came out and it was maybe 2010, 2011, when I really heard Kendrick for the first time. And, and I've, you know, I have an ear from listening to hip hop when someone is saying something that was in the mainstream hip hop, but then was, had this moral, spiritual clarity that was uncommon right before Good Kid Mad City, which is first major album as I really started paying attention.

And, and then when. That album and subsequent albums came out. I just saw the continual growth and this density of ideas, which is very rare at that, that kind of spiritual clarity often that you see in his work. And so I think fast forward is that through dam, which was 2017 that that came out. And so when that came out, I think I had listened to so many things.

And at that point I had, I had a kid, he was a year old at the time, my son. And so there was this, and I was going through my own spiritual journey because I also was journeying from growing up in the evangelical Protestant charismatic tradition into where I'm now, which is an Eastern Orthodox tradition.

And so in that, that exact time period where that album came out, I was also in this kind of journey period where. I was just reading a lot. I was like listening to a lot of things of the Bible project kind of podcasts and really reframe understanding the Bible in a way that even though I'd read it so much growing up, there was just all these layers.

I realized that I never understood or I'd been missed or didn't even know it was there to look for like the first, you know, 20, you know, almost 30 years of my life. And so it's along with that and reading, reading stuff that, that, that album came out and like really made me. Thank you. And so I, I just wanted to write and put that together because I really felt that that album was one where if you weren't really looking for some of this stuff or weren't really listening or didn't have the background that it wouldn't, wasn't, people weren't going to recognize it.

And particularly at this point, Kendrick was, you know, one of, if not the biggest rapper to, for people that really looking for like rhymes and complexity and, and, and layers, he, he was, he was at the top of the game as far as he'd gotten to that point already. And so I thought it was important to try to.

Write something, write some kind of blog or something so people could understand it if they didn't have the background. And, uh, yeah, essentially I heard about dissect through some other friend. I emailed Cole, who's the host of dissect said, and this was actually just the first season. It was just after the, he did a season on spit butterfly.

That's the first season I emailed him. So it was still smaller at the time. And he's like, Oh, that's, that's cool. Like I'll read through your blog. And then essentially that was kind of it. And then basically, um, a little while later, it was, I guess, 2018. And then he was looking for someone to write the fifth season, which was going to be on by Kendrick Lamar.

And so he said, Hey, I read your, your blog post, like you clearly know a lot about this stuff. And he's, I didn't grow up in a Christian background. I don't have this background at all. So I'd love to have, have a co writer for the first time, or like really a writer for, for this particular episode. And I just want you to take a lot of your knowledge, basically learn how to write in the dice, the dissect format, which is this line by line format.

Um, inserting the, you know, the right kind of references and all these different ways. And so basically I was brought up as a lead writer for that season. So like for the whole, there's 20 scripted episodes, Cole really, he's really, as he's really good at music and production and he hears that kind of first.

So any parts of the, the music production, um, notes are things that he wrote that season. And then everything else is what I wrote. So the majority is the 95, 99 and 5 percent of it, um, is what I wrote. The lyrical substance is, is all you. Yeah, all of that. It was a little stuff. I wrote and stuff. So, um, and I learned a lot doing it I learned I learned how to communicate I learned I learned a lot from Cole in terms of how he had built his audience how He communicated and he had missed somebody that really was wanting to learn about Jesus and Christianity and what country was saying Spiritually, I mean he didn't have the background It was actually very open and very humble person.

I was really willing to listen. It has a really good heart And so I learned a lot about how to communicate through writing that season and really realizing, oh, this is where people are at. This is what people understand or they don't understand. And here's how you can bridge the gap. And so I crafted, helped to craft the scale of like, how to take these things from the Bible, from Kendrick, from hip hop, from black experience, from all of this stuff, and be able to help to make it easily accessible to people who didn't grow up in that background.

So that's a lot of what I learned and try to do a lot in that season. And, and any other things that I've. Done either one dissect or other things, including this interview. Hopefully that also does that here as well, too. Oh, 

Evan Rosa: I'm excited. The spiritual clarity point I think is really fascinating, really interesting.

And we're going to keep it through the lens of Kendrick, but I will say at least generally, when we're talking about music and other art forms and thinking about the sort of purpose of art, and I would say the public purpose of art, I want to foreground it with a little bit because this is, I think. At the sort of hermeneutical heart of what happened, uh, last Sunday night during the super bowl, which is a giant community where it was like 133 million or something that was tuned in.

And I, I mean, arguably because of Kendrick and certainly by the halftime, it was game over for the, for the Eagles, they, they. They had already won the game practically to turn that into this public performance art. It was so much more than a concert felt like a kind of combination concert, album drop reinterpretation.

Performative choreographed, I think, multi layered message. And then to think about the way that that, you know, in so far as like the hermeneutical element is, is about like this exchange between an author and an audience, it's amazing. This is a fascinating thing that Kendrick has done on a very, very public stage where, where there's this, this very profound, I think.

Example of how art shapes and is constitutive of human culture.

Femi Olutade: Yeah. As, as far as art and what it does and what its purpose and what does it mean to be a true artist? I think there's definitely a lot in there from her hermeneutics and from a spiritual perspective. Well, you see a lot in Kendrick's work.

And also if you even look at, you know, what's how St. Paul and how he talks to the kind of Greeks. In Athens and other places, there is definitely the sense of art being part of a prophetic mode of communication, of taking ideas that exist in the spiritual realm and communicating in a ways that really sticks with people and allows people to be immersed in a certain set of thoughts and emotions.

Exactly. It's very much too. Yeah. Paul's crystallize it by, by, and why, why I like the Paul's point is because he talks about, Oh, even as some of your prophets have said, this idea that people, even outside of Israel, outside of the people of God have these prophets that are speaking through poetry in my art, that that is like an essential way in which the spiritual realm, however you engage in that exists.

And then as you mentioned, going back into the old Testament, you know, the prophets that were in the old Testament. are often speaking in poetry and bringing art and in this way in which you have to meditate and work at it. And so I do think art, what, why, what is art? Why is art different than what we're doing now as far as discussing or analyzing it and other things is that art definitely leaves these gaps that are there.

Like poetry in particular, it's built off having gaps and you have to work and digest and put things together. So it allows for this. Multifaceted set of connections that really can break you out from how you currently think in your own set of connection into these new world of kind of connections and whether that be poetry, whether that be hip hop, whether that be, um, fashion, you know, within the orthodox tradition, iconography is one of the central things of, uh, things that are a way of, of making holy set apart art that communicates story, communicates truth, communicate something.

But it's not exactly, it's not video camera footage, it's not, it's not a documentary. It's communicating these much larger, bigger ideas that when you look at it over time, when you pray in front of it over time, when you ponder, when you look for the details, that process is what transforms your thoughts and emotions and gives you these new sets of them.

Evan Rosa: And I think, and I think does work in the prophetic. Mode, and I do want to think about the sort of choreographed nature, because I think that's an important part of this Kendrick performance, but to understand Kendrick as prophet occupying a prophetic space as he has for so long, I come back to sort of the, the bizarre movements of Ezekiel say, where God is having Ezekiel do incredibly strange things, or maybe seemingly irrelevant things.

Lying down on his side for 40 days or doing something with a brick, pretending it's Jerusalem, things that would have confused the audience as well. And I think sort of counterpoint to the relevancy of Paul say, this is maybe more in line with the prophetic mode of like Jesus where the parables are mysterious for a reason, and they're cryptic and they have a way of acting as a lightning rod.

Being a mode of presenting the truth that is meant for a particular mode of reception, I think, and I think that's part of what was going on in that halftime show is it was hard to receive it was, it was just hard to understand and. A lot of people just completely missed the point. 

Femi Olutade: Yeah, that, that is true.

And I think the people, people in the hip hop community talk about, there's a lot about hip hop as a form of it being something Jay Z described it as like lean forward media in his kind of biography that he wrote. And the, he distinguished between media that is lean back media and lean forward media.

That a lot of whether pop music or, you know, blockbuster movies is this lean back. It doesn't require you to think very much. It follows your own expectations. Things just run smoothly and you, you just kind of watch. You don't have to think you don't have to really engage. You can just lean back and just kind of edge out about it.

But what Jay Z described hip hop as something that is lean forward media, that it requires you to take a position. It always started in battling and thoughts and you have to do this extra work and you have to take a position and you have to think about what you think and feel about it because it's not presented just like right for you so directly.

And so when you take Jay Z's definition of hip hop as a lead for media, that's definitely what is going on with Kendrick's performance because how, how somebody would experience that as someone that comes not from being in hip hop, not from knowing or, or listening to it before. Or even if you're at the surface where you've maybe you heard it just in passing or like in a commercial somewhere or like in some venue or a club or something, but haven't really sat with him and understood where it come from and when it came from, then there's a lot of things that would be lost on why is, why is the performance like this and what is it even saying or doing, but for someone, if you, if you really pay attention to hip hop and particularly paid attention to Kendrick's work as someone who's been at the top of Hip hop artistry for the last, wow, I mean, the last decade.

You, when you, you're experiencing it differently than other people. I know that there were some points where I was kind of like, oh, wow. He, this hat, oh wait, he did that. Oh, oh, wow. He did that. And you can, you can experience that in real time. But if you haven't done that work. And it is work to do, even if you're, you have to really listen and think and sometimes look up lyrics and sometimes understand where it's come from.

So maybe listen to other things that came before what is being performed. So there's a lot of work that kind of goes into, into it. So yeah, there is, there is definitely. There is, there is definitely that that's what highlight for this performance. There's definitely a lot of, a lot of work. And I think the reason it was that way, he chose intentionally to do that, to do a performance that is a piece of art, that is something that people have to.

Do the work to understand, maybe to research, to listen and to, to really unfold the ideas. And those who have already done the work up to that point, you have experience where maybe in real time you can, you, you're getting more of it and can both enjoy it and then are picking things up. But then even as it goes forward, there's more to pick up.

And I think that's often what. Makes really transformative art and what's often distinguished a lot of Kendrick's work 

Evan Rosa: and maybe we can do a little bit of dissection, uh, in a moment for, for the super bowl performance, because yes, the super bowl performance was an important message, I think, and, and just a sight to behold, but Kendrick's broader work, I think, is, is just so fascinating and And really repays a close look that lean in, leaning into Kendrick for me goes even deeper than the average hip hop artists.

And it does come back to spiritual clarity for me. It's uncommon to find a musician with the sort of synthetic ability to draw so much together into. What is essentially a musical, lyrical masterpiece that is, is also celebrated in pop culture as well can, can win Grammys and Pulitzer prizes. What, what, what are the key components to understanding the spiritual clarity of Kendrick Lamar?

Femi Olutade: A great question. How can you really understand and, and appreciate the spiritual clarity? How does that unfold? And maybe some of those other work, including DAMN.. You know, where does that come from? A lot of hip hop often deals with the hard reality of life because it comes from the African American experience, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century in kind of low income, urban environments, post the civil rights movement, where you really see the, the weight and the evils and the challenges of Past oppression of a lack of leadership of a lack, lack of fathers, uh, drugs of crime of all these kinds of things in these communities, particularly in New York and Los Angeles, where the music came out of.

And when you grew up in that environment, you can make music about it. That's talking about what you, what is going on there and glorifying it, or just living somewhat blindly to it because you're, you know, now you're at the top. of the artistic success or, or one can just enjoy the parties and the drinks and the drugs.

And one just talks and raps about that and just enjoys it. And that's like the stage where there's a lack of clarity. Where the clarity often comes in is when one's lived through that and what's gone through everything, including oneself, but also seeing the effects on people's lives, on friends, on addictions that you've seen in, in family members or friends, on deaths, whether that be gang violence or addictions with loss of relationships, breakdown of family and order, other things like that.

I think, yeah. When people are able to go through that, talk about the experience, but also talk about what happens depending on how people make choice in their lives and this need to be transformed. And in some ways, because it's going on in such a critical environment where things can be life or death, often the way in more comfortable parts of America, would that be more mainstream, more suburban, more middle class you can, you can, you can think.

Or you can think the right way, I think the wrong way, but you might not end up like getting murdered or murdering somebody, but in a place where life is just on a nice edge, how you think will like very readily produce certain fruit one way or the other. And I think that's where you see a lot of that in DAMN..

And that's where it comes out. The idea of wickedness or weakness, which I've interpreted as being this choice, which seems odd. Nobody really wants to be weak and no one wants to be wicked. But what is. I interpreted as saying is a lot of what Jesus said and what Paul writes about, um, on Corinthians of this idea that when, um, when we are weak, then we are strong because the power of Christ rests in us.

And it is through weakness that people enter into the kingdom of God. And that is the opposite of wickedness, which seeks to have strength, which seeks to domineer, which seems to use that strength for violence and power to both satisfy one's own desires and to be able to keep anyone from challenging what one wants to hold on to.

And so that's a lot of how I interpreted a lot of the Kendrick's words throughout DAMN.. And it's a recurring motif between You know, between wickedness and weakness that goes throughout the whole thing also between then pride and love Becomes also another one that comes out later and love and lust and so there's all these mirrored things that the whole album is actually structured like a chiasm like a lot of the psalms like psalm 67 I've argued that it's it's really chiastic in the sense of the outer The first and last track kind of mirror each other the middle two tracks Which are middle two tracks are pride and humble are the middle two tracks And they're mirroring each other and commenting on each other.

And the song Pride, Kendrick actually being very humble. And the song Humble, Kendrick's actually being very proud. And there's all this like twisting around what's going on. And Humble was one of the tracks that Kendrick performed at the Super Bowl. So all of that is there. And there's all this commentary about how one's choices were, were going to have good fruit or bad fruit.

And that's going to be seen through one's life. And what Kendrick does in Dan is he pulls it out from his experience growing up in Compton and central, south central LA, this place of violence, what he refers to as a mad city where, where there's so much that has gone on because of the environment that people have gone through.

And he shows the ills of that environment and by showing it in himself. But throughout the album, what you start to discover is that Kendrick depicts himself as a prophet. And this is almost like one of these sign acts from Ezekiel that you're talking about. And as he's depicting the evil inside himself, what he eventually reveals, particularly on there's a song called XXX, which is on the latter half of the album, what he reveals there is that he is just a mirror for America, that everything that he is saying and doing and showing about his struggles Between pride and humility between lust and love and this desire to try to reach for and achieve and search for like money, power, and, and, uh, sex, money, and murder is how he describes it.

And that that is something that is very, it's in DNA, which is also one of the songs that he performed, that that is something that is core to the hip hop and the environment that, that, that Kendrick grew up in. But is actually a mirror of something that is much larger and a spiritual set of thoughts and emotions in America.

And that's very clear in DAMN., when you look at something like DNA, when you look at humble, when you look at particularly X, X, X, and that often influences, even if I just tease that for you and it can't get into all of it. When you use, when, when Kendrick starts playing the Super Bowl and everyone starts coming out in red, white, and blue, and that's the whole color palette, you know, and you know, even before that, Samuel L.

Jackson comes, he says, I'm your uncle, Sam, again, he's Samuel L. Jackson dressed up as uncle Sam, this personification of America, that there's this larger commentary about Kendrick being this mirror for the tendencies and for the thoughts and emotions that are generally shared through him. The media through the economic system to the governmental system of America.

Evan Rosa: What's so fascinating about the concept of being a mirror, and this is a direct line from, Oh, I'm going to forget what song. That's what a mirror does America's reflections of me. That's what that's the 

Femi Olutade: end of X, X, that's how X, X ends. Yeah. Marissa America's reflection of me. That's what a mirror does. 

Evan Rosa: And of course, like the, the way he wraps it, it sounds like America, you know, it's almost rhymes with America.

America does. And, uh, and it's just, it's good. It's good lyrically, of course, but it becomes, I think, a hermeneutical device for understanding a lot of what he's trying to do. And you already mentioned a few of the ways that. It's just, if you knew that, if you knew that this was a component of what, of what Kendrick regularly is investing in his lyrics.

Then you'd be looking out for it in a different way. And I mean, it's just, but it is blatant. It's, uh, coming out in red, white, and blue, eventually forming an American flag. And so I think we're in a good spot to like dive in a little bit more on, on what's going on here. And you brought up uncle Sam, uncle Sam is.

Is a personification of America, but Kendrick uses uncle Sam alongside Lucifer and to pimp a butterfly as the two antagonists, well, maybe two of three. I mean, he's also himself as an, as an antagonist and to pimp a butterfly. I'm, I'm curious if you can help set the context, because I think you need, we need to understand the role of Samuel L Jackson in this playing roles in, for instance, Django unchained.

As a kind of quote, uncle Tom figure, there's that, there's that element going on as well. The choice of Samuel L. Jackson for that role is multi layered in and of itself into Pimp a Butterfly. What, what would you say is the role that uncle Sam is playing that would help us understand the role of Samuel L.

Jackson in the Superbowl halftime show? 

Femi Olutade: Yeah, so to answer that directly, I would say, in short, you already alluded to that there is this, there is this mirrored nature also in to the butterfly or like a multi spiritual layer where you see one thing and then there's another thing that's deeper, that's a spiritual reality underneath it.

And in to the butterfly, Uncle Sam is the front for a deeper spirituality that's related to Lucy was short for Lucifer, which is the, the devil or Satan, the, the diabolical false accuser or shining one who also shows up in the recent album GNX. And so it's a representation of pride and strength and control and all these other things.

But Uncle Sam is, is mentioned or Kendrick raps from the perspective of Uncle Sam on a song called Wesley's theory, which is the first track on the album to the butterfly 2015. And on that. Uncle, Uncle Sam's like. What do you want a house or a call 40 acres and a mule, a piano, a guitar. Um, and he's like, you can live at the mall.

So Uncle Sam first represents a lot of commercialism, being able to give you the material and commercial success and possessions. Man and wealth that you really want and Uncle Sam being this vehicle almost, you know, like Satan in the wilderness Tempting Jesus where he's oh, I have control over all the kingdom of the world and I can give you all of it There is there's that kind of thing of offering the to satisfy the material desires But at the same time, what you find is that what's going on with Uncle Sam is Uncle Sam is actually trapping Kendrick and people like Kendrick, just like Lucifer is trying to trap people.

And Uncle Sam does that by getting them to buy these things by using their money in a ways where eventually Uncle Sam could come after them with the, through the IRS and get them for tax evasion. Right. Which is what happened to Wesley Snipes, which is why it's called Wesley's Theory. Right. And so it's, it's, there is this.

Yeah. Kind of diabolical devious thing going on where it's actually a trap because it's an adversarial relationship. Uncle Sam seems like What Uncle Sam is doing is for the benefit of Kendrick to satisfy the needs, but there's actually this adversarial relationship that's going on. That's about power and competition and Uncle Sam being the winner at the end of the day.

Evan Rosa: Yeah. But the 40 acres and a mule element is really important, not just for Wesley's theory. It comes up. I mean, Kendrick recites, uh, recites it again. He refers to 40 acres and a mule in the Superbowl halftime show. He does. Yeah. So let me find a line. He, he says it's right before not like us. It's a, it's a cultural divide.

I mean, get in on the floor, 40 acres and a mule. This is bigger than the music they tried to rig the game, but you can't fake influence. And this is, this is, yeah, it was like, it's a, it's another interpretive code, I think for what's. For how we should understand that performance itself. But I mean, I'll let you maybe explain the 40 acres and a mule reference, but it's a, it's a historical reference.

It comes from the special field orders given by union general William T Sherman during the civil war. That is about livelihood and an ownership of something, but a kind of half hearted. And in a way, almost demeaning effort on the part of uncle Sam to, to try to develop a livelihood for black families in the Jim Crow era.

Femi Olutade: Yeah, exactly. So it is after the civil war, after the slaves are freed, there was this promise that each, you know, black family would receive 40 acres and a mule 40 acres being important because at the time in the 1800s, agriculture was the main form of the economy. And so having land meant that you had an economic stability and potential and can farm on farm on the land and be able to produce and take care of oneself and, and one's family and people.

And a mule, of course, at the time before a lot of the mechanization of the agricultural world, you needed a mule to do farm labor and things. So it was this promise that there would be what would be referred to as reparations of payback for the, the years of slavery and the injustice done against black people.

And long story short, this never actually happened. Then people did not get, everybody did not get 40 acres and a mule. I don't even know if really any substantial amount of people got anything like that. So it's, it's a false promise. And it's just this idea that there, there had not been restitution, there has not been reconciliation and payback for the debt of what it took for the burden placed on black people as the country was in its infancy and for, you know, almost a hundred years afterwards, as far as it being built up.

So a lot of that is, is in there. And again, it goes to this adversarial relationship with Uncle Sam. These false promises, what's the promise, but is never actually really received. And even what is actually whatever, whatever it seems like there is something that is positive received, there's these strings attached to it that then become the same string or maybe even the rope that, you know, people are hanged by or, or, or enslaved the re enslaved by or imprisoned by.

Evan Rosa: And I think this is where to round out the uncle Sam elements to develop it in the context of the great American game, right? That's, that's what, what is introduced at the very beginning of, of the performance said by Samuel L Jackson, the great American game. And this game Kendrick informs us is a rigged game and.

And what some commentators are already pointing out is, is that this great American game is really run by white owners and black athletes. And, and it is a kind of, you wonder about the, the way that there's a kind of exploitation that might be happening there. Fascinating to me was there's a moment when Kendrick is surrounded by, by a bunch of other guys.

And they're all representative of West Coast Compton style, hip hop. There's some jeans and a T T shirt. They've got grills and they're joyfully enjoying this moment. There's 11 of them. And they're underneath that street lamp, which is also another Kendrick reference, both to all right. And to. His company, PG Lang, but the fact that there's 11 of them and that there's, that's the number of football players on a team.

Kendrick is the coach. He's the 12th member, but then you also have 12 disciples. I don't know. You know, there's fascinating numerology that's going on here. What I'm trying to point out is the, the racial element of the Super Bowl halftime show. And. And how, how Kendrick has historically treated this, this theme and has been blasted from every direction about it.

Femi Olutade: Yeah, that, that is very true. So, I mean, you said a lot of things that there's, it goes so deep in terms of how the performance is offering commentary and on different levels. So both, yeah, I said, as far as it being America's game, and as you point out, race are two things that have, I think, several layers in it.

So again, the first, most obvious layer is that America's game is often like a title referred to for American football, you know, it's even distinguished from what we call soccer in America by the word American. It's American football. It doesn't get more than that. When to describe this sport, you have to say American in front of it.

And so this idea of America's game being in the Superbowl, that's what it seems to be introducing. But then there's what you find is that the whole design of it is thematically the most unifying concept is the idea of a competitive game. In the entire performance, everything is centered around that. So you see that in the, it's, it's beginning with a PlayStation, like the, the square square X circle and triangle buttons, which come from a PlayStation again, playing a game, playing in that case, a video game there is like in the back, if you look in the crowd, there's this, there's lights from the crowd that show like loading.

And it's like a percentage loading is if it's loading a video game. And then before he starts, it says there's some text that says there's again with the lights, it says start here and has an arrow pointing to the square where Kendrick starts the performance. So there's all this thing about a game and being played.

So the football game, the video game, all this, this, this kind of game terminology, this competitive game. And again, it's a PlayStation. The word play is in there. And this, even that concept of play comes all the way back to things that Kendrick has said earlier, most notably within 2024 on Euphoria, which was the first track that Kendrick released, um, at, you know, to, to discrediting Drake as the person that was, that was in this competition, this game.

about who's the best rapper that Kendrick said, have you ever played? Have you ever, okay, N word let's play. Have you ever walked your enemy down like with a poker face? And so that when he says play everything around PlayStation, have you ever played this game? It's all tied together. And from when Kendrick Talked about it interviews where his mindset's at what like about the performance and things one of the key Words he brought up was competition and he just like everything is about competition and like hip hop comes is a competitive sport It's a competitive exercise, you know for those that haven't listened to hip hop extensively And the best way to describe it, it's like a debate, it's a, it's a debate competition.

You are, and the topic is always, who is, why am I the best? And that's the debate. Why am I better than you? That's the topic of every single hip hop, you know. Yeah. And the reasons you can categorize them come down to, I can categorize them in three, which is I'm the best because I have the most commercial or material success.

That's one, two. I'm the best because I have the best artistry in terms of how I say that I put things in a way that you've never thought of them before. They're this artistry component. And the third thing is I'm the best because I have the highest integrity. So however you define what creates integrity and those are often what hip hop battle, you can take almost everything that said everything's a debate over like those kind of categories.

Now you start with like the sex money power 

Evan Rosa: thing, 

Femi Olutade: sex money power thing. So within the way Hendrick says it, sex money, murder, murder. Yeah, exactly. So having, because being able to do that, be able to get people out means I can buy the guns. It means I can pay off the people to do the shooting. It means I can control the courts.

All of that is, is in this. really corrupted version of what it means to have economic material success. So all of that is roped into that. And all of that, again, is a mirror towards America in a lot of ways of what's being said in there. And then there's this artistry. What makes good art is hip hop. Good art is, and they're all a lot of what, what uncle Sam says later is, Oh, that's what America wants.

Whenever SZA is singing. What is beauty? What is artwork? What can we appreciate? And then going down to integrity of what is it? What is a flag represent? What is what is the values of like America? What's the what are the values of Kendrick or the values of those that are opposed to Kendrick? So all that is there.

And then all even within those three things there, I would also say there's three layers of where the game is, where the competition is. The top one is like race in America and this competitive landscape that we already talked about with Uncle Sam and this this adversary relationship. Yeah. Beneath that, as we've also alluded to, is this competition within hip hop.

As I mentioned, hip hop is a competitive enterprise. It's a competitive sport. It's a debate that there is always, and Kendrick's talked about this, like for him, hip hop always comes down to competition. And like I said, it's a debate of like, why am I, or why me and my people better than you? All there's a hip hop competition and belief beneath that within 2024, there was the, the very specific competition between Kendrick and Drake.

With certain people that have all have heard a lot of the headlines zoom into that and that's very much there as a through line Throughout particularly the latter half of the of the performance But it is part of this larger thing of just general competition Within all these different levels over these different categories of what makes one better or worse or higher or lower And that's being done.

And also even within race itself is every single layer on is, is, is in every one of those layers. So race in America, we see that with uncle Sam and the flag and what is ghetto, what is not ghetto. You see that in hip hop being really held up as being a, a, a art form that came out of the black African American experience.

And there being all this commentary, what it means and why it makes the same as it does because of that. And then within Drake, the, the, the argument, the, the feud or with Drake himself, a lot of it, what's where it started with was Kendrick saying that Drake was someone who did not, it was not really black is what is what Kendrick said.

And not because his mom happens to be Jewish, but because he didn't really grow up in black culture. He doesn't really understand black culture, but he uses it to get money. And to be able to get commercial sense, uh, success, which is what Kendrick alleges. And so there's a whole racial element about where Drake even fits within the world of us, which is not like us is about at one level about black people, black people that have, that have been enslaved by people that have tried to make a way out.

And so All of that, that idea of competition on all those levels and, and trying to assert what is true, what is good, what is right through hip hop. That's a lot of where a lot of those themes start unfolding throughout the, the halftime show. 

Evan Rosa: Yeah, I think we need to address some of this because you're right that, I mean, it was maybe the only narrative in the, the evening of the first, the first takes on, on the halftime show were, uh, just puzzlement from, you know, many parents, uh, texting their kids, like, Do you know what that was?

But you know, as Kendrick did say, the revolution is about to be televised, but you picked the wrong guy and he's going to blow everything up. Um, Drake, everyone honed in on the beef. Everyone wanted to say it was just the, the biggest diss track in history. And this idea of being better than superior and being in constant debate.

I think it's very, very. Misunderstood in so many ways, and I think it became a marker for distaste among a lot of people is that, so the pettiness of using the, something as huge as the super bowl to settle game over a rap beef. And yet I think it's, it's, it's just misses the point entirely. And the fact that, you know, he, he does not like us last, the fact that he teases it.

In the middle of the set, there's this kind of awareness to me that, that, that he knows it's going to be misunderstood. He has uncle Sam approve of, you know, the easier listening R and B songs where there's not really any rapping with SZA involved those, Oh, more like that. We need more of that. There you go.

It's Kendrick anticipated prophetically anticipated. The very critique that was going to happen, the, the struggle between, I think, rap and mainstream American culture, which he's also very well attuned to, uh, you can listen to him talk about Geraldo on, on, on, on DAMN. As totally missing the point. Um, and I think this, this idea of missing the point and, and choosing the wrong guy, turn the TV off.

There's not just a struggle between Kendrick. And Drake, it's the struggle between the author and the audience, rap culture, black male rap culture in particular, and mainstream culture thinking of the Superbowl halftime show as a sort of, as you say, lean back, or as Jay Z said, lean back, not lean in, it's just entertained me, uh, almost to the point of stupidity and, and Kendrick is pushing on that so much.

Uh, I would just love to hear what you think is going on, like with this. Incredibly strong reaction to the, you know, the biggest diss track in the history of diss tracks. 

Femi Olutade: Yeah, I think it's, yeah, I don't know. There's so many layers to it. I mean, uh, there's, there's this, there's the idea of, I don't know, you know, people like to see blood kind of this, this idea.

And Kendrick said that, said that at some point of, I think it's on 616 in LA, which is one, he didn't release it widely, but I think it's on social media or is, or is, is I, I love peace, but war ready if the world ready to see you or want to see you bleed. Which part of it is, but there's an idea of almost this like gladiatorial thing.

I think that's there. And well, I mean, that's football. It's also the most violent of sports, right? Of popular ones. That's that's had such a wide audience. Yeah, totally. The metaphor there is 

Evan Rosa: constantly a 

Femi Olutade: metaphor of war, violence, violence. Exactly. So there's that whole element of it. That's there. And just also just like the cult of celebrity and like, you know, and people really identifying strongly and being on one team versus another and wanting to see people rise up, wanting to see people brought down.

There's this kind of almost like eating popcorn and watching it. So there is this gladiatorial aspect of it that I think is why people often focus on it so much. Um, and I think not, not able to see the nuance of, Oh, they're saying this, but there's layers of why they're saying it. There's layers of what they're getting at.

And when you only see. Just that the two people going at it, you can overly focus on that and think, Oh, maybe it's petty. Maybe it's not a debate over them, but there's a lot of bigger things. Some of the things are about hip hop. Some things are about identity and culture. Um, and one of the things is a lot in one of it, it, it, the third thing that I mentioned about integrity was often what Kendrick.

And it did. Artistry was there. Like, and I think people knew that Kendrick was going to be artistically savvy and just on top of it. But he really won on integrity at the end of the day because he proved Drake to be someone that wasn't authentic and didn't have integrity towards black people. And even more so, the thing that became the viral thing was allegations about his, about him allegedly engaging in sexual misbehavior.

With people that with girls that were young, and there's a whole layer to that, that when Kendrick really leaned into that, and there was other things that had existed before on the Internet that Kendrick was able to refer back to that had been there for years for five years before that there's things out there that Kendrick was just then repeating out loud that had been there before.

When this going on in the same year in which someone like P. Diddy gets brought down and arrested where there is a lot more of this like awareness of like the, the, the unjust underbelly of what's going on, predatory or behavior in some of these places of power. There is a whole aspect of it, of the, like I said, this, this competition, which is seeking for something more than just, Oh, I individually win or even my city wins or not.

There's a question about, about society. And what do we do when there is evil that we could recognize is truly evil, that should not be rewarded so much and not be declared the winner if they act in this way, we should not see them as a winner. We should not see them as being successful because if they act this way, there is potentially this way, if this room for them to change it and and mature and grew up and repent and and and pay restitution and things like that.

But if someone refuses to do that, They shouldn't be allowed to be viewed in a way where we look at them as an example or look up to them in a certain way. And a lot of what, if you listen to a lot of Kendrick after work and what he's saying, a lot of it is this idea of, hey, somebody had to do this.

That's actually the TV off, there's a last thing and the hook there is like, yeah, got my foot up on the gas, but somebody got to do it. And the whole thing starts one of the early lines off of bodies, which is like the unreleased song was like, everybody must be judged. Oh, he says that he says that it's, it starts off with like reincarnated with love, my Gemini twin, which is about this idea of there's this dark side and, uh, and a light side, there is this like evil and good.

There's all this stuff that's in there. But he says that everyone must be judged, but this time God only favoring us, like, and so there is this idea, if you look at it from this moral standpoint, and I know a lot of, I've definitely talked to a lot of women and heard a lot of women heard that said at the end, and we're like, this is a good thing because someone needs to make sure that this kind of behavior is Is something that people realize if you go into this, you will be found out.

You will be paraded as an example of what not to be in front of everybody. And if even like that, this could be so discouraged. So spoken out again as heinous and evil, that it should be there as a public service announcement at the Superbowl. And so, yeah, this idea, everyone will be judged that to some extent there is presented as in what Kendrick is more than just as beef or this thing, this painting that he doesn't like about Drake or something like that.

There's this idea of, hey, how you act, how America acts, how people behave good or bad, whether it's black people, whether it's white people, how you act with one's life, how you don't want kids, how men act with women, how society acts with people that are, that are vulnerable. And yeah, how Drake acts with his fame and his power and his ability to still rap about, he had a response and he used to Talking about, Oh, Kendrick wins.

Then people are going to be like dancing and twerking with a dictionary or something. And he's leading us as ignorance and stuff. And this idea of like, what do you do with that power? And you are going to be judged by that. I'm going to be Kendrick because I'm going to be judged by it. We're all going to be judged by God eventually from it.

And all of that thing about competition, there's idea of who declares the winner. And there's a whole layer in this that, well, ultimately God is the one that declares the winner because everyone will be judged. Yeah. It's all part of the competition. 

Evan Rosa: Yeah. I mean like the, and I, I haven't heard, heard the song yet cause it just came out, but, but Drake's is leaning into basically the ignorance side of things.

And he's just saying, I just came to have a good time. That's like his latest track and, and, and this, and the sort of moral seriousness that Kendrick brings to everything is, is incredible. It's astounding. And I think we can maintain like the sort of the alleged nature of. The Drake stuff. And as you said, Kendrick's just repeating what was already out there.

It's just amazing, um, to see that level of moral seriousness, bringing something to the gladiator ring. I really think you're onto something with that, that, that the Superbowl is the contemporary gladiator ring. I mean, we've got to have us UFC as well, but not at the level of. Of that, the Superbowl holds for people where everyone wants to see blood and, and Kendrick brings this moral seriousness, this spiritual clarity, and seems to always ever be raising this question.

Is it wickedness or weakness? You decide he lit. He still leaves it up to, to the, to the listener.

Femi, I know you got to go. Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. We peeled back only a few layers of this onion, and I've just enjoyed. The whole thing. I am so grateful to you and, and I hope maybe you'll be willing to join me again sometime. 

Femi Olutade: Yeah, it's great talking. Um, great conversation.

Really appreciate the work that you've done to understand the show. A lot of Kendrick's work, everything going on. There's so many layers, but it's always good to talk to people that have been doing that work when hopefully that does a service to. All of us to think about these ideas and, um, definitely love the work that y'all done love the, uh, for the life of the world.

It's my favorite Alexander Schmemann book within the orthodox tradition. And I also, I love Miroslav Wolf's work, Exclusion and Embrace was like one of the early books I read in college that was really influential for me. In many ways, the whole battle with Drake and everything we talked about is a mirror for the discussion in Exclusion and Embrace.

Everything about otherness and identity and excluding others, uh, or erasing them. All of that. There's so many layers. It's all in there. 

Evan Rosa: Oh my gosh. Well, that's fantastic. Femi, I'm delighted to have met you. Thanks for joining us on the show. 

Femi Olutade: Awesome. Thanks Evan.

For

the life of the world is a. of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured Femi Olutade, production assistants by Alexa Rollow, Emily Brookfield, Zoë Halaban, Kacie Barrett, and Macie Bridge. I'm Evan Rosa and I edit and produce the show. For more information, visit us online at faith.

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