Racial Inequality In Kendrick Lamar's Song 'Alright'

“We gon’ be alright! We gon’ be alright!”, the refrain of Kendrick Lamar’s song “Alright” was repetitively chanted by Black Lives Matter protesters in June 2015, while they were gathering at Cleveland State University to confront police who arrested a 14-year-old for being “allegedly” intoxicated on bus (Gordon). The Slate culture writer Aisha Harris indicates a suggestion if “Alright” could become “the new Black national anthem” due to its being “unapologetically black”, since the song is acknowledged as the “unifying soundtrack of the Black Lives Matter movement (cf. Coscarelli; Robinson). As Harris considers this song as “both a way to be defiant and proud in the face of those who don’t see you as anything more than a ‘race-baiter’ or a

Ruffin II, has been successful “in creating a new mechanism for non-violently addressing racial inequality in twenty-first century America” by promoting its agenda through cyber activism. As the movement is inspired by the Civil Rights/Black Power movement in the 1960s, the Black Feminist movement and the Anti-Apartheid/Pan African movement in the 1980s, the political hip-hop movement in the late 1980s, the LGBT movement in the 2000s, and the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, Ruffin II also commended Black Lives Matter not only for its responding action against anti-Black racism, but also for its intersectionality in “calling for a united focus on issues of race, class, gender, nationality, sexuality, disability, and state-sponsored violence” with no preference of one social issue over another. Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly, where “Alright” is the single taken off, is widely acclaimed by music and culture critics for its direct link to the Black Lives Matter Movement; furthermore, with the social observation in the lyrics of all tracks, the album is hailed as the “reboot” of conscious rap which makes hip-hop a part of Black Lives Matter’s musical revolution