A few days before this album popped up on my list thanks to the random number generator, a Los Angeles rap icon released a new album that tackles intense subject matter & doesn't always paint the emcee in a flattering light. Lots of conversation followed around the responsible use of the emcee's platform & whether he was using his well-known status as a conscious rapper to make provocative statements without offering enough solutions.
Of course the album I'm talking about is Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar, but that whole paragraph could apply to the furor that swirled around Death Certificate when it first dropped, & relistening to it today allowed me to unpack some of my feelings about the new K.Dot, as well as how my perspective on edginess changes as I get older as a hiphop fan.
When my students share rap music with me, I encourage a lot of discussion of content. I usually leave all the violence out of the conversation, & focus instead on how the authorial lens treats marginalized groups--in the popular rap of today, that usually means women, LGBTQ+ folx, & sometimes people with disabilities. I've had students ask various versions of "this song talks about killing people, why are you so caught up on the word 'bitch?'" My answer is that, in my experience, very very few listeners come away from, let's say, a Comethazine album with the message that it's cool or desirable to gangbang & murder. But a lot of young male listeners come away from such an album with the message that it's cool to mistreat women.
When you're an adolescent, there's a subversive thrill you get from hearing taboo content from a provocative voice, & relish in the idea of self-appointed moral guardians taking offense, no matter the context. But as an adult, you realize that not all edginess is created equal. So when Ice Cube raps about violent revenge fantasies against LAPD chief Daryl Gates in "The Wrong N***a to Fuck Wit," white men who sexually harass Black women in "Horny Lil' Devil," or Uncle Sam himself in "I Wanna Kill Sam," it hits a lot different than the repeated homophobic slurs in "Horny Lil' Devil" & "No Vaseline," or the xenophobia in "Horny Lil' Devil" & "Black Korea." ("Horny Lil' Devil" has a little bit of everything, doesn't it?)
Kendrick Lamar in 2022 & Ice Cube in 1991 both used the same tactic: dividing their albums into 2 clearly delineated halves. A major difference is that Cube made the meanings of the 2 halves explicit: he says it both on record & in the liner notes: "The death side, a mirrored image of where we are today [...] The life side, a vision of where we need to go." It's very clear that Cube is pointing out problems in the 1st half of the album & offering solutions in the 2nd half. Some topics are in direct conversation, like the gang truces of "Color Blind" as counterpoint to the set warfare of "My Summer Vacation;" the maturing out of childish shenanigans in "Doing Dumb Shit" opposed to the picaresque "Steady Mobbin';" or the extreme, deracialized sexualization of a teenage girl in "Givin' Up the Nappy Dugout" answered in (yet again!) "Horny Lil' Devil," which for all its crudeness, feels genuinely respectful of the Black women whose dignity it seeks to defend.
To me, the most powerful tracks on the album come near the end of the "death side." In "A Bird in the Hand"--over a sample-heavy Boogie Men beat that sounds more like the chaotic Bomb Squad production of AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted than the leaner, funkier offerings found on this album--Cube uses a surgical triplet flow to carefully & precisely unfold an explanation of the socioeconomic factors that lead so many underemployed, given-up-on young Black men to try their hands at the dope game. "Blacks are too fucking broke to be Republican," he declares, before ending the song on a double-double-entendre claiming that a kilo of coke will solve more problems than the current president: "A bird in the hand is worth more than a Bush."
Soon after that triumph we get "Alive on Arrival," where Cube narrates from the perspective of an innocent bystander in a drive-by who dies in the hospital from neglect & indifference. It's obvious that the cops care more about interrogating him than saving his life, & the institutional problems (he cites the unavailability of "an overworked physician") & well-chosen details of humdrum waiting room existence ("I done watched 2 episodes of M*A*S*H") paint a vivid & disturbing portrait of the kind of thing that happens far too often & is written about far too seldom. Of course, the last stroke of genius is ending the "death side" & starting the "life side" in the same place. From death to birth, from dystopia to careful optimism, the symbolic hospital is the album's fulcrum.
Death Certificate is one of the most ambitious & artistically successful full-fledged concept albums in hiphop history. If you put this album on for something in the background while you do other stuff, you'll find yourself sitting down & forgetting the other stuff because you're getting drawn inexorably into Cube's world. The vocals are so powerful & the concepts are so vividly compelling that it's impossible not to listen. In the context of Kendrick's latest opus, it needs to be acknowledged that not every rapper has the luxury of being able to embody characters, to say provocative things on record without necessarily having it interpreted as literal or an endorsement. Cube & Kenny were both very aware of that luxury, & were happy to use it to make artistically layered statements. What would the world look like if we gave every rapper that benefit of the doubt?
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