Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-nominated album,
good kid, m.A.A.D city, was released on October 22, 2012, nearly eight months after George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. It wasn’t as if Kendrick Lamar planned it that way. It’s not a thing you can, or would ever want to plan. Kendrick was simply going about doing his work, while America was going about doing its own.
But it’s important to note when this album was released because it provides the context for the way the album was received. For months, pictures and stories of Trayvon Martin had circulated every form of media, and everyone was forming an opinion on who this 17-year-old black boy from Miami, who had been shot in the chest on his way home after buying some iced tea and Skittles, was and wasn’t...