February 12, 2025 • 34 mins
Ramses Ja and Q Ward take a look at a few of the hidden gems in Kendrick Lamar's half time show at this year's Super bowl.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is the Black Information Network Daily Podcast, and I'm
your host, Ramsey's Jaw. And sometimes the amount of stories
that make their way to us means that we simply
can't cover everything that comes our way. But from time
to time, a story just stays with me and Bill
compelled to share it with you and give you my thoughts.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
And now one more thing, all right, the super Bowl
bigger than what.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Uh or as it's known in my circles, the UH
the the game that they were playing during the Kendrick
Lamar concert.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
They did have a football game.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
That was it. Yeah, So that's it, okay, understood, understood. Well.
A lot of folks have their opinions on whether or
not Kendrick Lamar are put on a good show, whether
it was worthy of the super Bowl halftime, and I'm
(01:09):
just going to get right into it. Uh. I don't
normally leave comments in the comments section. I know better,
but Kendrick is from Compton.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Kendrick is from Compton.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, and I'm from Compton, and I'm just I'm not
made that way where I could just ignore somebody.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
I've been trying to, but I can't.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, i gotta I gotta get in there, right so.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
And you know how I'm anti comment section, Like.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
That's super duper anti.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
That's not where I hang out. I don't roll over there.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Well, but you have to get a couple of bars off,
Like I'm like, hey, look, man, for those people, they
got something to say. If I see three, four, five
of them in a row, I'm like okay. And granted,
and there's more people, more people saying they loved it.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
But I'm not trying to bang on those people. I'm
here to teach.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yes, they need to learn right. So like that, and
in that spirit, you know, there's a news station out
where we live. They put a comment out that said,
what do you think of Kendrick Mar's halftime performance? Rate
your thoughts going from A plus to F right? And
so it's you know, we're a polarized time in this country.
(02:26):
So there were a lot of a pluses and a
lot of f's right. And I noticed a trend with
the f's. They looked a certain way. They had the
same complaints, you know, whatever right, And you could, after
a while, you could start to profile the people who
were assigning the s right. And like I said, too
many f's in a row, I'm like, wait, a minute,
(02:48):
contents stand up? You know what I'm saying, Like I
can't no, I gotta say something because I can't let
y'all out number You know what I'm saying, not that
not that it was close, but anyway, I'll now share
the comment that I left a plus. Folks can watch
any of the breakdowns of the performance on social media
and get exactly why so many people loved it. Kendrick
(03:08):
makes high art. Sometimes you need a guide to high art.
You need to know the background story or the intended
message or the target audience, etc. It works the same
if you're in a museum. Sometimes you can appreciate the
genius of an artist or a sculpture until you appreciate
the purpose of the piece, or the risk involved, or
(03:31):
where the artist was creatively at that time. There's a
reason he's a Pulitzer Prize winning artist who has twenty
two Grammys. The reason doesn't need to be lost on you. Also,
I don't understand all the lyrics to Pearl Jam or Radiohead,
so let's all be careful on that two way street,
Compton Forever, keep winning dot Now or the people that
(03:59):
were not able to get past Well, I just I
don't understand or just it's too hip hopp or there
were no explosions or fireworks or anything like that. I
say to you, this is high art. There are easter
(04:19):
eggs in his performances. There are easter eggs in his lyrics,
in his raps that you don't know about. Q and
I once we said something on this show. We said,
you know, there are people who are super lyrical. Right,
Eminem is a super lyrical person. You know, you could
argue Drake as the same, and j Cole, and there's
(04:40):
these great names jay Z and so forth right nas
of course, these greats that are super lyrical. But what
Kendrick does is something different. He's playing a different game.
There are levels to his his his music. Each song
requires as a breakdown, and that's not something you can
(05:01):
say about any of those other names. They just kind
of say what they feel. And Kendrick is saying something
where no matter how many times you listen to the song,
you're gonna hear something different, or he's saying something to
where no matter how many different breakdowns you hear of
the song, the next breakdown is holding another easter egg
that you hadn't even considered a perfect example of this
(05:24):
is and I hope I get this right. During that
Super Bowl performance, there was someone who pointed out that
when he came out on a PlayStation controller that the
X and the triangle and the circle and the square
were lighting up in such a way that it replicated
the cheat code for GTA five for Infinite Life or
(05:49):
something like that. Is like increase your attributes, right, And
when you take that in context of what it is
Kendrick stood for what it is he's trying to do,
for the purpose what machine he's up against, and then
the fact that many of us can identify with that,
you start to understand and appreciate. Oh, there's easter eggs
(06:09):
here that I could not have considered, and you were
looking for an explosion. Now, I don't want to suck
all the oxygen out of this conversation because I know
that you has plenty to share and then will come
back to me because I have some more to share
from online sources.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, we could do this like this conversation we could
have for hours. Yeah, because it means something different to
us than it would the layman or the just common
person who just so happened to be watching the Super Bowl,
or just so happens to be a fan of music.
Being a specific fan of Kendrick Lamar brings with it
a different set of eyes, a different set of ears,
(06:50):
a third eye, and you.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Have to know that you're not going to catch it.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
A different way of processing and an understanding. Like you
said that you won't catch every Easter egg the first
twenty five times, right. I heard Kendrick talking to Drake
on All the Stars last year. That song came out
seven years ago or something like that. Yeah, we're still
(07:16):
learning from seven years ago today, So you're not going
to get everything that happened a few days ago right
on time. There's two separate pieces of data that are
being ignored or missed here. One of them is the
most obvious one, which is confusing me the most. How
(07:36):
people are. It's funny while I was saying that, I
realized that I'm not confused. I got unconfused while I
was saying that people are being intentionally up to in
the same way they did with this new president. When
he was running for president. People would pretend to not
see things and pretend to not know things, or not
(08:00):
even pretend not to know them, but just take the
opposite position fervently while ignoring obvious things, and we will
be like, how are they? Oh, never mind, they're sick offense?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
There are some people who watched this just so they
could say it was whack.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So of course, in their opinion, it's going to be whack.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
They precolored it that way. And the reason why I
know that is that there are people who I know
to be intelligent. I didn't just start interacting with them
on Sunday making very unintelligent observations like, Hey, how come
he's doing these songs people don't know yet versus the
hits And that's so obvious to us, and I'm like
(08:42):
it should be. GNX just came out. Artists see a
nearly four hundred percent spike in sales of the music
they perform at the super Bowl. After the super Bowl,
why would he not perform the music from the album
that he just put out?
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And I add something else here. Okay, Now that may
be true, and I suspect that it is. But also,
Kendrick Lamar is the same person where when they were
battling Drake and Kendrick. Uh, there there is no way
(09:20):
I am one hundred percent biased. If you're from Compton, California.
You have my support. That's just how I made. Don't
ever put me on a judging panel.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Okay, that's not Compton, but you people, no matter from go.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Ahead, go ahead and say that. But in the in
the context of Drake and Kendrick, that was what it was.
But I I'll say I am a fan of Drake.
Drake has has contributed what he has contributed to the culture,
for better or worse.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
You know how many clubs we've turned upside down to
Drake with Drake.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, and and and I and my heart goes out
to him because I know he's got to be feeling
this over and over and over again, you know. But
when they were battling back and forth, the thing that
let me know not only that my allegiance was where
it was supposed to be because I made that way,
but my allegiance was where it was supposed to be
because it's the right place for it to be, was
(10:18):
when Drake said to Kendrick, you're always rapping like you're
trying to set the slaves free. Right now. What that
was a horrible thing to say. That's an awful thing
to say. It just it's just the of what what
are you wrapping for Drake so you can get some
(10:39):
money and some girls? Yes, that's corn, that's super cool.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Like that as a question, Well, you know that's absolutely
why he's rapped.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Okay, yeah, I'll give you that. But we watched the.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Video where he married seventeen hundred women.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Look, man, that's and that's cool. But like if that's
a byproduct of what it is you're living your life for,
like I around here, you and me Q we stand
on man business right now, what comes with being a man? Yeah,
maybe it's some success, maybe it's some whatever, but man
business is man business.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I was, and we've also turned down we've turned down
some of the spoils.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
With our values exactly right. So that's man business, right
And and Drake I felt like, you know what, he
had never been pressed in that way, and not that
I held it over his head or anything like that.
Most most people aren't, you know, and they're just on
their journey. But when you intentionally attack someone who stands
on man business, who stands on you know, Uh, in
(11:37):
Kendrick's case, let me let me say something different. Uh,
community business, black business, Compton business, la business, like his
people's business, right, and then you belittle that by saying
you always rapping like you're trying to set the slaves free. Oh,
that is a fatal mistake right now, wear that in mind,
(11:58):
where can Where Drake rather was going with that was
to try to point out something that's very true about Kendrick.
Kendrick's music is very political. It is very It's that
many of his songs play like Negro spirituals. They uplift us,
I love myself. If God got us, We're gonna be
all right like that, you know. And it's in the
(12:21):
same spirit of Tupac. So when Kendrick channels Tupac, it's
valid because Tupac wrote, keep your head up, you know
what I'm saying. Tuproc wrote dear Mama. Tupac wrote Brenda's
got a baby, and Drake don't have nothing to go
that can compare with that. And this is why Kendrick
is in those types of conversations where Drake is and
you can talk about how many albums Drake sold, and
(12:44):
like Kendrick said, I make music that electrifying, you make
music that pacifying. Right now, with all that bearing, bearing
all that in mind, when Kendrick steps out to perform
at the super Bowl. It stands to reason that Kendrick
may not necessarily exclusively be doing these particular songs so
(13:09):
that he can get money off of him, although that
could be a byproduct. It could be the case that
this playlist was curated specifically to get a message off. Indeed,
the performance everything that he's saying, and with someone like him,
I wouldn't put that past him.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Now, it's not that that could be the case. That's
absolutely the case.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
It is.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
I'm just saying, and there's a bomb continue ahead where
I was going. Yeah, there is a commercial element to this,
and I should pretend that it's not. What would be
me being up to and intellectually dishonest and I refuse to.
The message part is obvious. It's kindred. He's the culture
(13:51):
part is never going away. He never turns that button
off for the capital part. But the capital part exists.
Most artists that perform at the super Bowl halftime show
our legacy artists performing their hits.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
That's what they have.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Kendrick is in his prime with the number one album
that just came out, So for people to I bring
this up intentionally, people were confused how songs like Peekable
were performed, it's a smash from his brand new album, like,
of course get it. He's making room for that new
music as well, and the messaging again would have to
(14:29):
be intentionally missed as well. You had to be you
had to be watching with the critical eye to pick
him apart and not understand if we watched that to
pick out all the stuff we didn't like and find
all the flaws and all the mistakes and point to
all the reasons how it could have been better.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Of course we could.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
But that's like people picking at Lebron James, like, yeah,
you can watch his game and you can talk about how,
you know, Michael Jordan was six for six and he
never lost. Except to make that statement and it be true.
To pretend that Michael Jordan only played for six seasons,
you have to ignore all the times he didn't even
(15:08):
get to the championship, And then you have to be
intellectually dishonest and make it a better accomplishment to not
make it to the championship than to make it there
and not win it. But there are people who are
committed to that. There are people who have made careers
off of doing that. Watching Lebron James play basketball, a
(15:28):
man who does everything in basketball well and has at
the highest level for longer than anyone ever has. There
are people who have made millions of dollars turning on
a microphone in the camera and telling us how good
he isn't And that's sad, right, especially because you and
I talk about our lack of monolithic solidarity. Because we
(15:51):
say it like it's a flex. There's this other thing
that we started to say, like it's a flex. That's ridiculous.
I'm not my ancestors. Flex. Are you trying to position
yourself as better, as stronger, as able to endure more,
as more intelligent as Like what are you saying when
you say that? Because I hear you saying it as
a flex, you couldn't possibly understand the gravity of the
(16:15):
statement that you're making. They died so you can do
what you want now. They died so you could have
the privilege to not participate in elections that they died
to be able to cast a vote in. Of course,
you're not our ancestors. Some of you couldn't be. Some
of you couldn't have possibly survived what they went through.
(16:35):
So someone who's channeling all of them every time he
puts his pen to paper. It's really above your criticism.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
There, it is. That's it. You are not qualified to
criticize Kendrick Lamar. Now if you say, hey, it's not
for me, then say hey, it's not for me. Okay,
but say that in your private circles. Don't go into
the chat room and give this man an f because
you didn't get it right. You have to bear in
(17:06):
mind there's a real like you don't get to that
level by accident. How about this, Let me add something
else here, something that I learned. And I picked this
up from another one of the people that was pointing
out all the different Easter eggs, right, And then I
think to your point Q about him, you know, playing
some album cuts off of his new album, There is
(17:26):
a song called Man in the Garden, right, and I
didn't think to break that down any further. I just
didn't think to break it down any further. Man in
the Garden, I'm thinking Madison Square, you know, I'm just
whatever whatever came to mind. He performs a little bit
(17:48):
of that song sitting on the steps at the super Bowl,
surrounded by his dancers, but only the ones wearing white,
and then as this person who was sharing Easter eggs
on their social media says, this is more reminiscent of
like a like a cemetery or a funeral. And he's like,
(18:11):
you know, and when you think man in the garden,
then it comes full circle. And I was like, man,
I didn't even I didn't even get that. And he's like, yeah,
well when you see the only the dancers in the
white are there, and how he used the red, the white,
and the blue, the red and the blue specifically from
where he comes from and the white to show where
everyone ends up. Like it was a breakdown where I
(18:32):
was like, man, the artistry here. To listen to someone
say there were no fireworks is like okay, listen you you.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Need to be pacified or no spinning rims is what
that's the that's the equivalent of saying And this is
the part that makes that even deeper. What you just
explained might not have even been his point.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
But the fact, how I think about it, it could be.
And that's the point. And can I go somewhere with this?
So watch this ghost face killer of all people, ghost
face killer for anybody that listens to Wu Tang, anybody
that knows ghosts. He says some stuff, and it's sometimes
(19:15):
it'd be sounding wow, it sound good, but it'd be
sounding wild, you know what I'm saying, Like he just
you know the wallabies and the olive trees and the
you know, like that's ghosts, right. And you know, he's
had some criticisms throughout his career, as all artists do.
(19:36):
But he said something that stayed with me long before
Kendrick was even on the radar. But someone had had
taken an issue with him and maybe an interviewer had
brought it to his attention, like, hey, man, so what
do you say to people that say, hey, they don't
really follow your lyrics, they don't really understand what it
is you're trying to say, you know all the time? Well,
ghost Face said, well, listen, artists supposed to make you
(19:59):
feel So I'm or phrasing. This was years ago, and
ghosts don't talk like this. You can go back and
try to find an interview yourself. I'm not trying to
miss quote ghost Face killer. He's always been very kind
to me, so, but he was saying, you know, art
is supposed to make you feel something. Okay, when you
go into a museum and you see a painting or whatever.
You might not know what the painting is. It can
(20:20):
be an abstract sort of painting, but the point is
for it to make you feel something. And if you
see the painting and you feel something, mission accomplished. If
you see the painting and you don't feel something, move
on to the next piece. But I make art. So
this is effectually what he was communicating, and that stayed
with me because I am a child of hip hop.
(20:42):
My my older brother is hip hop royalty. So I
got all of this. Honestly, my whole career is hip hop, right,
So that was something that I needed to take with
me because a lot of hip hop songs, you know,
I'm like, Okay, is that grammatically make sense? No? Is
(21:04):
that make What is he saying? Does that go with
the theme of the song? No? Not necessarily, but did
I feel something? And that was where I was able
to make the determination once upon a time that Tupac
was the best, the best rapper to ever live, the
greatest of all time, because when Tupac makes a song,
he puts feeling into it and he makes sure that
you feel something on the other side of it, and
(21:25):
that might not be something That's true with other lyrical
rappers who you're just wowed by the fact that they
are talented. No where is the feeling what am I taking?
What feeling have I taken from this?
Speaker 3 (21:37):
The thing that disappoints me the most at a discourse
behind this, because I don't mind people not loving it.
I just wish that it didn't have to be so extreme.
People aren't saying, oh, that was cool, it just wasn't
for me. They're like it was trash yeah, And I'm like,
how did everybody miss the obvious? People are saying now
in response to this performance, the same thing they were
(22:00):
saying in between Drake setting it off and Kendrick responding.
They're saying the same thing, bops and he make the
slave free music. And like all the things that they said,
they learned nothing from what just happened. Like he taught
a lesson put Belta and then went back to Kendrick
(22:22):
and he showed up authentically asked Kendrick to give a
message to the to the newly inaugurated president who was
in it terrance, to the very league that hired him,
who removed in racism. Like people ignoring all of this
context and not processing what Kendrick did are missing the
(22:44):
point on such a grand level that when you pointed out,
they're like, you're a stan and how come you can't
be critical? And I'm like, how come you can't open
your eyes and see the very obvious truths He showed
up for us? And how is the us that he
showed up for disappointed and not proud and not haling
him up as the great artist and creator that he is.
(23:08):
He showed up in front of the entire world. More
people watched his halftime performance than Michael Jackson's. The most
viewed halftime in the history of the Super Bowl was
Kendrick Lamar. The halftime performance, probably for the first time ever,
got more viewers than the game. There was a five
or six percent drop off when he stopped performing. Average
(23:30):
peak for Kendrick was I think one hundred and thirty
three point five million viewers. Average peak for the game
was like one hundred and twenty six million. A significant,
noticed present drop off because people showed up to watch
that man perform, and what he did in his performance
would show up for us authentically when he had the
hits to.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Just party, oh yeah, he's got him.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
He could have come and just partied with with Asap Rocky,
But that's not what he was there for, right and
after he gave us the message and he walked us
through the story, like all the comments that you guys
are making, Uncle Sam made those points for you while
he was performing, and he responded in full artistic context,
(24:15):
live in front of the world to every criticism before
you even had a chance to give him. And you
still brought those same lazy critiques to social media within minutes.
It's like, did you even pay attention at all? Not
just to the performance, but to this whole year. He
spent the year showing you there's nothing you think I
(24:36):
can do that I can't. As a matter of fact,
the thing you think he's better at than me, watch
me make a smash and hit him over the head
with it. Pay it shot for a year. You better
walk around like daft punk.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Remember day, Listen, I know a gentleman. His name is Stephen.
Stephen is a billionaire with a b He lives not
far from my house and he's friend in mind. Stephen's
(25:16):
house is enormous. You would you would It would take
two magazines to encompass his The grandeur of his home.
You could have a magazine dedicated to just his pool
or just the wing where he hangs one type of
(25:40):
art from one type of part of the world. It's enormous.
I've been to Stephen's house, bulletproof windows like name it,
it's all there. Never seen anything like it. I don't
know that I will. I took another billionaire into his
house and he said that I've been in palaces that
(26:01):
weren't as nice as this one. Okay, the guy that
owns like zig Zag and whatever he's on the cover
of for but you can check him out, promise anyway.
Stephen Cooper's house is expertly curated. It is expressive. It
is for what it is. It is executed at a
(26:26):
level so masterful that it blows the mind. As I mentioned,
I took someone else into Stephen's house who was his neighbor.
They just had never met, and he was so wild
by it. He's like, I've been in palaces that aren't
as nice as this house on this golf course here.
(26:51):
Stephen's house is not my taste. I don't. I'm not
into like Victorian paintings. I'm not into busts of people
with the powdered wigs. I'm not into you know, stained
glass of fixtures from some church in the fourteen hundreds.
That's not my thing, right, But I do recognize the
(27:13):
artistry and the curation of an experience because I got
that one hundred percent walking into his house. Now, this
is how the commentar sound. If I walk into Stephen
Cooper's house and he gives me the full tour and
I got to spend thirty minutes just trying to appreciate
(27:37):
the pool and the gazebo because they had to import
the stone, and the pool is the deepest one in
the whole state, and you could dive and scuba dive
down just that. Right. Imagine if I left his house
because it's not my taste, and I was like, man,
the house was trash, How goofy would I sound? That's
how you sound when you critique a Kendrick Lamar performance.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
There are intended feelings, right, You spoke about art making
you feel. How it makes you feel. Won't always be good, sure,
but there are intended feels. If you are us after
that performance, if you were paying attention to see it
(28:23):
and not watching to find every flaw so that you
could be the first person on the Internet to have
the opposite opinion of everybody else because contrarianism is somehow
an intellectual flex. Now you would have felt moved after Yeah,
those who felt offended by it actually like who got
(28:43):
it and felt defended? Who got the messaging and it
bothered them?
Speaker 1 (28:46):
It was supposed to.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
It was supposed to. If you're us and you felt
that way, you either weren't paying attention, or you're the problem,
or made up your mind before he even started that
he was whack. You couldn't have understood it and been
us and not been moved in a positive way. Those
of us that are being critical are just like, Okay,
(29:09):
everybody glazing Kendrick. Now, so let me show them that
I'm not one of the sheep. It's the same thing
we just dealt with in the election, right, No one
like us should have supported the other guy. Those that
did were either misinformed or have decided in their mind
that I'm going to show everyone how much of a
sheep that I'm not take the contrarian position and just
(29:32):
ride it out because I'm more woke, and I'm more intellectual,
and I'm more aware and more informed than everyone else.
Everybody else is wrong, and I'm right. It's an arrogant, smug, condescending,
intentionally contrarian position to take with no end toward no
end right. I want to read this because I don't
(29:53):
want to spend three days on this topic, because I
know that we could. Kendrick started the show with an
unreleased song that's a snippet right before gnxt dropped that
everyone has been waiting for him to release as a
full song. Now, I don't think he gave us a
full song, but he did give us more lyrics. And
if you can hear these lyrics and think he's mid as,
(30:17):
the famous philosopher Sean Carter once said, if you can't
respect that, your whole perspective is whack. Only thing matter
right now is living right now. And I can't spare
no feelings quiet on set, but my aura allowed I
(30:38):
navigate through hood and wisdom. The money all here, young man,
f holding your hand, you'll die broke, trying to play victim.
The little ideas I told made people go rogue until
God did me a big one that was in the
snippet the verse reincarnated with love my Gemini when backpowering
(31:01):
up no more handshakes and hugs. The energy only circulate
through us. Everybody must be judged, but this time God
only favoring us. Twenty years in, still got that pin
dedicated to bare hard truth. The etiquette speak with a
vigilant tongue. The predicate this time is fu. I'm carrying
(31:21):
heavier hearts right now. I can power lyft with Olympians
two too. As an Also, I'm carrying various darts right now.
I desert this like terror masseu. See we go body
for body, I hand you a body. I'm probably a
better masseuse. I really don't bother nobody, but they run
(31:41):
it by me. If I got to clear out the room,
you would not get the picture. If I had to
sit you for hours in front of the louver, listen
to this, bro, you would not have a soul even
if I had told you to stand next to Johnny
and Q. Have started with nothing but government cheese. But
(32:03):
now I can seize the government too. Remember the food
stamp color was tann and brown, but now the hunted
is blue. Remember I said I'm the greatest back when
you debated the number one and number two topic was
always hilarious to me. You carry him to me. I
brung out the and then he screams, Christ Like, if
(32:28):
that is whack to you, then you're then you and
I can't even have this conversation. Yeah, and that's that's
my take on Listen.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
I'm gonna leave you with this last little bit that
I came across on the internet. This is from my guy,
Bruce Saint James. Okay, Bruce Saint James is white, is
a ghost, but he gets it. Okay, Bruce Saint James
is older than us, but he gets it. Uh. Ten things,
but I'm only gonna give you about six. Ten things
(32:59):
about Kendrick Lamar. One he does not drink or do drugs.
I confirm that during I think our first interview because
that's the same with me. I've never drank, I've never
done drugs, Norris Q. We say that as often as
we can because it's important for people to know that
that is a viable path. He does not drink or
do drugs. Two. He's won twenty two Grammys, an Emmy,
(33:22):
and American Music brit and Pulitzer Prize Awards. Three he
was a straight A student in high school and would
have gone to college for astronomy or psychology, but started
a rap career instead. Number five he's still with his
high school sweetheart. Number six, he is heavily involved in philanthropy.
And we'll end it on number seven, but you could
(33:44):
keep going. He is a brilliant songwriter, and I think
that that's where we want to stop it, because I
think that that, above all else, helps make your point
that he is a brilliant songwriter. So you got anything
else to add to it, do it in the comments.
I'm at ramses Ja.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
I am cbe Ward on all social.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Media and until we talk to you peace. This has
been a production of the Black Information Network. Today's show
is produced by Chris Thompson. Have some thoughts you'd like
to share, use the red microphone talkback feature on the
iHeartRadio app. While you're there, be sure to hit subscribing.
Download all of our episodes. I'm your host Ramsey's Jah
on all social media. Join us tomorrow as we share
(34:25):
our news with our voice from our perspective right here
on the Black Information Network Daily Podcast
This is the Black Information Network Daily Podcast, and I'm
your host, Ramsey's Jaw. And sometimes the amount of stories
that make their way to us means that we simply
can't cover everything that comes our way. But from time
to time, a story just stays with me and Bill
compelled to share it with you and give you my thoughts.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
And now one more thing, all right, the super Bowl
bigger than what.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Uh or as it's known in my circles, the UH
the the game that they were playing during the Kendrick
Lamar concert.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
They did have a football game.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
That was it. Yeah, So that's it, okay, understood, understood. Well.
A lot of folks have their opinions on whether or
not Kendrick Lamar are put on a good show, whether
it was worthy of the super Bowl halftime, and I'm
(01:09):
just going to get right into it. Uh. I don't
normally leave comments in the comments section. I know better,
but Kendrick is from Compton.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Kendrick is from Compton.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, and I'm from Compton, and I'm just I'm not
made that way where I could just ignore somebody.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
I've been trying to, but I can't.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, i gotta I gotta get in there, right so.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
And you know how I'm anti comment section, Like.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
That's super duper anti.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
That's not where I hang out. I don't roll over there.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Well, but you have to get a couple of bars off,
Like I'm like, hey, look, man, for those people, they
got something to say. If I see three, four, five
of them in a row, I'm like okay. And granted,
and there's more people, more people saying they loved it.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
But I'm not trying to bang on those people. I'm
here to teach.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yes, they need to learn right. So like that, and
in that spirit, you know, there's a news station out
where we live. They put a comment out that said,
what do you think of Kendrick Mar's halftime performance? Rate
your thoughts going from A plus to F right? And
so it's you know, we're a polarized time in this country.
(02:26):
So there were a lot of a pluses and a
lot of f's right. And I noticed a trend with
the f's. They looked a certain way. They had the
same complaints, you know, whatever right, And you could, after
a while, you could start to profile the people who
were assigning the s right. And like I said, too
many f's in a row, I'm like, wait, a minute,
(02:48):
contents stand up? You know what I'm saying, Like I
can't no, I gotta say something because I can't let
y'all out number You know what I'm saying, not that
not that it was close, but anyway, I'll now share
the comment that I left a plus. Folks can watch
any of the breakdowns of the performance on social media
and get exactly why so many people loved it. Kendrick
(03:08):
makes high art. Sometimes you need a guide to high art.
You need to know the background story or the intended
message or the target audience, etc. It works the same
if you're in a museum. Sometimes you can appreciate the
genius of an artist or a sculpture until you appreciate
the purpose of the piece, or the risk involved, or
(03:31):
where the artist was creatively at that time. There's a
reason he's a Pulitzer Prize winning artist who has twenty
two Grammys. The reason doesn't need to be lost on you. Also,
I don't understand all the lyrics to Pearl Jam or Radiohead,
so let's all be careful on that two way street,
Compton Forever, keep winning dot Now or the people that
(03:59):
were not able to get past Well, I just I
don't understand or just it's too hip hopp or there
were no explosions or fireworks or anything like that. I
say to you, this is high art. There are easter
(04:19):
eggs in his performances. There are easter eggs in his lyrics,
in his raps that you don't know about. Q and
I once we said something on this show. We said,
you know, there are people who are super lyrical. Right,
Eminem is a super lyrical person. You know, you could
argue Drake as the same, and j Cole, and there's
(04:40):
these great names jay Z and so forth right nas
of course, these greats that are super lyrical. But what
Kendrick does is something different. He's playing a different game.
There are levels to his his his music. Each song
requires as a breakdown, and that's not something you can
(05:01):
say about any of those other names. They just kind
of say what they feel. And Kendrick is saying something
where no matter how many times you listen to the song,
you're gonna hear something different, or he's saying something to
where no matter how many different breakdowns you hear of
the song, the next breakdown is holding another easter egg
that you hadn't even considered a perfect example of this
(05:24):
is and I hope I get this right. During that
Super Bowl performance, there was someone who pointed out that
when he came out on a PlayStation controller that the
X and the triangle and the circle and the square
were lighting up in such a way that it replicated
the cheat code for GTA five for Infinite Life or
(05:49):
something like that. Is like increase your attributes, right, And
when you take that in context of what it is
Kendrick stood for what it is he's trying to do,
for the purpose what machine he's up against, and then
the fact that many of us can identify with that,
you start to understand and appreciate. Oh, there's easter eggs
(06:09):
here that I could not have considered, and you were
looking for an explosion. Now, I don't want to suck
all the oxygen out of this conversation because I know
that you has plenty to share and then will come
back to me because I have some more to share
from online sources.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, we could do this like this conversation we could
have for hours. Yeah, because it means something different to
us than it would the layman or the just common
person who just so happened to be watching the Super Bowl,
or just so happens to be a fan of music.
Being a specific fan of Kendrick Lamar brings with it
a different set of eyes, a different set of ears,
(06:50):
a third eye, and you.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
Have to know that you're not going to catch it.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
A different way of processing and an understanding. Like you
said that you won't catch every Easter egg the first
twenty five times, right. I heard Kendrick talking to Drake
on All the Stars last year. That song came out
seven years ago or something like that. Yeah, we're still
(07:16):
learning from seven years ago today, So you're not going
to get everything that happened a few days ago right
on time. There's two separate pieces of data that are
being ignored or missed here. One of them is the
most obvious one, which is confusing me the most. How
(07:36):
people are. It's funny while I was saying that, I
realized that I'm not confused. I got unconfused while I
was saying that people are being intentionally up to in
the same way they did with this new president. When
he was running for president. People would pretend to not
see things and pretend to not know things, or not
(08:00):
even pretend not to know them, but just take the
opposite position fervently while ignoring obvious things, and we will
be like, how are they? Oh, never mind, they're sick offense?
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
There are some people who watched this just so they
could say it was whack.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So of course, in their opinion, it's going to be whack.
Speaker 3 (08:19):
They precolored it that way. And the reason why I
know that is that there are people who I know
to be intelligent. I didn't just start interacting with them
on Sunday making very unintelligent observations like, Hey, how come
he's doing these songs people don't know yet versus the
hits And that's so obvious to us, and I'm like
(08:42):
it should be. GNX just came out. Artists see a
nearly four hundred percent spike in sales of the music
they perform at the super Bowl. After the super Bowl,
why would he not perform the music from the album
that he just put out?
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And I add something else here. Okay, Now that may
be true, and I suspect that it is. But also,
Kendrick Lamar is the same person where when they were
battling Drake and Kendrick. Uh, there there is no way
(09:20):
I am one hundred percent biased. If you're from Compton, California.
You have my support. That's just how I made. Don't
ever put me on a judging panel.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Okay, that's not Compton, but you people, no matter from go.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Ahead, go ahead and say that. But in the in
the context of Drake and Kendrick, that was what it was.
But I I'll say I am a fan of Drake.
Drake has has contributed what he has contributed to the culture,
for better or worse.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
You know how many clubs we've turned upside down to
Drake with Drake.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, and and and I and my heart goes out
to him because I know he's got to be feeling
this over and over and over again, you know. But
when they were battling back and forth, the thing that
let me know not only that my allegiance was where
it was supposed to be because I made that way,
but my allegiance was where it was supposed to be
because it's the right place for it to be, was
(10:18):
when Drake said to Kendrick, you're always rapping like you're
trying to set the slaves free. Right now. What that
was a horrible thing to say. That's an awful thing
to say. It just it's just the of what what
are you wrapping for Drake so you can get some
(10:39):
money and some girls? Yes, that's corn, that's super cool.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Like that as a question, Well, you know that's absolutely
why he's rapped.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Okay, yeah, I'll give you that. But we watched the.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Video where he married seventeen hundred women.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Look, man, that's and that's cool. But like if that's
a byproduct of what it is you're living your life for,
like I around here, you and me Q we stand
on man business right now, what comes with being a man? Yeah,
maybe it's some success, maybe it's some whatever, but man
business is man business.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I was, and we've also turned down we've turned down
some of the spoils.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
With our values exactly right. So that's man business, right
And and Drake I felt like, you know what, he
had never been pressed in that way, and not that
I held it over his head or anything like that.
Most most people aren't, you know, and they're just on
their journey. But when you intentionally attack someone who stands
on man business, who stands on you know, Uh, in
(11:37):
Kendrick's case, let me let me say something different. Uh,
community business, black business, Compton business, la business, like his
people's business, right, and then you belittle that by saying
you always rapping like you're trying to set the slaves free. Oh,
that is a fatal mistake right now, wear that in mind,
(11:58):
where can Where Drake rather was going with that was
to try to point out something that's very true about Kendrick.
Kendrick's music is very political. It is very It's that
many of his songs play like Negro spirituals. They uplift us,
I love myself. If God got us, We're gonna be
all right like that, you know. And it's in the
(12:21):
same spirit of Tupac. So when Kendrick channels Tupac, it's
valid because Tupac wrote, keep your head up, you know
what I'm saying. Tuproc wrote dear Mama. Tupac wrote Brenda's
got a baby, and Drake don't have nothing to go
that can compare with that. And this is why Kendrick
is in those types of conversations where Drake is and
you can talk about how many albums Drake sold, and
(12:44):
like Kendrick said, I make music that electrifying, you make
music that pacifying. Right now, with all that bearing, bearing
all that in mind, when Kendrick steps out to perform
at the super Bowl. It stands to reason that Kendrick
may not necessarily exclusively be doing these particular songs so
(13:09):
that he can get money off of him, although that
could be a byproduct. It could be the case that
this playlist was curated specifically to get a message off. Indeed,
the performance everything that he's saying, and with someone like him,
I wouldn't put that past him.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Now, it's not that that could be the case. That's
absolutely the case.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
It is.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
I'm just saying, and there's a bomb continue ahead where
I was going. Yeah, there is a commercial element to this,
and I should pretend that it's not. What would be
me being up to and intellectually dishonest and I refuse to.
The message part is obvious. It's kindred. He's the culture
(13:51):
part is never going away. He never turns that button
off for the capital part. But the capital part exists.
Most artists that perform at the super Bowl halftime show
our legacy artists performing their hits.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
That's what they have.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Kendrick is in his prime with the number one album
that just came out, So for people to I bring
this up intentionally, people were confused how songs like Peekable
were performed, it's a smash from his brand new album, like,
of course get it. He's making room for that new
music as well, and the messaging again would have to
(14:29):
be intentionally missed as well. You had to be you
had to be watching with the critical eye to pick
him apart and not understand if we watched that to
pick out all the stuff we didn't like and find
all the flaws and all the mistakes and point to
all the reasons how it could have been better.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Of course we could.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
But that's like people picking at Lebron James, like, yeah,
you can watch his game and you can talk about how,
you know, Michael Jordan was six for six and he
never lost. Except to make that statement and it be true.
To pretend that Michael Jordan only played for six seasons,
you have to ignore all the times he didn't even
(15:08):
get to the championship, And then you have to be
intellectually dishonest and make it a better accomplishment to not
make it to the championship than to make it there
and not win it. But there are people who are
committed to that. There are people who have made careers
off of doing that. Watching Lebron James play basketball, a
(15:28):
man who does everything in basketball well and has at
the highest level for longer than anyone ever has. There
are people who have made millions of dollars turning on
a microphone in the camera and telling us how good
he isn't And that's sad, right, especially because you and
I talk about our lack of monolithic solidarity. Because we
(15:51):
say it like it's a flex. There's this other thing
that we started to say, like it's a flex. That's ridiculous.
I'm not my ancestors. Flex. Are you trying to position
yourself as better, as stronger, as able to endure more,
as more intelligent as Like what are you saying when
you say that? Because I hear you saying it as
a flex, you couldn't possibly understand the gravity of the
(16:15):
statement that you're making. They died so you can do
what you want now. They died so you could have
the privilege to not participate in elections that they died
to be able to cast a vote in. Of course,
you're not our ancestors. Some of you couldn't be. Some
of you couldn't have possibly survived what they went through.
(16:35):
So someone who's channeling all of them every time he
puts his pen to paper. It's really above your criticism.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
There, it is. That's it. You are not qualified to
criticize Kendrick Lamar. Now if you say, hey, it's not
for me, then say hey, it's not for me. Okay,
but say that in your private circles. Don't go into
the chat room and give this man an f because
you didn't get it right. You have to bear in
(17:06):
mind there's a real like you don't get to that
level by accident. How about this, Let me add something
else here, something that I learned. And I picked this
up from another one of the people that was pointing
out all the different Easter eggs, right, And then I
think to your point Q about him, you know, playing
some album cuts off of his new album, There is
(17:26):
a song called Man in the Garden, right, and I
didn't think to break that down any further. I just
didn't think to break it down any further. Man in
the Garden, I'm thinking Madison Square, you know, I'm just
whatever whatever came to mind. He performs a little bit
(17:48):
of that song sitting on the steps at the super Bowl,
surrounded by his dancers, but only the ones wearing white,
and then as this person who was sharing Easter eggs
on their social media says, this is more reminiscent of
like a like a cemetery or a funeral. And he's like,
(18:11):
you know, and when you think man in the garden,
then it comes full circle. And I was like, man,
I didn't even I didn't even get that. And he's like, yeah,
well when you see the only the dancers in the
white are there, and how he used the red, the white,
and the blue, the red and the blue specifically from
where he comes from and the white to show where
everyone ends up. Like it was a breakdown where I
(18:32):
was like, man, the artistry here. To listen to someone
say there were no fireworks is like okay, listen you you.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Need to be pacified or no spinning rims is what
that's the that's the equivalent of saying And this is
the part that makes that even deeper. What you just
explained might not have even been his point.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
But the fact, how I think about it, it could be.
And that's the point. And can I go somewhere with this?
So watch this ghost face killer of all people, ghost
face killer for anybody that listens to Wu Tang, anybody
that knows ghosts. He says some stuff, and it's sometimes
(19:15):
it'd be sounding wow, it sound good, but it'd be
sounding wild, you know what I'm saying, Like he just
you know the wallabies and the olive trees and the
you know, like that's ghosts, right. And you know, he's
had some criticisms throughout his career, as all artists do.
(19:36):
But he said something that stayed with me long before
Kendrick was even on the radar. But someone had had
taken an issue with him and maybe an interviewer had
brought it to his attention, like, hey, man, so what
do you say to people that say, hey, they don't
really follow your lyrics, they don't really understand what it
is you're trying to say, you know all the time? Well,
ghost Face said, well, listen, artists supposed to make you
(19:59):
feel So I'm or phrasing. This was years ago, and
ghosts don't talk like this. You can go back and
try to find an interview yourself. I'm not trying to
miss quote ghost Face killer. He's always been very kind
to me, so, but he was saying, you know, art
is supposed to make you feel something. Okay, when you
go into a museum and you see a painting or whatever.
You might not know what the painting is. It can
(20:20):
be an abstract sort of painting, but the point is
for it to make you feel something. And if you
see the painting and you feel something, mission accomplished. If
you see the painting and you don't feel something, move
on to the next piece. But I make art. So
this is effectually what he was communicating, and that stayed
with me because I am a child of hip hop.
(20:42):
My my older brother is hip hop royalty. So I
got all of this. Honestly, my whole career is hip hop, right,
So that was something that I needed to take with
me because a lot of hip hop songs, you know,
I'm like, Okay, is that grammatically make sense? No? Is
(21:04):
that make What is he saying? Does that go with
the theme of the song? No? Not necessarily, but did
I feel something? And that was where I was able
to make the determination once upon a time that Tupac
was the best, the best rapper to ever live, the
greatest of all time, because when Tupac makes a song,
he puts feeling into it and he makes sure that
you feel something on the other side of it, and
(21:25):
that might not be something That's true with other lyrical
rappers who you're just wowed by the fact that they
are talented. No where is the feeling what am I taking?
What feeling have I taken from this?
Speaker 3 (21:37):
The thing that disappoints me the most at a discourse
behind this, because I don't mind people not loving it.
I just wish that it didn't have to be so extreme.
People aren't saying, oh, that was cool, it just wasn't
for me. They're like it was trash yeah, And I'm like,
how did everybody miss the obvious? People are saying now
in response to this performance, the same thing they were
(22:00):
saying in between Drake setting it off and Kendrick responding.
They're saying the same thing, bops and he make the
slave free music. And like all the things that they said,
they learned nothing from what just happened. Like he taught
a lesson put Belta and then went back to Kendrick
(22:22):
and he showed up authentically asked Kendrick to give a
message to the to the newly inaugurated president who was
in it terrance, to the very league that hired him,
who removed in racism. Like people ignoring all of this
context and not processing what Kendrick did are missing the
(22:44):
point on such a grand level that when you pointed out,
they're like, you're a stan and how come you can't
be critical? And I'm like, how come you can't open
your eyes and see the very obvious truths He showed
up for us? And how is the us that he
showed up for disappointed and not proud and not haling
him up as the great artist and creator that he is.
(23:08):
He showed up in front of the entire world. More
people watched his halftime performance than Michael Jackson's. The most
viewed halftime in the history of the Super Bowl was
Kendrick Lamar. The halftime performance, probably for the first time ever,
got more viewers than the game. There was a five
or six percent drop off when he stopped performing. Average
(23:30):
peak for Kendrick was I think one hundred and thirty
three point five million viewers. Average peak for the game
was like one hundred and twenty six million. A significant,
noticed present drop off because people showed up to watch
that man perform, and what he did in his performance
would show up for us authentically when he had the
hits to.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Just party, oh yeah, he's got him.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
He could have come and just partied with with Asap Rocky,
But that's not what he was there for, right and
after he gave us the message and he walked us
through the story, like all the comments that you guys
are making, Uncle Sam made those points for you while
he was performing, and he responded in full artistic context,
(24:15):
live in front of the world to every criticism before
you even had a chance to give him. And you
still brought those same lazy critiques to social media within minutes.
It's like, did you even pay attention at all? Not
just to the performance, but to this whole year. He
spent the year showing you there's nothing you think I
(24:36):
can do that I can't. As a matter of fact,
the thing you think he's better at than me, watch
me make a smash and hit him over the head
with it. Pay it shot for a year. You better
walk around like daft punk.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Remember day, Listen, I know a gentleman. His name is Stephen.
Stephen is a billionaire with a b He lives not
far from my house and he's friend in mind. Stephen's
(25:16):
house is enormous. You would you would It would take
two magazines to encompass his The grandeur of his home.
You could have a magazine dedicated to just his pool
or just the wing where he hangs one type of
(25:40):
art from one type of part of the world. It's enormous.
I've been to Stephen's house, bulletproof windows like name it,
it's all there. Never seen anything like it. I don't
know that I will. I took another billionaire into his
house and he said that I've been in palaces that
(26:01):
weren't as nice as this one. Okay, the guy that
owns like zig Zag and whatever he's on the cover
of for but you can check him out, promise anyway.
Stephen Cooper's house is expertly curated. It is expressive. It
is for what it is. It is executed at a
(26:26):
level so masterful that it blows the mind. As I mentioned,
I took someone else into Stephen's house who was his neighbor.
They just had never met, and he was so wild
by it. He's like, I've been in palaces that aren't
as nice as this house on this golf course here.
(26:51):
Stephen's house is not my taste. I don't. I'm not
into like Victorian paintings. I'm not into busts of people
with the powdered wigs. I'm not into you know, stained
glass of fixtures from some church in the fourteen hundreds.
That's not my thing, right, But I do recognize the
(27:13):
artistry and the curation of an experience because I got
that one hundred percent walking into his house. Now, this
is how the commentar sound. If I walk into Stephen
Cooper's house and he gives me the full tour and
I got to spend thirty minutes just trying to appreciate
(27:37):
the pool and the gazebo because they had to import
the stone, and the pool is the deepest one in
the whole state, and you could dive and scuba dive
down just that. Right. Imagine if I left his house
because it's not my taste, and I was like, man,
the house was trash, How goofy would I sound? That's
how you sound when you critique a Kendrick Lamar performance.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
There are intended feelings, right, You spoke about art making
you feel. How it makes you feel. Won't always be good, sure,
but there are intended feels. If you are us after
that performance, if you were paying attention to see it
(28:23):
and not watching to find every flaw so that you
could be the first person on the Internet to have
the opposite opinion of everybody else because contrarianism is somehow
an intellectual flex. Now you would have felt moved after Yeah,
those who felt offended by it actually like who got
(28:43):
it and felt defended? Who got the messaging and it
bothered them?
Speaker 1 (28:46):
It was supposed to.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
It was supposed to. If you're us and you felt
that way, you either weren't paying attention, or you're the problem,
or made up your mind before he even started that
he was whack. You couldn't have understood it and been
us and not been moved in a positive way. Those
of us that are being critical are just like, Okay,
(29:09):
everybody glazing Kendrick. Now, so let me show them that
I'm not one of the sheep. It's the same thing
we just dealt with in the election, right, No one
like us should have supported the other guy. Those that
did were either misinformed or have decided in their mind
that I'm going to show everyone how much of a
sheep that I'm not take the contrarian position and just
(29:32):
ride it out because I'm more woke, and I'm more intellectual,
and I'm more aware and more informed than everyone else.
Everybody else is wrong, and I'm right. It's an arrogant, smug, condescending,
intentionally contrarian position to take with no end toward no
end right. I want to read this because I don't
(29:53):
want to spend three days on this topic, because I
know that we could. Kendrick started the show with an
unreleased song that's a snippet right before gnxt dropped that
everyone has been waiting for him to release as a
full song. Now, I don't think he gave us a
full song, but he did give us more lyrics. And
if you can hear these lyrics and think he's mid as,
(30:17):
the famous philosopher Sean Carter once said, if you can't
respect that, your whole perspective is whack. Only thing matter
right now is living right now. And I can't spare
no feelings quiet on set, but my aura allowed I
(30:38):
navigate through hood and wisdom. The money all here, young man,
f holding your hand, you'll die broke, trying to play victim.
The little ideas I told made people go rogue until
God did me a big one that was in the
snippet the verse reincarnated with love my Gemini when backpowering
(31:01):
up no more handshakes and hugs. The energy only circulate
through us. Everybody must be judged, but this time God
only favoring us. Twenty years in, still got that pin
dedicated to bare hard truth. The etiquette speak with a
vigilant tongue. The predicate this time is fu. I'm carrying
(31:21):
heavier hearts right now. I can power lyft with Olympians
two too. As an Also, I'm carrying various darts right now.
I desert this like terror masseu. See we go body
for body, I hand you a body. I'm probably a
better masseuse. I really don't bother nobody, but they run
(31:41):
it by me. If I got to clear out the room,
you would not get the picture. If I had to
sit you for hours in front of the louver, listen
to this, bro, you would not have a soul even
if I had told you to stand next to Johnny
and Q. Have started with nothing but government cheese. But
(32:03):
now I can seize the government too. Remember the food
stamp color was tann and brown, but now the hunted
is blue. Remember I said I'm the greatest back when
you debated the number one and number two topic was
always hilarious to me. You carry him to me. I
brung out the and then he screams, Christ Like, if
(32:28):
that is whack to you, then you're then you and
I can't even have this conversation. Yeah, and that's that's
my take on Listen.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
I'm gonna leave you with this last little bit that
I came across on the internet. This is from my guy,
Bruce Saint James. Okay, Bruce Saint James is white, is
a ghost, but he gets it. Okay, Bruce Saint James
is older than us, but he gets it. Uh. Ten things,
but I'm only gonna give you about six. Ten things
(32:59):
about Kendrick Lamar. One he does not drink or do drugs.
I confirm that during I think our first interview because
that's the same with me. I've never drank, I've never
done drugs, Norris Q. We say that as often as
we can because it's important for people to know that
that is a viable path. He does not drink or
do drugs. Two. He's won twenty two Grammys, an Emmy,
(33:22):
and American Music brit and Pulitzer Prize Awards. Three he
was a straight A student in high school and would
have gone to college for astronomy or psychology, but started
a rap career instead. Number five he's still with his
high school sweetheart. Number six, he is heavily involved in philanthropy.
And we'll end it on number seven, but you could
(33:44):
keep going. He is a brilliant songwriter, and I think
that that's where we want to stop it, because I
think that that, above all else, helps make your point
that he is a brilliant songwriter. So you got anything
else to add to it, do it in the comments.
I'm at ramses Ja.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
I am cbe Ward on all social.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
Media and until we talk to you peace. This has
been a production of the Black Information Network. Today's show
is produced by Chris Thompson. Have some thoughts you'd like
to share, use the red microphone talkback feature on the
iHeartRadio app. While you're there, be sure to hit subscribing.
Download all of our episodes. I'm your host Ramsey's Jah
on all social media. Join us tomorrow as we share
(34:25):
our news with our voice from our perspective right here
on the Black Information Network Daily Podcast
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