The first three songs off rapper Kendrick Lamar’s highly-anticipated fourth studio album, Damn, deride law enforcement officers, Fox News, and one of the network’s long-serving personalities, Geraldo Rivera.
On the first track, “Blood,” the California rapper takes his first political swipe by sampling audio of two Fox News reporters reciting anti-police lyrics from his Black Lives Matter anthem “Alright” — “‘And they hate popo’…ugh, I don’t like it’” — which he performed standing atop a police car at the 2015 BET Awards. The second song, “DNA,” sees another Fox News audio sampling: “Hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years.”
Lamar addresses Rivera directly on the third song, “YAH,” noting that his niece watched the Fox correspondent criticizing her famous uncle.
“Fox News wanna use my name for percentage
My latest news is my niece, she’s worth livin’
See me on the TV and scream, “That’s Uncle Kendrick”
Yeah, that’s the business
Somebody tell Geraldo this n*gga got some ambition”
The Grammy-winner gets more political on “LUST,” recounting the feeling of watching the news in the hopes that Donald Trump had not won the election.
“We all woke up, tryna tune to the daily news
Lookin’ for confirmation, hopin’ election wasn’t true
All of us worried, all of us buried and the feeling’s deep
None of us married to his proposal, make us feel cheap
Stealed and sad, distraught and mad, tell the neighbor ‘bout it
Think they agree, parade the streets with your voice profit”
wpDiscuz