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RELATED CONTENT

AIDS 35 is a constantly evolving project, paralleling the reality of a constantly evolving disease. This page contains current content that is relevant to the goals and aims of this project, beyond spoken word narratives. 

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2016 BET AWARDS

In this performance, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar draw on many of the racialized themes of Lemonade, while still contributing to the broader themes of the album’s reflection of black womanhood, motherhood, and wifedom in the wake of a husband’s infidelity

  • This song on the album features African dance styles and appearances from the mothers/female family members of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Gardner, all of whom were killed by police

  • This performance features Kendrick Lamar in a black hoodie, which draws on the symbolism of the Black Hoodie marches following the killing of Trayvon Martin

  • Water plays a huge role in this video and in the lyrics:

    • “Wade through the Water” is referenced in the lyrics, which is a slavery-era negro spiritual

    • Kendrick’s verses refer to “fire hydrants and hazardous, smoke alarms on the back of us,” which is a reference to the pressurized hoses weaponized against protesters in the Civil Rights Era

    • Beyoncé references “tryna rain, tryna rain on the thunder” and “tell the storm I’m new,” referring both to her commitment to protest the continued unequal treatment of black Americans and her commitment to giving her all to saving her relationship with her husband

  • This performance shortly followed Beyoncé’s controversial Super Bowl performance, which garnered attention due to the prominence of Black Panther symbols used in the performance, and her release of the Formation video which includes significant anti-police symbols in response to police brutality against black Americans

  • The symbols and spoken-word poems throughout Lemonade call in African diasporic themes, as do the dance styles seen in this video, which invoke parts of many of the narratives in this project that center around African womanhood and HIV

  • Additionally, Beyoncé’s relationship with her daughter and her commitment to staying with her husband to make a better life for her daughter are prominently seen throughout Lemonade, which draws on themes expressed in “Dandelion”

 

For a more full understanding of the context of this piece, view these sources:

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2016 GRAMMY AWARDS

Kendrick Lamar - Blacker the Berry/Alright

This 2016 Grammy Awards performance by Kendrick Lamar and the entirety of the album of To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) highlights many of the similarities between race relations in the United States and in South Africa:

  • Kendrick Lamar, though he grew up in Compton, California during the height of the fame of N.W.A. (another Compton-based rap group, one of whom, Eazy E, was the first well-known rapper to pass away due to AIDS-related complications and publicly address his illness to his fans, stating that this is not just a gay issue, as HIV/AIDS can be contracted heterosexually if proper precautions are not taken, as was the case for Eazy E), the aftermath of the explosion of popularity of crack-cocaine, and during the racial tensions prevalent in Rodney King-era Los Angeles

  • Large portions of Lamar’s inspiration for this album came from both what he experienced growing up amidst the Compton community he grew up in where he personally witnessed the effects of gang violence, drug addiction/dealing, poverty, racial profiling/police brutality, mass incarceration breaking family units/communities, and sex work, in addition to a trip he took to South Africa, where he noticed many of these same trends spiralling out of control in the post-apartheid reconstruction era

  • In this performance, he combines his lyrics from “The Blacker the Berry,” which speaks on how the carceral system has exploited black men’s labor from the beginning of this country to the benefit of white fat cars (which has clear connection to “Welcome to the Mines”), “Alright,” which has emerged as the rallying anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement due to how it unabashedly addresses resenting police for racial profiling and brutality with the overall message of “we gon’ be alright,” and a freestyle that speaks on his guilt and anger in light of heightened killings of unarmed black people, especially youth, by police

  • The imagery of this video draws on the realities of mass incarceration of black men, then moves to a bonfire surrounded by African-inspired dancers, and concludes with an image of the entire African continent labelled “Compton,” making clear the parallels the artist sees between the two contexts of racism

  • This album is rich with symbolism, conflating Uncle Sam with Lucy, short for Lucifer, who claims to be the “dog” of American blacks, but in reality exploits their labor for money

  • In “Complexion (A Zulu Love),” Lamar calls for the end of black-on-black violence and colorism through the context of seeing frightening similarities between gang violence in Compton and ongoing racial tension between the Zulu and Xhosa in South Africa

  • In “How Much a Dollar Cost,” Lamar fails God’s test and ensures his own eternal damnation due to his own love of money, as he feels as a black man he had to struggle so much to get rich in a white man’s world that he becomes selfish and greedy, which causes him to not spare 10 rand for God disguised as a crack-addicted beggar in South Africa

  • This album shows Lamar’s struggle to grapple with the history, present, and future of race-relations and how they affect daily life/financial realities on a personal level, a community level, a national level, and a global level. It is important to read the unedited lyrics for both of the songs in this video, as the primetime showing of this performance caused it to be heavily edited.

 

For more insight into this context, as well as the context in which the album was released, follow these links to learn more:

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