![]() ![]() “A lot of ppl have problems with Kendrick’s use of the f-slur here but it’s important to remember the narrative frame the song uses,” wrote another trans fan. ![]() We should be grateful one of the most remarkable rappers alive chose to bring up this topic.” “This song may not be some of y’all’s ideal version of allyship and activism but it’s done in a way that holds truth and weight to the transphobia and homophobia in hip-hop. I’m sorry he didn’t sugarcoat it for y’all but it’s realistic as personally I get dead named and misgendered by family to this day,” wrote one trans female fan on Twitter. “Like it or not the use of the f- slur, dead naming and misgendering is reality. While trans fans are going to have different reactions informed by their wide variety of lived experience, some have said they’re grateful for Lamar’s candor and the delicacy with which he uses hateful phrasing to compassionate ends. In the wake of Dave Chappelle’s “The Closer” controversy, around the comedian’s transphobic language, this high wire act could easily have backfired for Lamar. “Reminded me about a show I did out the city / That time I brung a fan on stage to rap / But disapproved the word that she couldn’t say with me / You said, ‘Kendrick, ain’t no room for contradiction / To truly understand love, switch position’ / ‘F-t, F-t, F-t,’ we can say it together / But only if you let a white girl say ‘n-’.” Later, Lamar also calls back to an infamous real-life moment onstage in 2018 when he brought a white fan up to rap with him, and she repeated anti-Black slurs that, from Lamar’s mouth, would be a normal part of hip-hop vernacular, but made him stop the show to reprimand her. ![]() Lamar cites his trans uncle as the first person he ever saw writing raps - an influence that made his career possible.īut Lamar also “Asked my momma why my uncles don’t like him that much / And at the parties why they always wanna fight him that much / She said, ‘Ain’t no tellin’ / N- always been jealous because he had more women / More money and more attention made more envy.’” “See, my auntie is a man now, slight bravado / Scratching the likes from lotto / Hoping that she pull up tomorrow.” On “Auntie Diaries,” a younger Lamar tries to make sense of his affection for and fascination with the trans relatives around him, while navigating and absorbing the slights and violence he sees around them. “I watch him and his girl hold their hands down.” “My auntie is a man now / I think I’m old enough to understand now,” he says at the song’s opening. The song plays out over years of his youth, as Lamar comes to understand that a figure he once knew as a favorite aunt has transitioned into a male identity. But it’s also won over some trans listeners for being wrenchingly accurate about this cis, straight Black man’s path to a fuller understanding of his relations. The song has already antagonized some listeners with its pointed use of anti-gay slurs and other purposefully ugly language around gender and sexuality. But true to form, the Pulitzer Prize-winning hip-hop star doesn’t approach it in an easy redemptive arc. The song is a vivid, exceptionally provocative look into the mind of a younger Lamar forming a concept of transness amid a working-class Compton culture not often inclined to embrace it. Morale & the Big Steppers,” wrestling with big issues: identity, spirituality, monogamy, mortality.īut no single track has sparked more online conversation than “Auntie Diaries,” on which Lamar explores his evolving relationship with his trans relatives. Kendrick Lamar spends much of his new 18-song double album, “ Mr. ![]()
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