Kendrick Lamar's Story Telling Devices
I encountered a really interesting theory on TikTok regarding the storytelling devices used on Kendrick Lamar's first two albums and I wanted to expand it to the rest of his discography. To paraphrase the existing portion of the theory Section. 80 is a book (the campfire motif), Good Kid Maad City is a movie (the linear story telling), and To Pimp a Butterfly is a poem which I shouldn't have to explain. That leaves Kendrick's two newest albums to examine. Mr Moral and the Big Steppers is a play centered around therapy, most evident in songs like We Cry Together, Worldwide Steppers, and Auntie Diaries. Despite arguably being his most approachable album, Damn was the hardest for be to figure out. Initially I thought of it as a journal taking a deep dive into each of Kendrick's emotions. Unfortunately the lack of a linear story-line largely ruled this device out. Each song on this album seems to live in it's own self-contained world. The only thing comparable to this style of story-telling is a TV Show.