Why Kendrick Lamar Could Be an Emblem of Advent

I was raised in a more-or-less secular household. Of course, Christianity, always existed in the background; I went to Catholic school, but faithful praxis was never in the foreground. Prayer was seldom and vague, though the idea of God never doubted. Because of my past, I’ve always had more respect for those who “find” faith as opposed to those who were raised in it. Having to question, doubt, and fight for what one comes to believe, perhaps even to look strange to relatives and loved ones, is not only difficult but also edifying: how could those handed the cross, the crescent, or the kippah possibly understand that?

Of course, I recognize that’s not the right way to feel about faith. It’s certainly not the way I evaluate my friendships with fellow believers, but it has left me with a certain love for those at the margins, those who exist in places outside the scope of “mainstream” Christianity. I think that’s why, as a Catholic, I prefer reading Langland, Kierkegaard, and Marion to Thomas. It’s not because I’m not faithful; it’s because some part of me must play the contrarian, or, at least, the outsider.

With that in mind, I’d like to highlight a recent musical performance that many may have missed: Kendrick Lamar on The Colbert Report. Kendrick’s work, like that of the vast majority of rappers, is NSFW (and that’s a warning). That said, he makes constant mention of God, religion, sin, and redemption. Sometimes in less-than-sophisticated words, he touches on the most sophisticated of concepts. Who among us even has the right words to describe the most difficult questions: existence, meaning, the divine?

His new song, the one embedded in the link above, has received some coverage for continuing to publicize racial issues in this charged time. But Kendrick’s music has always shied away from the political as such. His commentary is always cultural, approaching how it feels to grow up in Compton, what it means to grow beyond that, but never leave it behind. That sense of place, that attachment to the salt of the earth while recognizing its dangers is healthy, even helpful. Kendrick has touched on how race and ethnicity can be important without being our only or primary means of identification; he’s rapped about religion’s positive impact and commented on how the sexualization of our culture is anything but positive. As he puts it in one song:

To the meaning of life, what’s my purpose?/
Maybe this earth is, ain’t a good place to be/
How far is Heaven? Let’s see/
Is it in the clouds like they said it would be?/
I wonder when I die will he give me receipts?/
I wonder will the eyes of the Lord look at me?/
Look at me, look at me, I’m a loser, I’m a winner/
I’m good, I’m bad, I’m a Christian, I’m a sinner/
I’m humble, I’m loud, I’m righteous, I’m a killer/
What I’m doing, I’m saying that I’m human, now people just…/

That dual sense of blessing and sadness, of the quest for meaning in a world so often dark, yet eminently joyful, seems to me the perfect emblem of the outsider Christian, who is, in a sense, the perfect one.

In this season of Advent, such reflections on the paradoxical nature of our existence are apt. So let’s learn to look into the darkness, to the outsiders, to the marginalized with hope and love. We never know what we’ll find.