U By Kendrick Lamar: A Song Analysis

I am in individual who is captivated and surrounds themselves around music daily, whether from including music in my routine in relaxing, working, or in deep thought. One would easily state music is my best friend if one watched me for a week. Even as I write this response, I am listening to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly album. I find his work and LPs, to be grand pieces complex with unique perspectives providing ability to relate in a personal way I usually cannot relate with other individuals. I feel the song U by Kendrick Lamar off his recent album To Pimp a Butterfly is the most important song, piece of literature, or simple excerpt of advice ever given to humanity. U has great significance to me in a literal sense and metaphorical

sense. U provides a strong emotional connection to physical events in my life as well as the convoluted occurrences within my mind.

I could easily say this song saved my life, inspired me to open up and strive to be better. U is a song that provides a sense of realization of my follies of yearning to isolate and feel self-pity. Motivating an individual through language to strive for success, and the only way to gain success is through self-love.
Before Kendrick Lamar dropped his album on March 15,2015, through high school I had developed a hatred for my own self not appreciating my gifts, feeling worthless in this world. I believed the idea of society that a young black man is nothing but trouble and has no true help to succeed. The majority of this idea was developed from being surrounded by people with a mindset similar to such during my time at Northwest High School. My family and myself began to notice the toxic spirit of the school and immediately transferred me ending my tenure in the school of Freshman to first couple weeks of my Junior year and transferred me to East High School. All these overwhelming ideas of self-loathing packed with me. Self-loathing became a companion with me through my journey of life. As well as, becoming a companion in my journey to East High school.

Throughout the fall and winter, the therapy of being in an open place began to take root and started to mend the personal wounds I had suffered. However, just how any devastating emotional wound occurs it takes long periods to heal. So come the late winter/early spring, I struggled in school to get work done, nor to simply live life at all. I always used music to get me through day-to-day life, music was my life support, and Kendrick Lamar was my doctor. When everything peaked over and my counselor believed in sending me to the children’s hospital for permanent stay. Then the evening of March 15, 2015 came to roost the morning, Kendrick Lamar released his album and I grasped hold sat down and listened to the album through. I loved every ounce of it from the funk to the 90’s classic rap instrumentals and R&B sounds. Then the song U came on, began with three Piercing cry’s out to the world. From here, he goes onto talking about the direct struggles of loving himself in a self-argument turned, struggled rage. The song literally broke the chains of my depression and helplessness. It started me on the path to find true love for my own self which I travel yet today and will till the end of time.
Kendrick Lamar is a complex artist who creativity and linguistic skill is unmatched by any artist I believe in our current modern society today.

His ways to orchestrate such a captivating song such as U is breathtaking. The language in the song is unparalleled. He focus his rhymes behind the bases of an Anaphora in order to captivate the effect of an argument with his own self giving the listener an allusion he is ranting at his own self, throughout the beginning of the song. After the skit within the song you are able to piece together the belief this rant is truly directed towards the narrator himself. This allows one to observe the parallel between your own conflicts and the conflicts of the narrators. So as the narrator lectures himself, he also lectures you evoking a unique motivation within yourself creating a since of a warzone between the person you are before listening to the song compared to after. This conflict is what has driven me to set goals challenge myself and adopt the master status “I am a young black man who will be successful and give back to the world that has molded him into the human he is today.” The song provides a sense of identity that can never be beaten, burned, or whipped down from the current state the identity takes place. Only to be built to achieve and reach new heights unseen by a person before all for the bettering of one in society and in their own perception of

themselves.
U by Kendrick Lamar is the most important piece of literary work ever created in my eyes. This song cut through the chains that kept me in a dark abyss, captive to a past life where the wind did not blow nor did the light shine. There was solely self-pity and hatred encompassed within a soul, within a heart, within me. Many people will say when the found religion they say they saw the light. However, when I listened to the song U I found the light illuminating across my face. This light was not physical solely a symbol for the idea and mindset must have to pursue hope. The song developed a self worth within me all through hope. U made me realize of the importance in loving myself in fullness; otherwise, one would never truly be happy, satisfied, or aware. One would solely walk in a zombie like trance to the dull beat of life. The Song U taught me of the importance of self-conflict and from listening to the song I soon learned this idea was beneficial. I was not a crazy individual. I was not a monster of a boy. I was not a psychotic individual shun from society. I was not a person who should be dead. However, one who should love themselves and carry hope through there soul. Hope that everything would be All Right.