Kendrick Lamar went 5-for-5 on Sunday, Feb. 2, at the Grammys, and I can’t tell if it’s surprising. On one hand, Lamar’s five wins, including Song of the Year and Record of the Year, were amazing to see. That kind of stuff just never happens, especially to rappers. At the same time, though, Lamar has been all that anyone can talk about in the rap game right now.
If anyone was gonna win those Grammys, it was going to be him.
Lamar’s monumental achievement and the decisiveness of his success is a sign of the beginning of a shift in the rap scene that’s becoming more and more apparent as the days go by.
To start, let’s talk about the change in the Grammys this year. They were a great example of how the dynamic between rappers and rap music has changed in the past few years. Lamar’s five wins themselves are symbolic of how thoroughly deposed Drake now is from his throne, a reality which seemed almost impossible just a year ago. Lamar’s Drake diss track “Not Like Us” is, after all, the most popular diss track on Spotify and the most decorated song in the history of the Grammys.
Drake was the most popular rapper of the 2010s and 2020s, and was considered by many to be the greatest rapper too. But after the once-in-a-lifetime rap battle between Drake and Lamar, Drake may never recover his status ever again.
The other big wins for rappers at the Grammys also indicate how much rap is changing. For example this year’s Best Rap Album — “Alligator Bites Never Heal” — was written by Doechii, making her only the third woman to ever win the award.
The style of her album was also very unique when compared to the other albums nominated for the award. For one, Doechii raps about her struggles with her record label, which is usually a big taboo for anyone to talk about. She also talks about her mental health in the album too, which has been exceedingly rare to see in rap up until the past few years.
Her album won over more traditional rap albums like Eminem’s “The Death of Slim Shady” and Future and Metro Boomin’s “We Don’t Trust You.” That puts into perspective how much underground artists were able to break out at this year’s Grammy winners really are.
But, and here’s the important part, the change in rap music extends much further than just this year’s Grammys. I would attribute it to the work of some of the most influential rappers since 2000: Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar. Yes, there are undoubtedly other rappers that certainly did rock the rap world around this time — Biggie, Tupac, and Rakim being some of the others — but their contributions are not quite a part of the shift we saw at the Grammys.
Granted, these legends expanded rap music from the somewhat-underground style it was in the ‘80s and early ‘90s to being the major influence on mainstream music it was in the 2000s. But West and Lamar, although they were greatly influenced by these rappers, were the ones to go on and start the shift we are seeing today.
West’s major contribution to the shift we see today was on its subject matter as he moved rap away from being all about the “gangster mindset” it once was by discussing more emotional topics. For example, his debut album “The College Dropout” perfectly exemplified this new style by addressing the issues in early 2000s society that we are still facing today, like those surrounding sexuality and religion.
That same sentiment of branching out to discuss new topics foreshadows what Doechii did in “Alligator Bites Never Heal,” and that correlation is certainly not coincidental. But, as we all know, Kanye West isn’t making music like that anymore. Kendrick Lamar, on the other hand, is, and his music is what I see as the main voice in rap keeping the change going in the present moment.
Looking back on his career, Kendrick Lamar has done much of the same genre-breaking rapping that Kanye did in the 2000s. The shining example of this is his third studio album “To Pimp a Butterfly,” which features songs covering topics like racial inequality and depression while also combining different styles across African-American music genres. That same kind of ingenuity and uniqueness is what encouraged newer styles of rap to be so prominent in this year’s Grammys, like Andre 3000’s masterpiece “New Blue Sun,” which was nominated for Album of the Year and Best Alternative Jazz Album.
So, what do these changes in rap’s composition mean for the future? It is really hard to tell from where we are, but with Lamar’s continual success and rap’s newfound popularity, the horizon has never looked so bright.
