DW Recommends: “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar

 Alls my life I has to fight, n*ggaAlls my life II couldn’t tell you which Black death — murder, really — caused me to first play Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright.” But I know I played it in the minutes after I stood behind my closed office door to mourn Terence Crutcher. That “big bad dude” shot dead in the road reminded me of my big bad father. I wept. My head throbbed with a fierce heat with every wail I swallowed. Then I shuffled to my desk and put on my headphones. I played “Alright” so loud my eardrums ached. I worried my coworkers, mostly white, could hear it and would report me. But I refused to turn it down. I needed the words to knock the pain out of me. After the second replay, I opened my office door.Wouldn’t you knowWe been hurt, been down beforeThey kept shooting. We kept dying. Our pain, our pleas, our concern wasn’t enough to sway the 2016 presidential election. I knew before I saw the election results. I knew the country had slid further into shadow because it was nothing new to me. The morning after, I queued up the song. I sat on the floor and wept. Then I played it again as I got ready for work. The show must go on.I can see the evil, I can tell it, I know it’s illegalI don’t think about it, I deposit every other zeroI come to this song often. Not after every shooting, murder, bombing, or act of violence against Black folks. If that were the case, I’d be a dazed devotee forever at the altar of my musical god. But I play it once for my grief. The spoken word, the horns, and the drums catch my sorrow. The song is upbeat, but I still weep, my singing guttural. Kendrick raps what so many of us Black folks live and endure. Every word extracts my pain like a Sunday hymn until I am cleansed. Then I listen to it again. On the second go ‘round, I snap and bite the words. I shout and dance as the words that once helped me mourn, build me back up and empower me. Then I’m ready to move forward.N*gga, we gon’ be alrightDo you hear me, do you feel me? We gon’ be alrightThere’s a reason Black people sing “Alright” on street corners with raised fists. There’s a reason we bump it till our cars shake as we cruise down the street. There’s a reason we shout it at rallies. It is the spirit of us. It’s only fitting that “Alright” became and continues to be an anthem of sorts for Black Lives Matter.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-48u_uWMHY&feature=youtu.be[/embed]DW McKinney is a writer and reviewer living in Las Vegas. You can find her on Twitter (@thedwmckinney) or say hello at dwmckinney.com.A donation has been made to: Black Visions Collective  a Black, trans, and queer-led organization in Minnesota that seeks liberation for all members of the Black community.