King Kunta

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KING KUNTA - by Kendrick Lamar

By:

Valerie

Lisa

Lotte 

Eva 

Maureen

17-6-2022

- Song 

- Textual Features

- Themes

- Issues 

- Activity

Textual Features

• Title - King Kunta: Oxymoron, the contrast between king (power and wealth ) and slave Kunta
• Title - King Kunta: Allusion, Roots: Saga of an American family
• Line 2: "I don't want you monkey-mouth motherfuckers": Alliteration; makes his critique towards other rappers more powerful

Textual Features

• Line 21-23: "I swore I wouldn't tell, but most of y'all sharing bars. Like you got the bottom bunk in a two-man cell. Something's in the water" --> Homonym: bars has two meanings, lyrics and a prison cell.

             "something's in the water" --> Ghostwriting happens so                  much, like it is spreading through the water

Textual Features

• Line 34-35: "The yam brought it out of Richard Pryor                                              Manipulated Bill Clinton with desires": Intertextuality --> Lamar refers to Richard Pryor because he is a victim of drug abuse and to Bill Clinton because he ruined his life and career because of drugs. 

Textual Features

• Line 60: "Annie, are you okay? Annie, are you okay?" Intertextuality --> Micheal Jackson's 'Smooth Criminal', Jackson states that death is something that could happen to anyone. Lamar used this line because Micheal Jackson is also African American by birth. 

Themes & Terms

Slavery

• Kunta Kinte --> Slave in the novel Roots: saga of an American family
• Kunta's legs were cut off when he tried to escape, Kendrick makes a parallel. Everything in Kendrick's life that has held him back from achieving his full potential. 

line 11-14

"Bitch where were you when I was walkin'?

Now I run the game got the whole world talkin', King Kunta

Everybody wanna cut the legs off him, Kunta

Black man taking no losses"

Mass transportation of Africans between 1800-1850: Kunta Kinte was a victim

Themes & Terms

Racial Disparity

• Lines 56 - 57 --> Singing about killing in a song is enough for the police to frame Lamar for murder. Drawing attention to innocent black men that get arrested, just for being black. 
• Lines 62-64 --> He is very succesful, defying stereotypical perception of young black men, because most black men with an age of 25, in a ghetto, either are dead or in jail. 

"This shit is elementary, I'll probably go to jail

If I shoot at your identity and bounce to the left"

"Ah yeah, fuck the judge

I made it past 25 and there I was

A little nappy headed nigga with the world behind him"

Refers back to the imbalance of the treatment of the system between different ethnic groups.

Institutional racism; They don't receive the same housing opportunities, job opportunities etc. 

Themes & Terms

Self-reflection

• lines 68-69 --> Lamar mentions that he started from the ground and worked his way up. With "the belly of the beast" Kendrick means a neighbourhood run by drugs and gangs, thus Compton.

"Straight from the bottom, this the belly of the beast

From a peasant to a prince to a motherfuckin' king?"

Themes & Terms

Drug abuse 

• Line 21: Drug trades are done openly in the streets. Protected by the people who are supposed to stop them, and with this line criticizing them.

"You can smell it when I'm walking down the street"

"Straight from the bottom, this the belly of the beast

From a peasant to a prince to a motherfuckin' king?"

Vernacular English

"Everybody wanna cut the legs off him

When you got the yams-what's the yams?"

• African American vernacular English, is the day-to-day use of language between people in the same community.
• "wanna": it means 'want to'
• "yams": slang for cocaine

He uses it to bring his own culture to his raps

1: What does the word 'yam' mean in the song King Kunta

"The yam is the power that be. You can smell it when I'm walkin' down the street" The drug issue is discussed, how openly the drug trades are carried. 

1. Power & Prestige
2. Cocaine & Heroine

What do you think Lamar means with these lines?

In these lines, Lamar criticises the rappers that use a ghostwriter because he feels like he is one of the only ones left that writes his own lyrics. 

I can dig rappin', but a rapper with a ghostwriter?
What the fuck happened?
I swore I wouldn't tell, but most of y'all sharing bars
Like you got the bottom bunk in a two-man cell

Why does Kendrick Lamar write songs in general?

This can be seen in line 28: "And if I gotta brown-nose for some gold. Then I'd rather be a bum than a motherfuckin' baller" It shows that he is not in the industry to earn money but to spread his word.

1. To earn money
2. To make his mom proud
3. To influence
4. To be admired

Find an allusion in the lines 11 to 14

"King Kunta, everybody wanna cut the legs off him" It refers to Kunta Kinte since he got his legs cut off because he tried to escape. They did not want him to succeed.