10 Perfect Rap Songs For Rock Music Fans
5. The Blacker The Berry - Kendrick Lamar
Not every song on this list necessarily has to be in the same genre as rock. For all of the bands that can add some guitar or banging drums here and there, these are still hip hop songs, and the message is still firmly on that side of the spectrum. When you have a message behind your song that's a bit harsher than what you're used to though, it's hard not to bring out the big guns.
Throughout To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar continues to be the greatest of his peers, looking to dissect the complex relationship that he has with his old neighborhood after becoming one of the biggest stars in the world. For the past few tracks, you've seen him wallow in his sadness on songs like u, but The Blacker the Berry is where you start to see the ugly side of him come out. The majority of this track is Kendrick with his teeth exposed, laying into himself and everyone around him for being hypocritical for wanting to come back to his old stomping grounds and questioning whether the support that he gets from different sides of his fanbase is justified.
Behind him, the smooth jazz players that are on the last few songs are nowhere to be seen, replaced with a banging drum loop and one harsh line after another, especially towards the end where Kendrick delivers one final line about being a hypocrite for not crying over Trayvon Martin's death. He may have found some peace later on the album like I, but this is a man dissecting the toxic parts of his identity with no end in sight.