A lot happened at the 2016 Grammy Awards, which aired on CBS on Monday night. There was red carpet fashion. Taylor Swift won a bunch of stuff. Adele sang. Seth MacFarlane was there for some reason.
And the only thing that felt vital in the whole night was the performance of Kendrick Lamar.
If you haven’t watched the performance yet, please do.
In it, the best rapper alive performs Alright and The Blacker The Berry, two standouts off his latest album, To Pimp A Butterfly. Well, yes, that’s the basic narrative of what he did. It was more than that, though. It was a piece of performance art, a pyrotechnics show, and an outright challenge to white America: Watch this.
People felt uncomfortable with Beyoncé having her dancers wear Black Panthers outfits? Lamar walked out in chains.
He then gave us a piece of musical theater that made the performance of Hamilton right before it seem cute. Hamilton was charming, off-kilter and funny, a delightful and cutting reimagining of our nation’s history with good tunes and a nice introduction from Stephen Colbert. That wasn’t Lamar’s performance. Lamar’s performance was fire and brimstone and our nation’s dark history yanked in front of us.
To put it another way: The Hamilton number was a biting joke at the dinner table. Kendrick grabbed us by the throat.
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And shouts to CBS as well, who for the one time on the night stepped their game up at the exact right moment. The rapid cutting between cameras zoomed in on Lamar’s face for the stunning conclusion was perfect, giving even more immediacy to his fiery delivery. By cutting over and over, showing us multiple angles of his face, he ceased to be one man and instead became the voice of many, a furious, righteous voice speaking directly into the living rooms of America. (Update: A few people pointed out that CBS needlessly censored some lines of Lamar’s, including him saying “we hate po po.” Sorry CBS, I’m taking back your kudos.)
It was irrelevant that Taylor Swift won Album of the Year over Lamar because he had already won the night. He accomplished more than Swift could ever hope to. (And I say that as an unabashed Taylor Swift fan.)
His performance was challenging, honest and earnest, and I’m certain people will write a lot of letters asking CBS why a “political performance” was allowed on the night of a fun awards show. They’ll ask how they’re supposed to explain this to their children. That’s the point, though. They need to explain this to their children.
