Byron Bay Bluesfest headliner Kendrick Lamar is hip-hop’s ascendant megastar

POLITICALLY astute and musically on point, Kendrick Lamar is hip hop’s ascendant megastar, pushing the likes of Kanye, Drake and Jay-Z to the margins.

IT is Kendrick Lamar’s time.

Kanye West seems incapable of finishing and releasing his new album The Life Of Pablo, Jay-Z is cleaning up the Tidal mess and Drake is prepping his much-anticipated View From The 6 record, so, right now, Lamar owns the show.

His crowning moment came when he set fire to the Grammys stage in February with an incendiary, inspiring and politically-charged performance of Blacker The Berry, Alright and Untitled 3.

The latter track was a preview of the unexpected Untitled Unmastered album he would drop on March 4.

The eight tracks on that compilation are unreleased songs and demos which emerged during the sessions for his powerful second smash hit album To Pimp A Butterfly, which won five Grammys out of 11 nominations.

Trio of cool ... Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams and Jay-Z at the 2014 Grammys. Picture: Christopher Polk/Getty Images

It debuted at No. 1 on the American charts giving Lamar his second chart-topping album in less than a year.

And as he did with To Pimp A Butterfly, Untitled Unmastered arrived without a marketing and promotional blitz. Lamar, like Beyonce, Drake and David Bowie, doesn’t need one. The sneak attack is the new promo campaign.

But the surprise album release wasn’t embraced simply because of the Grammy wins but underlined his phenomenal success in promoting black counterculture into the mainstream in recent years.

Two years after his debut record Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City was locked out of the Grammys, winning zip from seven nominations, he is hip hop’s loudest and most provocative voice.

Lamar’s politically-charged lyrics have electrified audiences in the US since his debut album in 2012. Picture: Matt Sayles/Invision/AP

For every not-so-humble brag in his songs, there is a self-doubt disclaimer. He calls himself a king and a hypocrite, a sinner and a prophet. In Blacker The Berry, he controversially questioned those who would mourn slayed black teenager Trayvon Martin while perpetuating violence against their own community.

Another of To Pimp A Butterfly’s cornerstones was Alright, a song which became the rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement in response to the series of police killings young black men.

Lamar may have upset some in the black community with Blacker The Berry’s both-sides-of-the-argument approach but Alright helped channel the anger of black communities into positive protest as they chanted “we gon’ be alright”.

Like Dr Dre and Ice Cube before him, Lamar emerged from the southern Los Angeles city of Compton, associated with gang culture and gangsta rap, to become a superstar.

His dreams of busting out of Compton onto the world stage were sown at an early age, when a wide-eyed eight-year-old watched Tupac and Dr Dre shoot the video for Californian Love down the street from his home.

The fresh new face of hip hop. Lamar on stage at the 2015 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. Picture: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

He was a straight-A student at high school and was signed to a recording deal after releasing his first mixtape at 16 under the pseudonym K.Dot.

Now 16-year-olds are taking their understanding of America’s racial troubles from Lamar’s songs.

While most rappers steer clear of the role model tag for fear of eroding their “cred”, this 28-year-old artist who has the ears of Taylor Swift fans — he rapped on her megahit Bad Blood — as much as he does the hip hop crew, is prepared to step up.

“When I made To Pimp a Butterfly, I thought it would only live in a place where people like age 30 and up would respect it but there’s actually 15 year olds that know what’s going on in the album and can reflect on it outside their bedroom window,” he wrote in XXL magazine in late 2015.

“That’s the initial start for sparking the idea for change right there, because it always starts with the youth. So me taking my platform and speaking about some extreme topics and knowing that kids are going to go out there and listen to it, that’s the idea I’m truly proud of,” he wrote in XXL.

Some may have raised an eyebrow when Lamar was announced last year as one of the headliners of this week’s annual Bluesfest in Byron Bay, but his fans would get the fit.

The musical soundtrack for his longform narratives about life in America as a black man are as entrenched in the stems of hip hop — soul, jazz and funk — as his raps reference and pay tribute to the history of the civil rights movement in the US.

Fellow Bluesfest artist and acclaimed jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington plays all over To Pimp A Butterfly and James Brown and Sly Stone are as much an influence on his music as the freshest beats.

That’s why his wins at the 2016 Grammys should have included Album of The Year (won by Swift) and Song Of The Year, picked up by Ed Sheeran. Lamar is dictating the next direction for both hip hop and pop.

“I wanted to have a time capsule on the record. But I knew it would be fresh because a fresh kid is doing it,” he told Billboard during his media charm offensive ahead of the Grammys.

“I said: ‘That’s what’s going to make it new — my lyrics and my words.”

In addition to that unforgettable and historic performance, Lamar proved revealing at the mic when accepting his Best Rap Album award, appropriately from Cube and his son, O’Shea Jackson.

Whitney Alford and rapper Lamar at this year’s Grammy Awards. Picture: Larry Busacca/Getty Images for NARAS

After acknowledging God and his parents, he thanked his high school sweetheart and fiance Whitney Alford.

The pair have maintained a very private relationship, avoiding the red carpet massacres which attract Kanye and Kim or the orchestrated social media snaps of Beyonce and Jay-Z.

“I wouldn’t even call her my girl. That’s my best friend. I don’t even like the term that society has put in the world as far as being a companion — she’s somebody I can tell my fears to,” he told Billboard.

Kendrick Lamar performs at Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, tomorrow; Allphones Arena, Sydney, March 23; Bluesfest, Byron Bay, March 24.

Originally published as Byron Bay Bluesfest headliner Kendrick Lamar is hip-hop’s ascendant megastar