"Kendrick Lamar released this song via Taraji Henson (co-star of popular television show “Empire”) the day after winning Best Rap Song & Performance for “i” at the 2015 Grammy Awards.
“The Blacker the Berry” is a looking glass version of Lamar’s previous release, “i”. While “i” celebrates self/blackness, “The Blacker the Berry” deals with racialized self-hatred. Taken together the two songs contradict each other, though this kind of double-consciousness has always been part of African American experience.
TDE co-president Terrence “Punch” Henderson added weight to this claim by tweeting an image of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. side by side.
The song shares the name and ideals of Wallace Thurman’s novel The Blacker the Berry, and has drawn comparisons to 2Pac’s “Keep Ya Head Up.” Kendrick mentioned these ideals in his Billboard Cover story.
The single art for this song is by Italian photographer Giordano Cipriani. Pictured are a mother and her twins, from the tribe of the Surma, in the Valley of the Omo of Ethiopia."
