“The Blacker The Berry” by Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar put out "The Blacker the Berry" in February 2015 as the second single from To Pimp a Butterfly, his third album, where it sits at track 13. It shares its title with Wallace Thurman's 1929 novel and with a line from Tupac Shakur's "Keep Ya Head Up". Boi-1da and Stephen Kozmeniuk produced, with Terrace Martin adding production and alto sax; the Jamaican artist Assassin, uncredited, carries the chorus, and Lalah Hathaway sings backing vocals.

Lamar opens by calling himself a hypocrite, then spends the track celebrating his African-American heritage while wrestling with racism and hatred, furious and exposed by turns, until a jazz coda with Robert Glasper, Thundercat, Hathaway and Anna Wise brings it to rest. Critics raved about its cinematic production and confrontational bite, it went gold, and Lamar has rarely performed it live.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.