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“So to see them actually express themselves through song, through lyrics that I wrote?” For a kid from Compton whose life was transformed by hip-hop, the fame was nice, but the singing, the spirit, the possibility that his music was opening a cultural inroad for people joining the fight for civil rights- that was real. “A lot of people don’t have voices out there,” he said. For Lamar, the success was that people sang it in the streets.
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It wasn’t even that it broke new ground for where hip-hop might go. In an interview with Apple Music, Kendrick Lamar reflected on his 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly-in particular, the song “Alright.” It wasn’t that it sold well (it did).
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