Disclaimer: This article contains use of vulgarity.
Picking up from “King Kunta”, we enter “Institutionalized”. On this track, Kendrick along with Bilal, Anna Wise, Snoop Dogg and Taz Arnold all work together to portray an incredibly conflicted Kendrick. The song opens with Kendrick rapping as a younger version of himself trying to imagine a more successful life outside the ghetto
.
Once the intro ends, we have an excellent beatswitch transition us into a more successful Kendrick in the present timeline. The first verse seems to represent a somewhat cocky, naive Kendrick who is institutionalized by his new role and seems to think that he has all the answers for his community.
I come to this conclusion because of lines such as, “I’ll tell you my hypothesis, I’m probably just way too loyal. K Dizzle will do it for you, My ni- think I’m a god. Truthfully all of ‘em spoiled, usually you’re never charged.”
This paired with the earlier lines in the verse, “Me, scholarship? No, streets put me through colleges. Be all you can be, true, but the problem is. Dream only a dream if work don’t follow it.” This paints a picture of Kendrick thinking that all his community needs to do is work hard and be taken away from the violence but once he takes a friend of his to the BET awards, he learns a harsh reality.
This is that many of these people who Kendrick knows from the hood are institutionalized by their surroundings and even when they’re surrounded by celebrities and high-profile individuals, their roots begin creeping back in.
Kendrick uses excellent voice-shifting to illustrate this on the second verse of the song where he raps from the perspective of the friend. The bridge and outro by Snoop Dogg parallels nicely with this theme of things backfiring by Snoop seemingly beginning a fairy tale about Kendrick but once we reach the outro it ends on a darker note with the lines, “You can take your boy out the hood But you can’t take the hood out the homie Took his show money, stashed it in the mozey wozey. Hollywood’s nervous. F- you, goodnight, thank you much for your service.”
Bilal’s contributions further this with the simple phrase, “S- don’t change until you get up and wash yo’ a-.” In my opinion, part of Kendrick’s genius is the way that he can drive a concept across in incredibly understandable ways such as this. Here, he is seemingly saying that things don’t get better in your life until you clean up your act, but he is also saying to himself that he can’t truly make a change in the world until he helps his own community. Kendrick addresses this towards himself on top along with his community and you will see more of this kind of self questioning on the rest of the album.
I think this is a pretty genius song with a lot of things to take away from it. First of all, I appreciate the duality of the song as it speaks to different perspectives. Oftentimes I hear the more violent black communities criticized with many people asking questions like, “why don’t they just follow the laws?” and statements such as, “nobody has to be violent.”
I agree to an extent but I still think these are pretty poor responses to this topic because it ignores that there is nuance to the situation. For many people in these hoods that Kendrick describes, gangs and violence is all that they know and are surrounded by. It is very much similar to how many historical figures in our time period have done terrible things due to the times that they were in.
From here, Kendrick carries on the poem with the words, “sometimes I did the same.” This brings us to the next track “These Walls”, possibly the prettiest sounding song on the album but also quite deep at the same time. In this song, Kendrick not only talks about misusing his success to have sex with women, but also uses this sex as a metaphor to continue the themes of his fellow black man not being able to escape the hood life.
The first two verses on this song can simply be interpreted as being about sex but the final verse to close the song is where we see Kendrick coming to terms with what he’s doing and the corruption that’s occurring inside of himself. The production matches this tonal shift incredibly with an eerie beat change paired with vocals that almost sound like Kendrick is talking through an answering machine. This works perfectly as this verse is meant to address somebody who murdered a previously referenced friend of Kendrick’s from the song “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst”. He not only addresses having sex with the man’s girlfriend to hurt him despite already having been arrested, but also subtly foreshadows the theme of survivor’s guilt that will be further explored in the album.
Kendrick further sinks to his lowest as we reach the incredibly raw “u”, which can very easily be considered the emotional climax of the album. This is an incredibly dark juxtaposition to the lead single of the album, “i”, a song about positivity and self love, while this one is full of self doubt and Kendrick at war with his conscience. Production wise, Kendrick is free flowing over an incredibly dark beat that only gets darker as the song goes on. After an initial verse, the beat gives way to a heart-breaking bottle-clattering beat with Kendrick practically crying his verse.
This serves to me as a reminder of more of Kendrick’s genius. He is absolutely not afraid to alter his voice to show different perspectives along with different emotions. I’ve already mentioned it when I was talking about the intro to “Institutionalized”, but it is also incredibly present here in his second verse where he uses an incredibly sad, almost child-like voice to depict himself at his lowest.
Personally, I think this song is very relatable as during our lows we will often question ourselves in every way like Kendrick is doing here. We will question our decisions, say that we hate ourselves and attack ourselves personally because we know ourselves better than anybody else. It also resonates with me on an immense level because it shows that you are not you during your darkest times and that these moments along with the things he is saying will pass.
Another potent message was the way that he shows that sometimes when we move up in life, meet new people and have more responsibilities we forget about some of the people closest to us, which he illustrates by talking about his pregnant younger sister. We all have our low moments so Kendrick makes sure to bring us back to life a bit with the anthem “Alright”, with excellent jazzy production handled by legends Pharell Williams and Sounwave.
The first verse features Kendrick talking about drug habits of his and his fear that giving in to his vices, along with past karma will keep him out of heaven. He then proceeds to rap a great second verse where he introduces the concept of “Lucy” (Lucifer) and comes to the conclusion that everything will be alright as long as he has god.
That is without even mentioning the political undertones on this song in a context outside of the album with this song very much serving as Kendrick also telling his community that they will be alright as long as they stand side by side. This brings up the already present theme of unity that is explored further on the album and Kendrick must’ve been happy to see this song serve as an undeniable anthem during the black lives matter protests earlier this year.
If I was to describe this song in one way it’d have to be convincing yourself that everything will be alright even when you know that it’s not. The way that the tracklist gets darker after the song adds to this for me along with the final lines in the chorus, “I’m at the preacher’s door. My knees gettin’ weak and my gun might blow. But we gon’ be alright.”
If I had to be honest, this is one of the less interesting tracks on the album for me due to a somewhat trendy sound compared to many of the other songs. I do, however, think that it’s a testament to the artistry of Kendrick that even one of the less interesting songs on the album still has so many layers to it and is just very well made. This serves as a reprieve but with the poem returning at the end of this song, so do more realizations in the coming songs that I will explore further.
Cristian Valentin can be contacted at:
cvalentin@kscequinox.com
