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“Laundering Black rage means trying to get at something maybe even worse than co-optation, an actual means of governing people’s rage – to take that threat and then use it against them as a means of keeping them within the very framework that they’re pissed off about.”

 -Too Black, author of Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits 

Kendrick Lamar, once considered the torch-bearer of conscious hip-hop, is flaming out. His rise as a social commentator, with albums like To Pimp a Butterfly and DAMN., made him the poster child for progressive, “woke” hip-hop. However, Lamar’s success has come at a price: compromising the authenticity of his message to fit the broader commercial mold. This phenomenon isn’t unique to Lamar but is part of a larger trend among entertainers and activists in the face of mainstream capitalism. 

Jay-Z’s role in the NFL’s “social justice” initiatives is a prime example of how those who were once considered radical in their activism are increasingly co-opted into serving corporate interests. Both Lamar and Jay-Z represent a shift in how the industry harnesses their influence for commercial purposes—turning revolutionary symbols into sellouts.

Kendrick Lamar’s Evolution: A Shift From Activism to Mainstream Success

Kendrick Lamar’s evolution as an artist is both a story of artistic brilliance and subtle co-optation. In the early stages of his career, Lamar presented himself as a staunch critic of systemic racism and inequality. His 2015 album, To Pimp a Butterfly, was a ground-breaking piece of work, using jazz, funk, and spoken word to explore Black identity, social issues, and institutional oppression. The album’s themes of Black empowerment were undeniably aligned with the ideals of the Black Lives Matter movement, and Lamar became a beacon of socially conscious hip-hop. However, as Lamar’s career continued, there was an increasing disconnect between his art and the world he once criticized.

Released amid the rise of the BLM movement, Alright (2015) became an anthem of perseverance for activists fighting against police brutality and systemic racism. The song’s chorus, “We gon’ be alright,” provided a mantra of hope, but the track itself stops short of advocating direct action or systemic overhaul. While Lamar acknowledges racial struggle in his verses, he ultimately turns to a spiritual and internal reassurance rather than a call for revolution. Compared to the more confrontational energy of protest movements at the time, Alright was powerful yet palatable—used in marches, but still digestible enough for broad consumption. 

It was reminiscent of an artist of the past who also provided transporting and calming tones to his tumultuous era. Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World (1967) emerged during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, a time of immense racial tension, protests, and radical demands for justice. The song’s serene imagery—“The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky, are also on the faces of people going by”—paints an idyllic picture that stands in stark contrast to the violence, segregation, and social upheaval of the 1960s. While Armstrong was a respected Black artist, his song did not reflect the direct struggles of the movement in the way that contemporaries like Nina Simone (Mississippi Goddam) or James Brown (Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud) did. Instead, What a Wonderful World functioned more as an escapist salve rather than a militant cry for justice.

Below is a mashup of Kendrick and Satchmo’s songs:

A new documentary, Soundtrack to a Coup d’état (2024) details how Louis Armstrong and several other jazz legends of the 1960s were sent as “cultural ambassadors” to Africa, but dualed as decoys in the CIA’s plot to assassinate Congo’s prime minister Patrice Lumumba. Both Alright by Kendrick Lamar and What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong offer uplifting messages within their respective eras, but they also dilute the radical energy of the times in which they were created.

Lamar, like Armstrong, wants to float above it all. In the music video for “Alright”, Kendrick is hovering around the city of Oakland, while all sorts of chaos and partying and joy is happening below. It is a fitting image for the voyeuristic relationship Kendrick has with the streets, where he has the privilege of picking and choosing when he will embody the drama or escape from it. He is a butterfly that remains cozy in his capitalist cocoon, collecting massive royalties from fetishizing mass movements and cornering the market on obtuse political gestures. It is no wonder the weekend social justice warriors love him so much, he’s “just like us”.

Illustration by Rajesh Barnabas

Dilution + Misdirection = Co-option

The indirect or “stylistic” effort from Lamar, veers sharply to the center when compared to the direct “Fuck The Police” messaging of the earlier South LA hip hop era – a legacy Lamar flaunts his intimacy with at every opportunity (see Grammy Acceptance Speech, 2025).

While his lyrical content still touches on issues of race, wealth inequality, and the struggles of Black America, his persona has increasingly been polished and marketed to a mainstream audience. One key indication of this came in 2015, in reference to the uprising in Ferguson following the killing of Michael Brown. In an interview with Billboard, Lamar said:

“I wish somebody would look in our neighborhood knowing that it’s already a situation, mentally, where it’s fucked up. What happened to [Michael Brown] should’ve never happened. Never. But when we don’t have respect for ourselves, how do we expect them to respect us? It starts from within. Don’t start with just a rally, don’t start from looting – it starts from within.” 

This two-tongued quote could have easily been ghost-written by Barack Obama. With his brand of ‘pull your pants up’ messaging to Black people, the President perfected a call to ‘sit-down-be-humble’ in the face of mass movements; inspiring meaningless individualized action and inaction. The shift in his role should be expected, given Lamar’s vaulted position in the highly commercialized music industry and his growing ties with brands and high-profile corporate deals. Lamar’s business decisions, including signing endorsement deals with companies like Reebok and Apple ensure his loyalty to the system. While it is understandable for artists to capitalize on their success, the sheer volume of commercial endorsement deals raises questions about whether Lamar’s message of resistance has been diluted in favor of fame and profit. 

As one critic that goes by the moniker The-CollegeDropIn put it: 

“How can Kendrick go from making an album about labels pimping artists and robbing them of their creative visions, while calling out corporate fat-cats who are partially responsible for the suffering poor blacks face, to literally making an album for corporate fat cats who produce the most vapid, meaningless shit. People acting like Black Panther has anything to do with being black, or being Afrocentric. ‘Oh look guys, we have a black director’, who’s literally no more than a tool of old white people who tell him how to make the movie as vapid as possible.”

Moreover, Lamar’s participation in major award shows, like the Grammys, often blurs the line between activism and entertainment. Though he sporadically uses his platform to address systemic racism, his affiliation with the corporate sponsors of these events—who often profit from the very systems he critiques—raises concerns about the veracity of his activism.

“This is what it’s about, man. Because at the end of the day, nothing is more powerful than rap music. We are the culture. It’s gonna always stay here and live forever.” He continued his vague inspirational platitudes with this: “To the young artists, I just hope you respect the art form, get you where you need to go.”

Lamar’s ascension in the industry was directly related to his transformation into a West Coast Drake, excavating his eclectic inner emotions and existential struggles. Again, from The_CollegeDropIn:

“Nowadays he is just music for white kids at a frat party. Humble is a good song, but it’s no more than a banger for a bunch of white kids doing E, with one or two middle class Black kids acting like it’s the most fire shit ever, dabbing and yelling. Kendrick is just too popular now for his own good. Everyone just sees him as this ‘woke, deep’ rapper, but since his audience is now a bunch of white kids who play football, he can’t rap about anything woke or deep, so he raps about stupid ‘internal struggles’ and stuff, because that’s the only ‘struggle’ rich white people can relate to.” 

It is this metamorphosis that distinguished Lamar as the “Patron Saint of the Literati” as music writer Taylor Crumpton described him, “the darling of the Grammys.” Only then is he canonized by the all-white Pulitzer Prize committee, with their refined tastes.  

In essence, Lamar’s presence in these spaces shows that more often than not, artists take the easier path, and become subservient to the systems that be.  

Jay-Z: The NFL’s New “Social Justice” Mouthpiece

While Lamar’s evolution into a mainstream figure may reflect the natural course of a successful artist’s career, Jay-Z’s involvement with the NFL represents a more explicit and calculated effort to suppress the militant response to racial injustice in America. In 2019, Jay-Z struck a deal with the NFL to become the league’s “social justice advisor” and oversee its entertainment programming, including the Super Bowl halftime show. On the surface, this seemed like a victory for social justice—an attempt to incorporate activism into the NFL’s platform. However, beneath the surface, Jay-Z’s partnership with the NFL can be viewed as a strategic maneuver to placate the militant sentiments within Black America.

Kaepernick’s protest against police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem ignited a national debate and ultimately led to his exclusion from the NFL. The NFL’s response to Kaepernick was a blatant display of how corporate interests can quash social activism when it becomes too inconvenient. Jay-Z’s involvement with the NFL was seen by many as an attempt to neutralize the growing outrage surrounding Kaepernick’s treatment. Eric Reid, who took a knee alongside teammate Kaepernick summed up Jay-Z’s dealings with the NFL this way:

“Jay-Z doesn’t need the NFL’s help to address social injustices. It was a money move for him and his music business. The NFL gets to hide behind his Black face to try to cover up blackballing Colin.”

By taking a seat at the table, Jay-Z could be positioned as a middleman—someone who understood the concerns of the Black community but was willing to work within the system to create incremental change. Recall now Jay-Z’s legacy of being a go-between for the capitalist class and activists. During the Occupy Movement in 2010-11, he donned an “Occupy All Streets” t-shirt, which his Rocawear company sold with the intention of “reminding people that there is change to be made everywhere, not just on Wall Street.” This kind of “All Lives Matter” misdirection was an intentional ploy to water down the political outrage of the times. In his own words: 

“Yeah, the one per cent that’s robbing people, and deceiving people, these fixed mortgages and all these things, and then taking their home away from them, that’s criminal, that’s bad,” he told Zadie Smith in the NY Times. “[But it’s] not [bad] being an entrepreneur. This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on.” (Source: Jay-Z falls out with Occupy Wall Street, The Guardian)

Jay-Z had officially joined the Obama cult of two-tongued liaisons of the oppressor class. With a networth of 2.5 Billion, Jay-Z was obviously wary of the broadside indictment on the 1% club he was now a member of.  

Fast-forward to 2020 and Jay-Z’s decision to work with the NFL is widely criticized as an opportunistic move. Jay-Z, who had built his brand as a socially conscious rapper, was now merely serving as a tool for the NFL to manage its public relations crisis. In his piece Jay-Z Isn’t a Sellout, He’s a Capitalist, sports writer Dave Zirin described the deal this way:

“With the subtlety of a blowtorch, they staged this [press announcement] on the third anniversary of Kaepernick’s first anthem protest. The message was clear: This was about turning the page on Kaepernick and any protest that would directly confront racism either in the NFL or on the platform the league provides.”

Rather than pushing for radical change, Jay-Z’s NFL partnership ultimately served to whitewash the league’s history of racial discrimination, positioning him as a figurehead for a more palatable, corporate-friendly form of activism.

“The Art of the Deal” and the Commercialization of Black Resistance

It all came together —two titans of the hip hop world united at this moment, Jay-Z and K-dot, producing their own version of the “The Art of the Deal” on the highest stage – Superbowl Sunday, February 9, 2025. 

Enter Lamar, who spent much of last year invoking Tupac’s name, in his corporate-approved pickleball battle with Drake, because he can’t stand on his own revolutionary anti-establishment legacy. Kendrick’s vocal delivery (sounding like a chipmunk on these latest tracks) and politics becomes more and more shrill, that is why he is acceptable for the military-imbued, Air Force fly-over NFL showcase event. Drake may be good for listening to in places like Target, Kendrick is good-listening for the  Blue MAGA, blue chip neoliberal “conscious” activists. It’s a one-size-fits-all messaging for anyone on the front lines of their own personalized existential conflict who needs abstract anthems to justify anything “We gonna be alright…” —the lyrical equivalent of “Just Do It”.

Kendrick claims to be no one’s Savior, nor should entertainers be, but his move to play during the capitalist half-time showcase seems especially tone deaf, given the US/Israel genocidal program in Palestine. And afterall, have the We Charge Genocide conditions for Black Americans, that Kaepernick was trying to bring attention to, really changed in the decade since he took a knee?  But when white supremacy is on the rise or in doubt, send in neoliberal necromancers Kamala and Kendrick, America’s DEI special agents of the moment to smooth over imperialism and/or genocide. 

But when white supremacy is on the rise or in doubt, send in neoliberal necromancers Kamala and Kendrick, America’s DEI special agents of the moment to smooth over imperialism and/or genocide.

So desperate for a win, the K-hive was all about it, interpreting all sorts of deeper mysticism and political meaning to the halftime show. The euphoria over make-believe political moments was reminiscent of the bonanza over the Black Panther movies. How much kool-aid was imbibed to think Wakanda and the Superdome were real places? Lamar’s act may have been subversive 25 years ago, when Spike Lee’s film Bamboozled (2000) came out, but presently it seems like he and Jay-Z are the ones donning blackface for flimsy dog and donkey shows; super performative politics for the Super Bowl. 

“Not Like Us” could easily serve as the perfect anthem for MAGA members of the audience and their Tsar. It is a hyper nativist screed, scapegoating a foreign competitor —who really isn’t the source of your problems. That this becomes high art, Grammy garnering, Taylor Swift shimmying material, is in direct relation to its commercial service as a misdirection tool, a political distraction from the real culprits.   

Kendrick Lamar and Jay-Z have thus become master magicians, meta artists of misdirection. Their respective transformations highlight the higher level reality within the entertainment industry: the cleansing and commodification of Black resistance. The initial raw power of Lamar and Jay-Z’s messages has been diluted, as both artists’ platforms have been absorbed by larger, profit-driven systems. Lamar, once hailed for his incisive critiques of American capitalism, has found himself pimped, playing by the rules of that very system. Similarly, Jay-Z, a figure who once prided himself on his ability to challenge the all-white managerial class, has become a key player in a corporate machine that thrives on stifling dissent.

Both Lamar and Jay-Z’s actions speak to a broader issue within the world of hip-hop and activism. The mainstreaming of Black resistance often comes with a heavy price. What was once radical and confrontational is transformed into something palatable for the masses—an acceptable form of activism that doesn’t challenge the power structures that created inequality in the first place. The irony of Lamar’s success is that his music has been sanitized by the very systems of capitalism, corporate sponsorship, and celebrity culture that he once criticized. The irony of Jay-Z’s NFL deal is that, despite his commitment to social justice, his partnership with the NFL league has failed to deliver any meaningful change, instead offering the illusion of progress.

Conclusion: Action Speaks Louder than Lyrics

Kendrick Lamar’s transformation from an artist rooted in Black resistance to a mainstream celebrity reflects the challenges of maintaining authenticity in a system that thrives on profit over principle. Meanwhile, Jay-Z’s involvement with the NFL demonstrates how corporate interests can weaponize activism to undermine more radical, transformative movements. Both men have navigated the complexities of fame, capitalism and activism, but in doing so, they have softened their stances, trading authenticity for visibility and influence. As the commercialization of Black activism continues, the question remains: how can artists and activists remain true to their cause without becoming instruments of the very systems they aim to dismantle?

Finally, for further investigation and possible solutions to this dilemma, we could simply turn back to Lamar’s original work To Pimp A Butterfly, a metaphor for society’s “pimping” of young Black men for their artistic talent —the butterfly, while simultaneously driving them towards materialistic self-destruction. A deeper look at the political art of deception is found in Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits, by Rasul A. Mowatt and Too Black. Provided in its description:

“[It] Examines how Black rage—conceived as a constructive and logical response to the conquest of resources, land, and human beings racialized as Black—is cleaned for the unyielding means of White capital. Interlacing political theory with international histories of Black rebellion, it presents a thoughtful challenge to the counterinsurgent tactics of the State that consistently convert Black Rage into a commodity to be bought, sold, and repressed. Laundering Black Rage investigates how the Rage directed at the police murder of George Floyd could be marshalled to funnel the Black Lives Matter movement into corporate advertising and questionable leadership, while increasing the police budgets inside the laundry cities of capital — largely with our consent.”

“Rage is not enough. What are you going to do in response to that issue? The further the response is from the issue that produced the rage, the more it opens the doorway for laundering.” — Rasul Mowatt