100 Greatest Songs of the 2010’s #10 Kendrick Lamar – Alright

Released : 2015

There are fewer more awkward terms in music genre tunnelling surely than “Conscious” hip hop. After all, this is a movement defined by being in the societal and cultural frontlines, the rhymes effectively notes from an edge life that most of it’s suburban consumers find dangerous by loose association.

Alright is about consciousness, both of the marginalisation of black America and the police who stalk it, but also in Kendrick Lamar’s spoken word outro, of the self, of being at the centre of your own life if nothing else. Everything would change a year later, but whatever label you chose to put on it, this was a moment that turned cartoon lives into ones that bled out all over your bedroom floor, just to be resurrected again.