Playing on a side stage in the sunset time slot, Lamar drew a crowd of thousands both weekends that year, and he rocked them ecstatically. Photo by Scott Newton, courtesy of KLRU-TV/Austin City Limits 30 at ACL Live for an episode of KLRU’s long-running music television show “Austin City Limits.” Lamar was the first rapper to record the show since it moved to ACL Live in 2011.
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Kendrick Lamar was the first rapper to play the storied television show since production moved to the Moody Theater at ACL Live in 2011, but the show’s executive producer, Terry Lickona, had been working on his appearance for a few years, since he caught Lamar’s phenomenal ACL Fest debut in 2013. This is the story of how it went down, told through the voices of the staffers and fans who made the moment happen.
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In a city struggling with diversity problems, it was also complicated. The moment was powerful, breathtaking and unforgettable. Lamar, who burned with passion that night, leaned in, guiding the chant, dropping it down to a whisper and building it back to a deafening shout. Almost 2,000 Austinites raised their voices, shouting “We gon’ be alright” in unison. That night, in a break between songs, a spontaneous chant began at the front of the stage and spread through the concert hall. When Lamar previewed his ACL Fest set last year in a surprise appearance on “Austin City Limits,” the festival’s namesake television show recorded at ACL Live, the audience seized those words and made them their own. It’s something that people live by - your words.” “It’s more than just a piece of a record. When it’s outside of the concerts, then you know it’s a little bit more deep-rooted than just a song,” he said. “When I’d go in certain parts of the world, and they were singing it in the streets. In an interview with the New York Times in December, Lamar recognized the song’s power. Marc Fort, webmaster/publications coordinator for the Texas Music Office "That was just a moment that you don’t experience or see at 99 percent of the concerts you go to, where the audience is able to show their love and the artist has to take a moment and pause." V. Words have power, and on the dark days when we don’t even believe them, we can say these words, “We gon’ be alright, we gon’ be alright, we gon’ be alright,” until hope returns. It’s something we can repeat to ourselves every time a body drops. Written to empower black people, the song’s reach has grown to encompass everyone troubled by the way ongoing violence undermines our dreams of unity. The chorus, a repeated chant of “We gon’ be alright,” is more than a hook. Shortly after the album was released, standout track “Alright,” a protest anthem with a slick Pharrell Williams-produced groove, became a theme song at Black Lives Matter rallies across the country. He pulls back the veil on the deep-seated mistrust, the multigenerational ache that incubates rage and the soaring aspirations that will not be grounded, even when the arc of the moral universe Martin Luther King promised would bend toward justice feels agonizingly longer than it should be.
#THE MESSAGE BEHIND ALRIGHT BY KENDRICK LAMAR FREE#
Set against a complex musical backdrop of free range jazz and funk, Lamar’s 2015 opus “To Pimp a Butterfly” delves into what it means to be black in modern America.
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He wins hearts and minds every time he hits the stage. Many bands will have fantastic performances at the Austin City Limits Music Festival this weekend, but Lamar’s Saturday headline set is the most likely to open eyes and possibly even change lives. Like Bob Marley or Marvin Gaye before him, he’s a righteous teacher in a difficult time with the power to present an unflinching picture of what’s really going on in a way that resonates broadly. With the fire of a street preacher, the grit of a martial artist and the lyrical dexterity of Dylan, no artist more accurately captures the current turmoil in our country’s streets than the 29-year-old emcee from Compton. It’s impossible to talk about Kendrick Lamar’s music without talking about race relations in America.