​​​​Shana L. Redmond states in her book Anthem (2013) that “anthems are devices that make the listening audience and political public merge. Listening to Black anthems is a political act in performance because it mobilizes communal engagements that speak to misrecognition, false histories, violence, and radical exclusion” (2).  If we take this to be a working definition of what a Black anthem is, and what it is like to experience listening to one, then Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” can appropriately don the label.


 

Works Cited

Li, Jie. "Discoloured Vestiges of History: Black and White in the Age of Colour Cinema." Journal of Chinese Cinemas 6.3 (2012): 247-62. CrossRef. Web.

Manabe, Noriko. "We Gon’ be Alright? the Ambiguities of Kendrick Lamar’s Protest Anthem." Music Theory Online 25.1 (2019)Publicly Available Content Database. Web.

Redmond, Shana L. Anthem. New York [u.a.]: New York Univ. Press, 2014. Web.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York [u.a.]: Pocket Books, 1985. Web.