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Alright (Kendrick Lamar song)

"Alright"
Single by Kendrick Lamar
from the album To Pimp a Butterfly
Released July 30, 2015 (2015-07-30)
Format Digital download
Recorded 2014–15
Genre
Length 3:39
Label
Writer(s)
Producer(s)
  • Pharrell Williams
  • Sounwave
  • Michael Kuhle
Kendrick Lamar singles chronology
"Bad Blood"
(2015)
"Alright"
(2015)
"These Walls"
(2015)
Music video
"Alright" on YouTube

"Alright" is a song by American rapper Kendrick Lamar, taken from his third album To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). Lyrically a festive song about hope, it features uncredited vocals from the song's co-producer Pharrell Williams during the chorus. "Alright" was released to radio stations as the album's fourth single on June 30, 2015. Most music publications considered it among the best songs and videos of the year, highlighting their message in the social context of the time. "Alright" received four nominations at the 58th Grammy Awards: Song of the Year, Best Music Video, Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song, winning the latter two.

The song was associated with Black Lives Matter after several youth lead protests were heard chanting the chorus, with some publications calling "Alright" the "unifying soundtrack" of the movement.

Originally, Pharrell Williams created the beat and only six months later, Williams came up with a hook that inspired Lamar to find the right lyrics. The hook, "We gon' be alright!" allowed Lamar to use the symbolism inherent to spur the rest of the song's lyrics that eventually resonated with an entire movement. In an interview with MTV News, Lamar said it was inspired by his trip to South Africa, witnessing other people's problems in the country: "their struggle was ten times harder." The track opens with lines from Alice Walker's The Color Purple, "Alls my life, I had to fight". Lamar introduced the character "Lucy", who plays an essential role in the remainder of the album. According to the lyrics, as Lamar gets bigger so does Lucy: "ain't a profit big enough to feed you". At the end of the track, Lamar talks about his suicidal thoughts once in a hotel room "I didn't wanna self-destruct... The evils of Lucy was all around me." For music critics a "celebration of being alive", Lamar described "Alright" as message of hope. The song begins as a spoken-word treatise before exploding into a shapeshifting portrait of America that brings in jazz horns, skittering drum beats and Lamar's mellifluous rapping as he struggles with troubles and temptations. Musically, it features marching band propulsion and a jazz band's breezy reeds. For his sole production credit, Pharrell Williams, who made the track with Digi+Phonics' member Sounwave, sings the hook.


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Wikipedia

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