Heads up, this episode contains a profanity.

It's been nearly 40 years since the police killing of Michael Stewart in New York City,

and nearly a decade since another cop killed Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, and just three

years since George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis.

Their names, these moments have been seared into our collective memories.

They've given us a before and an after.

The before feels long gone, but the after, we're still living it.

There's a new rhythm, a new sound, new lyrics to capture the anger in our fists and

the hope in our open palms reaching for something more.

There are new songs to help us calibrate the world or escape it.

And no genre has given us that in these first tumultuous decades of the 21st century,

more than hip hop.

And perhaps no artist has captured the racial and political tension or the complexity of

this moment, more than Kendrick Lamar, an artist defining himself on his own terms, but

a clear descendant of Raquem, K.R.S., public enemy, and N.W.A. with some pach and a lot of

his eyes.

In the fallout from the killings of Michael Brown and George Floyd, it was Kendrick's

music that embodied the fury and fealty to black people in their liberation in the widest,

most modern context.

Kendrick Lamar, a son of Compton, California, born in 1987, a year before N.W.A. released

Street Out of Compton, came of age with West Coast royalty in his musical DNA.

Kendrick told hip hop station W.G.C.I that when he was just seven years old, his dad put him

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