We Cry Together

 

I've been trying to figure out how to approach Kendrick Lamar's incendiary "We Cry Together," probably the most talked about cut on his latest recording released in May, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, another powerful musical experiment and cultural statement.

Though I'm an unapologetic fan, I'm not in Lamar's target demographic, but neither were the members of the Pulitizer committee that awarded his 2017 record, Damn., the prize for music. To many of us, the 35-year-old Compton native is the gold-standard for consciousness-raising, an unalloyed lyrical genius.

"We Cry Together" is nearly 6 minutes of a couple (Lamar and the celebrated young actress Taylour Paige) verbally assaulting one another in a raw, brutal, profane exchange over a driving piano/bass/drums line. The insults, the teasing and the wounding hit the listener in the solar plexus first, but then, as with so much of Lamar's work, eventually worm up to the brain. As the kids might say, "Ohhhh, dammmnnnn. That's deep."

The argument is about more than these two seemingly unhappy people. I believe they are avatars for the delusion and dysfunction that, ironically, hold couples together. They are emblems as much as George and Martha in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, first stage 60 years ago.

Both works are about the lies we tell one another to fill the time and the emptiness, to avoid examining ourselves. We often mask all of this pain with sex. (Hump the hostess?)

"We Cry Together" is part theater and part treatise. It's by turns painful and funny and it feels interminable. So in that way, it's a lot like life for many of us.