Back in town (2025)
Classic Swap and Kendrick Lamar
“Walk in New Orleans with the etiquette of LA, yellin’ Mustard!”
—Kendrick Lamar, TV Off (feat. Lefty Gunplay)
We are so back!
It’s time for us to walk into 2025 with the etiquette of a classic swap. This edition includes submissions from the whole gang as well as a very thoughtful Bonus Track highlighting the pure genius of Kendrick Lamar in preparation for the Super Bowl Halftime Show this weekend.
We’ve got our foot on the gas because somebody has to do it and we are glad you are here with us! Be sure to keep your inbox open and don’t turn this tv off.
Speaking of the big game and the halftime show, be sure to share your setlist and guest appearance guesses in the comments! Happy Swap!
squabble up by Kendrick Lamar (Adam)
This week I put the jam bands to the side and dove headfirst back into Kendrick Lamar’s discography to appropriately prepare for the halftime show this Sunday. The sample used in this recent song from Kdot really takes me back to those days at the skating rink as a kid. Growing up, we skated as a family and my mom would always verbally notate if a song would sound good at the rink. This song fits the bill perfectly. Personally, I am eagerly anticipating what Kendrick Lamar presents us this Sunday. I am sure it will be wildly creative and have a much deeper meaning than any of us will realize. Enjoy.
Bluebird Singing by John Vincent III (Kody)
While I’ve had my best KCMO winter yet, I still need songs like Bluebird Singing by John Vincent III to put a little spring in my step. If you’re feeling the weight of Seasonal Affective Disorder, let Vincent take you down “winding roads that lead (you) back to bluebirds singing.” This song is a burst of warmth and joy—an anthem celebrating a blissful frame of mind. So join me in belting it out with John, because spring is coming.
California Stars by Billy Bragg, Wilco (Mat)
I revisited this great record the other day. It’s a solid choice for this time of year. In Alabama, we are having a little foretaste of Spring weather. This album—twangy, folksy, laid back—is perfect for whiling away cold mornings and warm afternoons. Enjoy the standout track here and don’t sleep on the whole album.
Breaker Box by Michigander (Ben)
For those who know my proclivity for pedal steel or melancholy alt-country, this is a change up pitch. More mainstream, more synthetic, but he’s got a sound I keep coming back to. Michigander (led by Jason Singer on keys and vocals) is releasing their first full-length album… today! This pre-release is my favorite track so far - check them out.
Cold Little Heart by Michael Kiwanuka (Jonathan)
My theme song right now. Don’t think too hard about it. It’s because I’m cold. Don’t get me wrong, I love Kentucky winter, but we’ve had an up-and-down week: cold, then warm, then cold again. I’m ready for spring, and I think Kiwanuka feels my pain. If you’re not that familiar with him, check out some more of this British musician’s other soulful tracks while you wait for spring.
Bonus Track: How Much a Dollar Cost by Timothy Abbatacola
Before Kendrick takes the stage and we all assume rapt anticipation, there will be a moment that is dark and quiet and still. It will be, for us who watch on television, truncated and totally ruined by the commercials that punctuate the end of the first half. But it will happen for the people in the stadium and, of course, the darkness and quietude and stillness will happen for Kendrick, too. This is fitting because Kendrick is one of our underground men. One whose words emerge from the churning sense of self that develops when the soul enters its own silence, when it remains there a long while and listens and watches and—in a unique sense—knows itself.
The truths which confront us in Kendrick’s repertoire aren’t readily transposed to principles, and perhaps they’re not meant to be. The truths which confront us there are dramatic truths, seething with all the grime and glory, percussive emotion and confusion of real life. They deserve a difficult kind of reflection, one that’s attuned to both the particularity of the ‘moment’ which the song imaginatively creates, as well as the kernel of reality to which such a moment testifies.
Let’s try it.
One of my favorite tracks, one I assume Kendrick will not perform on Sunday night, is “How Much a Dollar Cost.” The track begins with a newly successful Kendrick pulling into a gas station, ego revving right along with the engine of his luxury vehicle. Following the narrative of the album, he’s on this kind of revelatory trip to Africa, but as it often happens, his mind is elsewhere, perseverating on the time a friend questioned his intelligence:
dirty Marcellus called me Dumbo
Twenty years ago, can't forget
Now I can lend him a ear or two
How to stack these residuals tenfold
The liberal concept of what men'll do
This admission is so good, so human. Any modicum of success, every minor victory throws me back to a time when someone has questioned me, even if implicitly or kindly. He’s calculating the measure of his revenge, and that measure will be the ‘value’ he receives for his newfound wealth. How much does a dollar really cost? Good question.
A homeless man comes out of the gas station, asks for money, and this sets off an engagement which makes up the bulk of the track. Kendrick is suspicious. Doesn’t want to be “contributin’ money for his pipe” and tells him “beat it.”
The man stares; up goes Kendrick’s temper.
Guilt trippin' and feelin' resentment
I never met a transient that demanded attention
But to demand someone’s attention is more than the phrase lets on. To demand attention is not to ask for eye contact, but for someone’s full consideration, something like a blessing or psychological self-offering. The man continues to stare—we get the sense he does so with an open jaw, as if Kendrick were out of his mind not to help him, a kind of beautiful entitlement—then finally asks:
Have you ever opened up Exodus 14?
A humble man is all that we ever need
How much does a dollar really cost? The crux of the song is rapped like semi-automatic fire raging back-and-forth, a dialogue between Kendrick and this man who makes a claim on his attention and his means. Kendrick seems to be gaining ground when the argument becomes so quick and percussive they start to share lines. The boundaries between Kendrick and this man are blurring. Then,
And I'm insensitive, and I lack empathy
He looked at me and said, "Your potential is bittersweet"
I looked at him and said, "Every nickel is mines to keep"
He looked at me and said, "Know the truth, it'll set you free
You're lookin' at the Messiah, the son of Jehovah, the higher power
The choir that spoke the word, the Holy Spirit
The nerve of Nazareth, and I'll tell you just how much a dollar cost
The price of having a spot in Heaven, embrace your loss—I am God"
The associations here defy neat analysis. But they’re there. “Whatever you do not do for the least of these…”
The sound that keeps the beat in this track is like a big swinging chain. It lags in the air on the off-beats and then crashes to the ground, a reverberating clang. The music wallows slowly along, but is kept in check by that foreboding, walloping beat. The texture is sad and full of regret, as if Kendrick is dragging his feet, slow to face something he knows is waiting for him at the story’s end. But the momentum drags him along, and finally we face with him this terrifying revelation: that he lives out even his most mundane moments—even at the gas station—before God. That to be human is to live unto the standards of soul, not culture or success or any other fabricated set of expectations (As he promises in "Humble" "watch my soul speak, you let the meds talk').
From the underground, Kendrick’s painful reminiscence, this ordinary but shame-filled story of not stacking up, is transfigured to reveal just what exactly we were born to stack up to: a life worthy of one who’s got God’s attention, one who, miraculously, is entitled to supernatural attention, supernatural means. Genius storytelling, really.
If you, like me, see the genius of Kendrick, you might, like me, spend Super Bowl Sunday trying to convince our friends and parents and neighbors of his transcendence. That he’s crass not merely for the sake of being crass. That he’s a true poet. That he is deeply aware of his own humanity, and therefore uniquely situated to remind us of our own; our beauty and power, as well as our poison. We can try to point out in so many words that his storytelling lacks all the decadence of so many other ‘storytellers’ of our age, that you can watch him in his music move through the soil of experience and find there—like, really find—some kernel of reality, of life:
the thing that’s holding his (and our) precious and painful memories together, giving them meaning. We can try to explain those moments when he’s held out that kernel for our own beholding. How this has been for the recognition and consolation and fortification of things way down deep inside us (See, “Mother I Sober” or “The Blacker The Berry” or “u”).
We can talk about the power of this sort of music to make new ways of life possible for us. How we might thrust ourselves into the world of “How Much a Dollar Cost,” binding ourselves to the strength of the imagery, being a character cast by the dramatic energy of the song’s revelation, rather than a character cast by our own hurts, the ones which drive us toward silly vengeance (precisely the point of the song beginning the way it does).
We can talk about empathy, sitting in another’s shoes, of seeing America from the perspective of a boy from Compton.
We might also just enjoy the music. After all, he’s a really incredible artist. He is, because of his art, the kind of underground man whom the world cannot ignore. This is a gift. That he has chosen to use his art to ‘come up’ from his silences and speak true words to the world, this, too, is a gift (for I suspect not many do). Let’s remember to enjoy it.
Timothy Abbatacola lives with his family in Oak Park, IL, and teaches at North Star Classical Christian School. His favorite Album is "To Pimp a Butterfly" by Kendrick Lamar, and his favorite artist is Pinegrove (he cries every time he listens to "Aphasia", believing the song's message of 'goodbye' is really directed to him in reference to the band's recent dissolution).
Wow! That was deep, Timothy. Thank you! We’re dialed in to hear Kdot during this year’s Halftime Show.
It’s good to be back! Thanks for reading, friends.
-TheMusicSwap