The Story Behind The Sample: ‘DNA.’ by Kendrick Lamar
Kendrick Lamar is no stranger to sampling, having used the work of Bill Withers, James Brown, and Janet Jackson to enhance his own productions. In a continuation of our series on the impact that sampling has had on hip hop, we take a look at one of the standout tracks from Kendrick Lamar’s Damn.
The majority of this series has been dedicated to previous works which have been influential in the creation of the chosen track. This article is slightly off kilter as we will not focus on the work of a fellow musician, but rather the inclusion of a piece of criticism which has been leveraged to amplify the message.
Following the success of To Pimp A Butterfly, Kendrick Lamar was invited to perform at the BET awards in 2015, causing some controversy when performing ‘Alright’ on top of a vandalised police car. In a segment featured on Fox News ( you can probably see where this is going), following the ceremony, which was comprised of an entirely white panel, reporters criticised his vilification of the police, with one reluctantly accepting that “That’s his right to express himself. Let the free market decide. Personally, it doesn’t excite me, it doesn’t turn me on, doesn’t interest me.. I’m not feeling it.” A second would sarcastically chime in, “A rapper who’s anti-police? That’s never happened before.” These would prove to be tame when compared with what would follow.
Geraldo Rivera, former tabloid talk show host and attorney, with the hottest take of the night, said that “This is why I say that hip hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years.” In a twist of irony, which Fox News is a little too familiar with, this take fails to recognise that hip hop, to some degree, originated in a direct response to the racism experienced by the Black American community in the 1970s.
Lamar, after hearing the criticism, told TMZ: “How can you take a song that’s about hope and turn it into hatred? The overall message is ‘We’re gonna be alright.’ It’s not the message of ‘I wanna kill people’… Hip Hop is not the problem. Our reality is the problem.”
Never one to let those who have wronged him fail to suffer the consequences (just ask Drake), Kendrick would go on to use Riviera’s commentary in his 2017 project Damn. In the closing section of the album opener, ‘Blood’, the introduction of the Fox News segment is used as a prelude to the second track.
In the ‘DNA.’ music video K-dot sets the scene with guest star Don Cheadle, acting a detective who seeks the truth from a handcuffed Lamar, dressed as his alter ego, Kung Fu Kenny. When the detective touches a lie detector, he is overcome by the spirit of the rapper he is interrogating. A rapid response is elicited from the machine, referencing all the lies that have been spat. After becoming the rapper, the detective eventually frees Kendrick from his restraints.
As he walks out of the building, the infamous quote is played, which acts as a precursor to the second verse, accompanied by a beat change. With strong lyrics including “You motherfuckers can’t tell me nothin’/ I’d rather die than to listen to you” and “Sentence on the way, killings on the way”, Lamar reiterates that the tactless sound bite is a poor reading of the room when it comes to the oppression of the Black community. In the following track on the album, ‘Yah’, Kendrick directly calls out Riviera to round off his response to the comments made years before.
Following the release of Damn, Rivera posted an 18-minute video to Facebook, in which he praised Lamar for being a ‘great rapper’ before doubling down on his position, stating that hip hop has been “very culturally destructive”.
Sampling has been used in hip hop to amplify the impact of previous generations, pay homage to those who inspire, and, at times, spark creativity. By sampling the destructive statements that oppose the very source of the art in question, Kendrick Lamar proved why the existence of hip hop is still so important in the modern age.