Kendrick Lamar was undoubtly the big winner of the 58th Annual Grammy Awards, which aired last night from Staples Center in his hometown of Los Angeles, California. No Lamar didn’t win two of the most coveted awards, Record of the Year or even Album of the Year, but he did manage to snatch five awards from his record 11 nominations.
Sweeping the Rap categories and winning Best Rap Album for his historic album, To Pimp a Butterfly, the Compton native made more noise for his iconic performance of Blacker the Berry, Alright and what most of us assume is Untitled 3. As Kendrick came out in shackles with his prisonmates, before breaking free with a performance that will easily be the most talked about of the night and will go down in the awards almost 60-year history as one of the most iconic performances ever for the show.
An ode in way of the slaves before him (which most artists feel they are nowadays) and the late great Michael Jackson, K-Dot’s performance was so groundbreaking that a lot of people in the crowd looked like they didn’t know what was going on because of the message he was trying to get across with the performance. One that a lot of other artists outside of Rap/Hip-Hop probably don’t realize.
It was one that was definitely a huge topic of discussion and will be for years to come though.