God and diamonds: what Kendrick Lamar wanted to tell us through his crown of thorns

The latest edition of Glastonbury, the first after two years of cancellations due to the pandemic, will not be remembered for a performance, but for an object.

At the first live show of his new tour, rapper Kendrick Lamar appeared on stage wearing a crown of thorns resplendent thanks to, as we discovered shortly after, the 8,000 microdiamonds embedded in it.

It was the same one that adorns the artist's head on the cover of his new album,

, and which he had also worn in his performance at the Louis Vuitton show at Paris Men's Fashion Week just six days earlier.

However, the appointment at the British festival was the moment chosen to reveal its origin and the process of creating a accessory that is both symbolic and revealing.

One day after his concert, the firm Tiffany & Co explained in a statement that this crown was the result of a collaboration with the musician, a project that has involved ten months and more than 1,300 hours of work by four of its craftsmen in the north of Italy.

On a titanium base with 50 thorns, the 8,000 stones, totaling 137 carats, were set in pavé.

Although the price of this piece, unique and created exclusively for the artist, has not been revealed, various media value it at an amount close to a million and a half dollars.

Lamar and his manager and collaborator Dave Free presented this project to Tiffany last year, with a brooch created by jewelry designer Jean Schlumberger in 1947 as inspiration.

According to the firm, which had recently chosen Jay-Z and Beyoncé as the face of its

campaign , the final piece is "a metaphor for artistic courage, humility and perseverance."

Its meaning, however, is much more complex.

From neighborhood boy to town messiah

Lamar's crown marks, both in form and substance, a new stage in his representation to the world.

Since his debut in 2011, the Compton, Los Angeles-based artist had maintained a measured stance on the ostentation and luxury endemic to the rap scene.

"30 concerts a month and still I didn't buy a Lexus", he rapped in his song

, from 2017, remembering the time when he began to become an international star with his album

in 2012. Faced with overexposure and the use of luxury as a claim to success, Lamar has kept a low profile in his representation to the world.

He hardly uses social networks, he does not lavish himself at events and he hardly mentions fashion firms in her compositions, unlike a large part of her contemporaries.

Artist Kendrick Lamar in a promotional portrait.interscope records

Paradoxically, this differentiation from current rap has been what has driven Lamar to achieve a much greater cultural impact than other generation comrades.

As Drake racked up number ones on the charts, he became the first rap musician to receive a Pulitzer Prize, in 2018. Even before that, producer Pharrell Williams had called him "the Bob Dylan of our era." .

The comparison did not seem exaggerated: to his ability to dispense rhymes, Lamar adds a special depth as a lyricist, reflecting with self-criticism and crudeness the experience of being African-American.

Also like Dylan, the weight of his myth has been accumulating on his shoulders until it has become evidence.

“Your name is idolized and praised throughout the nation,” Lamar sings on “Crown,” one of the songs by

, the same one whose chorus is endlessly repeated “you can’t please everyone.” world".

After publishing

, his fourth album, had reached a status that transcended that of a popular music star, becoming a kind of moral oracle for the African-American public.

The subsequent silence in which he took refuge only increased it.

A five-year break barely broken by some collaboration and the soundtrack of the Marvel movie

in which, we later learned, Lamar had been a father twice and had suffered a creative block.

ghetto martyrs

The appropriation of Christian imagery is certainly not something new in popular music.

Madonna was able to see her provocative power in the

video clip , and on her

tour she included a segment in which she sang on a cross wearing a crown of thorns.

Rap, however, has been linked in a different way to these symbols.

From Tupac Shakur, whose crucified drawing appeared on the cover of his album

, who used that same image in the

, the stars of the genre have exploited that connection, comparing their transcendence to that of religious figures while referencing their status as martyrs from the underprivileged backgrounds of American society.

Kanye West, who did not hesitate to wear the crown of thorns at the time he released his song

, is perhaps one of the artists who has used religious references the most.

From proclaiming himself a god on

he has gone on to release heavily gospel-influenced albums like

.

Kendrick Lamar, in whose lyrics he had already shown his religious beliefs, has decided to take a more explicit step.

"The crown is a representation of the philosophy of the neighborhood told from an acceptable youth perspective," explained Dave Free, one of the people closest to Lamar.

The rapper was more symbolic in his Glastonbury live.

“I wear this on behalf of you, lest you forget one of the greatest prophets that ever lived.

We are going to continue to do our best to advance in his image and likeness”, he exhorted the audience, just before launching a somewhat opaque plea against the repeal of the right to abortion in the US: “If they judge you, They judge Christ.

May God accompany the rights of women”.

As a final symbolism, the performance ended with blood falling from the thorns.

This new mystical stage of Lamar also comes at a time when his career seems to reach a turning point.

For one thing, the lighthouse image of him begins to crack for the first time.

Despite receiving mostly positive reviews,

is his first album that contains questionable decisions that part of the public has reproached him for.

On the one hand, the inclusion of rapper Kodak Black, convicted of sexual assault charges, in several of his songs.

On the other hand, the feeling that he does not finish connecting with a younger audience, as evidenced by the reproaches that

earned him , a well-intentioned song in which he deals with the experience of his trans uncle, but in which he does not refer to him with the gender with which they identify.

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

was also announced as Lamar's last album for TDE, his longtime label.

He had previously launched pgLang, described as a multidisciplinary company to produce diverse artistic projects.

Those movements and certain messages on the album suggest that he is embarking on the path that many of his predecessors in rap have followed, going from artists to

.

His aesthetic decisions also show apparent contradictions: he rejects his referent role ("Kendrick made you think about it, but he's not your savior," he sings in Saviour) while using the imagery of a prophet.

The key, perhaps, is in the concept of martyr to which the crown of thorns alludes: Lamar is suffering for our sins before definitively abandoning the way we know him.

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