I was lying on the bed. Hoping the sweat would run down my arms slower if my limbs lay flat. The sun in the Sunninghill suburb is relentless. It laughs in the face of the word scorcher and considers sunscreen stupid. So I was laying there, resigned to being in a furnace. The windows were wide open and so were Dude’s eyes. He was standing in the middle of the room and I was wondering if his thin frame was blocking the fresh air circulation with all his excitement. He was going on about this Kendrick something-or-other.
I remember him saying something about the West Coast, I rolled my eyes. There was another thing about him rapping about being a Christian, I was intrigued. I wanted to ask if this Kendrick-what-what was hot but onomatopaeia made me weary of voicing such things since I was beyond burning up. Since that day, I learned that his surname is Lamar. I discovered that he has a silly but sweet soft spot for Beyonce (if you know The Ordinary Girl you know why that’s significant). I understood that he appreciated The Girlfriends as much as he did the Tammy's and Keisha's whose paths are different from each other. I also unconsciously began to accept his lines, phrases and quirks as things that would become part of our lives. If I had a Rand for everytime Dude answered a question with “Fuck thut...”
It’s been years since I was harassed by the Sunninghill sun - Norhood is so much better in so many ways - but at least, in that time, I got the answer to the question I was too lazy to ask Dude. Kendrick Lamar is hot. What he looks like doesn’t matter, what he’s managed to do for music and for self esteem is something special. This is Tammy’s Song, off Section.80, which is nominated for Best Mixtape at the 2011 BET Hip Hop Awards.
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