Rhetorical Strategies For Black Liberation

The term Black liberation may be divided into three branches: freedom of expression, socioeconomic freedom, and defining Black identity. Expressive and socioeconomic freedom are tied to an individual’s life experience, but socioeconomic freedom relates to the individuals community as well. The everchanging Black identity; that is, the undocumented reformation of Black culture and heritage in modern society, applies to Black communities across the diaspora. To manifest all three, therefore, is to achieve Black liberation. This essay examines the ways in which Black Americans achieve Black liberation through music. Tupac Shakur’s debut album 2Pacalypse Now, and Kendrick Lamar’s revered To Pimp a Butterfly capture the various elements of Black liberation. Throughout each album, the artists employ different rhetorical strategies meant for conveying their Black liberation.
The first branch of Black liberation is freedom of expression, or the act of relaying a unique Black presence through some medium. As defined by Garner and Calloway-Thomas, Black freedom of expression involves sharing a “cultural knowledge of African Americans” and recreating “language, discourse, and patterns of Black American behavior” (Wright, 2003, p.

In light of this, Lamar speaks from a learned perspective rather than a Black youth’s. The chorus voice mimics that of an elderly Black woman, and this is meant to recreate a passage of knowledge between Black generations. Whereas Shakur speaks from the eyes of a Black youth, whom “all [they] know is violence”, Lamar speaks as an experienced Black male who is “institutionalized” and learned “all that [he] can be” through the