#1 Album In The Country Ignites “Praying For Kendrick” Movement

Kendrick Lamar’s ‘DAMN.’ Earns the Biggest Billboard Debut of 2017

The album sold over 350,000 copies and was listened to over 341 million times on Spotify.

If you listened to the album you most likely heard this quote.

“I feel like the whole world want me to pray for ‘em, but who prayin’ for me?”

A fan of Kendrick’s music, Levi Macallister wrote a blog and posted on http://www.prayingforkendrick.com.

Macallister says, “I’ll be honest, I can’t say I’ve been following Kendrick since the beginning. I didn’t know him when he was K. Dot, I didn’t know a thing about Section 80 or the two records that came out prior to it, and when my friend introduced me to good kid, mAAd city, I didn’t understand. There is nothing in me that would presume to understand the life that Kendrick has lived, or the world from which he comes. I am a young, conservatively grown, white evangelical kid. I know nothing – experientially – of inner-city life in Los Angeles save the time my family spent in Watts serving the people who needed it there while I was growing up as a boy. I know nothing of the black experience save what the past two years have blindsided me with about how blind I am to it. It’s a humbling process, and I associate much of Kendrick’s work with education. It is as much academic as art to vibe to, and I am thankful for the things that I have learned, and the memories I now associate with his work.”

When DAMN. dropped on Good Friday, Macallister thought that there is not a mainstream artist alive that comes close to touching the kind of ecumenical response that Kendrick Lamar elicits from both sides of the unfortunate divide between sacred and secular.

Macallister says:

““Ain’t nobody prayin’ for me…”

There is.

Kendrick has unabashedly revealed his art as a mirror that does not shy away from the insecurities, anxieties, fears and inconsistencies it reflects. Those pockmarks are universal. I see them in my face and I’d bet you see them in yours. Surely we all wonder whether our prayers have reached the ears intended for them, or if anyone is praying them at all, or if it matters either way.

I think it does.

“Who prayin’ for me?”

My dear friends and fellow fans, may we be a people who answer that question with hands raised high above our heads.”

To read more about the Praying For Kendrick movement head over to the website.