As the end-of-year polls roll in, the White House has joined in the act, with the president and first lady naming their favourite tracks of the year. In an interview with the US magazine People, Barack Obama said his No 1 of 2015 was How Much a Dollar Cost by Kendrick Lamar, from his acclaimed hit album To Pimp a Butterfly.
The track sees Lamar rapping about encountering a homeless man in South Africa, assuming he wants money to buy crack and feeling resentful, before discovering the man is God. Which strongly suggests the president felt the need to emphasise his serious side – Fetty Wap’s Trap Queen, about cooking crack, might not have represented the White House so well.
Michelle Obama, meanwhile, emphasised the party, picking Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk as her favourite song of the year.
As annotated on genius.com:
"…Up until this point in the album, Kendrick’s been plagued by Lucy & Uncle Sam. On his road to recovery, he runs into a homeless man at a gas station in South Africa.
He tells the story of a man (who he thinks is a crack addict) asking for 10 Rand (apprrox $1 USD). Initially Kendrick says no and feels resentment as the man who continues to berate him. After asking if he’d read Exodus 14, Kendrick begins to feel guilty and sympathetic towards the man.
His selfishness, towards which he attributes his success, eventually comes out most in his interactions with the homeless man. At that point, the man reveals himself to be God – his selfishness and unwillingness to give the homeless man a dollar has cost him his place in Heaven. This revelation harks back to the parable of “The Sheep and the Goat.”
Kendrick then repents in the outro, asking God for forgiveness. It’s only now he’s free of Lucy & Uncle Sam – he had to be humbled to be humble. Pointing out that the figurative value of a dollar is far higher than the literal value of a dollar.
On December 9, 2015, President Obama named this record as his favorite of the year."
http://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-how-much-a-dollar-cost-lyrics
WOW! Glad to see that I have the exact same taste in muziq as POTUS! :):)
http://www.kenyatalk.com/index.php?threads/my-favourite-music-albums-of-2015-which-were-yours.13837/