Kendrick and Trey & Matt

Childish Seriousness

Part II

Few solid n- left, but it’s not enough
Few bitches that’ll really step, but it’s not enough
Say you bigger than myself, but it’s not enough (huh)
I get on they ass, yeah, somebody gotta do it
I’ll make them n- mad, yeah, somebody gotta do it
I’ll take they G-pass, shit, watch a n- do it
Huh, we survived outside, all from the music, n-, what?

- Kendrick Lamar “TV Off”

I am a ball dropper. I had this idea to write all these pieces about improv using art that wasn’t about improv. I got about three in and then went dark. The reason I haven’t returned to that collection is that I reached a crossroads I was unable to navigate. The next piece of media that I was going to exhaust was NaS’ 2008 album Hip Hop is Dead, where NaS’ claimed his art form had died.

“Hip hop been dead, we the reason it died

Wasn’t Sylvia’s fault, or because MCs skills are lost

It’s cause we can’t see ourselves as the boss.”

- NaS “Carry On Tradition”

Ultimately, it ended up feeling a bit dramatic. I sounded like a doomsday prepper. Still, I think that hip hop’s touch-and-go vitality rests on how resonate serious rap can be. If rap is on its deathbed as a relevant art form, then Kendrick Lamar is life support.

The beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake was as much about serious vs. non-serious as it was about rap skills. Drake is a popular artist, but he is not a serious artist. Kendrick, on the other hand, has a discography that reflects a struggle to be both serious and popular. Seemingly every other record since good kid, m.A.Ad. city showcases Lamar’s attempt to be serious and to be heard. To Pimp a Butterfly was a serious album. Damn was more infectious. I remember loving Damnbut I was surprised at its relatively short lifespan in my rotation. Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers was another serious album. We waited years for another Kung Fu Kenny album, and when it finally arrived, I think people were uncomfortable at how challenging it was to vibe out on a man expelling his therapeutic transformation. Or maybe not surprised at the challenge, but surprised we were being challenged. I don’t want to say that music can’t be both serious and fun, but in a genre like rap, where a hit is often defined by it’s ability to start a party or raise the roof, it is not easy to be taken seriously. “Get Low” is a banger, but not even pornographers would say a song about ball sweat is serious. That was the brilliance of “Not Like Us.” It was a DJ Mustard produced beat that rattled bodies with K Dot lyrics that shook minds. Not since “Jesus Walks,” had rap audiences and mainstream audiences been given a song that was as engaging on paper as it was on airwaves.

Kendrick attacked Drake for not being serious; for colonizing artists for popularity and cash. For leveraging his fame to exploit other artists and fans. Kendrick gave people what they didn’t know they were deficient in; a piece of art that took itself and its audience seriously. The song was as truthful as it was playful. It’s the perfect example of a piece of art being serious and fun. With the release of GNX months later, it would appear Kendrick had used “Not Like Us” to crack the alchemy of seriously infectious art. The song was a stepping stone, but the album proved it wasn’t a crutch. Kendrick’s new album isn’t devoid of shit talking, and the DJ Mustard beats are there, but it’s surprisingly sparse of barbs pointed at Drake. The continuation of the beef would have made Kendrick unserious. The beef wasn’t important because it was salacious. It was salacious because what Lamar was saying was important. But once the closing argument had been made, Kendrick could move on to other areas of serious thought. Ruminating on the beef would have made his art fast fashion. Cheap and easily disposable. Kendrick is more interested in a black Grand National; a serious piece of timeless artistic and functional merit.

Kendrick’s performance at The Super Bowl will test his serious flow. The halftime show is a break from, and a part of, a serious sporting event. This doesn’t mean it’s a break from serious, nor does it mean it extends the seriousness. It’s for entertainment. Serious artists from Prince to Bruce Springsteen have dominated in that slot, reminding us how talented artists in their element can be life affirming. But there’s also been wardrobe malfunctions, The Black Eyed Peas, New Kids on the Block, and Maroon 5. The halftime show does not need to be serious. A few years ago, most people just made fun of 50 Cent for getting fat. The Super Bowl is the most watched televised event on the planet. It is serious. In fact, professional sports are mostly impervious to non-seriousness. Even that Turkish Olympic shooter was serious. People were mean to Raygun because she seemed unserious. A good way to tell if the world views someone as serious or not is to examine how appealing the Halloween costume would be. Dressing up as the Turkish gunslinger is lionizing him. Whereas Raygun was already a costume.

Sports is a locomotive that billionaires can hitch their non-serious enterprises to. Amazon and Netflix are now telecasting games. Ads for the Super Bowl cost millions. Nike, Reebok, Under Armor have all built empires on the literal backs of extraordinary athletes and still the sport survives. Thinking about symbiotic relationships, professional sports are whales and corporate entities are barnacles, feeding off the whale that is mostly unaware of its passengers. I suppose you could make the argument that advertising pays for sports arenas and equipment, but I think sports wouldn’t be in jeopardy without its corporate sponsors.

Kendrick may be the halftime show in the Super Bowl, but he is not a barnacle. He will no doubt be entertaining to sell records and concert tickets, but will he be serious? He has the power to change the relationship. He can be that little bird on the back of a Rhino that eats pests and alerts the rhino to danger. Or one can hope he will be the mighty beast himself, with sports fans being the little birds, catching morsels of nourishment.

Of course, while Kendrick is singular, he is not alone. There is a small but mighty battalion. Musicians, actors, directors, writers, performers, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Another piece of art that had me thinking about improv that wasn’t about improv is the documentary Casa Bonita, Mi Amore. It captures the financial, emotional, and investment and cost it takes to take art seriously.

South Park put Colorado on the pop culture map. I’m not sure how many people know about Casa Bonita, Arvada’s strip mall Mexican amusement park restaurant, but it’s got to be exponentially more than would have known about it if the animated series South Park never became a cultural phenomenon. South Park’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, are from Colorado so episodes of their foul-mouthed cartoon feature its landscape both literally and figuratively.

Casa Bonita was a landmark for the state for decades. It combined family Mexican food with plaster caves, fake foliage, dinner theater including cave diving, and a little flag on your table you could raise to get more Sopapillas, fried dough covered in cinnamon. The documentary captures the afterlife of the restaurant’s glory days from bankruptcy, to Parker and Stone buying it, to the enormous undertaking to renovate it. The plot was in the news headlines so it’s not spoiling anything to say they bought a money pit, and would eventually sink 40 million dollars into it before reopening it with improved cuisine, attractions, and that patented South Park humor.

“No one would have done it the way we did it because it didn’t make any sense and it wasn’t smart.”

- Matt Stone

But they were serious. The documentary focuses mostly on Parker and Stone’s love for the restaurant, with Parker exuding an almost impenetrable bridge to his youth making his love fantastical. The duo commits to recapture the magic of the restaurant no matter the cost. Though I think if they knew the cost from the outset, they may have not started. And we’re all better for it. The striving to protect what he loves takes its toll on Parker, not just financially, but emotionally. During the soft opening, there is footage of Parker wandering around with a hangdog expression as some thirty-year-old bro is dancing around imitating Cartman. “It was just so not Casa Bonita. It felt like a nightclub in San Diego,” said Parker.

If preserving Casa Bonita was motivated only be profit, there would be no Casa Bonita because no restaurant is worth $40 million in renovations. Or there would be a chain of them slinging Sopapillas out of a drive-thru window, absent of any childlike amusement and indistinguishable from any other chain that would rather the food be fast than, well, food. Not serious.

Instead, Trey and Matt took their art seriously, even when their commitment looked foolish. But it only looked foolish through a business lens, which magnifies profit and nothing else. Parker and Stone preserved a place that represented an idea that possibly sparked the imagination that led them to create their own world of characters and adventures that eventually led them to then rebuild that place for another generation. Business never takes that kind of legacy seriously.

“Never let myself try to think that I own, that Casa Bonita is mine in any way. Cause it’s not. Cause it’s fleeting. I know this is just a moment in Casa Bonita’s life. A lot of the work, and the money was just saving it. Was just making it to be there in another fifty years.”

- Trey Parker

Towards the end of the film, Trey has this realization that his presence at the newly opened and magical Casa Bonita is pulling focus from the restaurant. People want to chat and take pictures with the creator of South Park, which was an opportunity cost of being able to resurrect the restaurant in the first place. His celebrity wasn’t a part of the original design, and it was detracting from the renovated one. Narrating over footage of fans greeting him, Trey says “oh yeah, I’m a distraction. This really sad moment. Wow I can’t be here…It was like a breakup. I was so intensely involved. This place that brought me so much happiness, I kind of can’t go.”

I found this revelation heartbreaking. Both for Parker, but also for artists. If you’re an artist, it’s not surprising to see Parker and Stone break the bank for their inner child. Most of us do that all the time, smashing our modest piggy banks to hone our craft or create our vision. It feels more causal than coincidence that at their peak powers, Parker and Stone bought their childhood amusement park and Kendrick Lamar named his album after his most sought after possession. What’s more, the trio are working together on a movie, and it was Parker and Stone’s tech that was used for “The Heart Pt. 5” music video. Game recognize game.

From the outset, Parker and Stone’s motives are framed as granting a wish to their former selves, allowing them to essentially “own Disneyland.” Money was no object to two guys who played streamers Max and Paramount Plus against each other and came out with nearly a billion dollar deal between seasons of the show on one service, and exclusive hour specials on the other. The haunting revelation is that someone as serious as Parker, with almost unlimited resources, who sunk 40 million dollars and years of planning and execution into his art, was not immune to the non-seriousness of fake commercialism. He needed to be the co-creator of South Park to take his dream seriously, but being the co-creator who saved a restaurant with his Hollywood millions meant that if he wanted other people to take his creation seriously, he would have to look on from a distance. Parker’s vision for Casa Bonita was about running around in Black Beard’s cave and imagining yourself as an explorer or cliff diver. It was a seriously silly, but equally real experience. It wasn’t about taking a photo with a famous millionaire to post on social media for fake likes. Parker’s seriousness made it possible for Casa Bonita to have a second life, and it also made it impossible for him to enjoy what he had created because his persona was a by-product of fake value assigned by show business. If all the money in the world can’t insulate us from non-serious influences, then what avenue is there for the rest of us modestly sculpting, that could preserve our serious creativity? Perhaps an avenue not where money is no object, but where there is no object. Where everything is made-up. There is an artistic form of expression that on the surface looks more fake and less serious than any of the other branches on its family tree. It requires no hardware, no higher education or intense selection process, and its execution relies solely on imagination and collaboration. Because of these factors, it has nearly universal accessibility and super-strain resistance to outside corporate interference. In the land of the fake, improv is king.

End Part II